| Ingredients: falling water, sustained sub-freezing temperatures. Optional: North-facing. This describes the Niobrara Walls. The Ogallala aquafer springs a leak along these 80 foot canyon walls, with the most spectacular ice formations breaking out for 1/2mile, just a few miles from the Fort Niobrara Wildlife Refuge headquarters. The approach in Winter is from the top where the rappel anchors (trees and fence posts) make for solid top roping too. |
Rock climbing has its limits around Valentine.
Its not that you can't find vertical surfaces of rock - the Niobrara canyon walls and the cliffs above the Minnechaduza are not easy to miss. The problem is that any rock bigger than a breadbox is composed of 2 flavors of rock: bad and almost-as-bad. We take some comfort from our in-house geologist that this rock was of considerably higher quality in an earlier era. But in 1997, anything you pull on in Yucca Dune country should be considered tentatively attached to Mother Earth.
Even so, we continue to climb rock, here and in other places not so far from YD. |
