Bouldering on the Great Plains

Earlier this month we released the latest episode in our “Off The Map” video series, which covered mountain biking in the Badlands of North Dakota on the infamous Maah Daah Hey Trail.

This week, the GearJunkie crew packed up a Subaru stationwagon and stacked bouldering pads atop a Yakima roof-top cargo basket in search of some of the most obscure rock climbing on the continent.

The venue was the great plains of western Minnesota, a landscape of wheat fields, combines, old barns, and straight highways that fade at the horizon line. But peppered on this flat land are immense hunks of stone, eons-old blocks of granite dragged to their current resting spots via glaciers and an ice age that overtook the region 10,000 years ago.

With five stout area climbers, GearJunkie’s editor Stephen Regenold, cameraman T.C. Worley, and intern Patrick Murphy visited three bouldering destinations during one, long 17-hour day.

Our forthcoming video, “Bouldering the Great Plains,” debuts on July 2. For now, check out our photos from the shoot here, a day of obscure yet surprisingly solid bouldering action on granite erratics and other small stones of the great plains.

—See GearJunkie’s ‘Off The Map’ series and full-screen video episodes, sponsored by Yakima, on the publication’s dedicated micro-site.