Scaling heights

It was the summer of 1991. My host family was planning a camping trip to the Black Hills area of western South Dakota and asked us if we would come along too. We had never visited this area so our answer was an enthusiastic "YES". My host family, the Olsons' had five members in their family (Cindy, Vern and their three children, Isaac, Jesse and Valori) . We were three in our family, myself, my then husband and our firstborn, Vasanth. We figured that one station wagon would not fit all of us, so we decided to take our beat-up old Datsun 310 also. Since we had two cars more room opened up and we added Usha (a fellow grad student), her friend (don't remember his name) and Vasantha (another fellow grad student's wife). And so, off we went, a gang of 11 in two cars. Our university was in the eastern edge of South Dakota and the Black Hills area is in the western edge of the state. We traversed the whole width of the state going from flat prairies to spectacular mountains. It was a fun 8-hr journey given the company we had.

We reached the Sylvan Lake Camp Site in Custer State Park, set up our tents and retired for the night. On our first full day there we hiked around Sylvan lake,

went paddle boating in the lake

and visited the Mt. Rushmore National Monument
As enjoyable as the day was, Vern had something special planned for us the next day. We woke up as usual and went hiking again to a different part of the park. After lunch Vern declared that we were going 'Rock Climbing'. Vern and his kids were accomplished rock climbers but we on the other hand were total novices. "Rock Climbing?" we all chimed in unison. The Sylvan Lake area is a rock climbers paradise with several Class 5 rocks to tackle. Vasantha immediately bowed out, saying no way was she climbing any rock, and no amount of coaxing from all us could convince her. Our son Vasanth was too young so that left Usha, her friend, my then husband and myself. We looked at each other nervously not knowing whether to go for it or not. Ultimately Vern and his kids convinced us that it would be fun and that they would be there to catch us if we fell. Our target was a peak called "Photographer's Peak", apparently one that was a favorite of the Olson family and rock climbing enthusiasts who visit the park. They had scaled it several times before and were so familiar with the route that they could do it with no tether at all. We walked to the base of the massive granite rock with some trepidation and excitement. On the way there Vern appraised us of the rules of rock climbing and when we got to the base he tethered all us 'Novices' to a rope.

Vern went ahead of us to show us the footholds that we would use and we followed him one by one. Despite some initial nervousness all of us quickly got the hang of it and thoroughly enjoyed the strenuous exercise we got.


Vern had promised us a treat when we got up to the summit and true to his words, we were blown away by the breathtaking view of Sylvan Lake we encountered upon reaching the summit.


Sure, it was no El Capitan (the world's most famous and difficult rock to climb), but for me it was a proud moment when I managed to scale the height of the peak. We spent a glorious half hour at the summit drinking in nature's beauty. It was then time to come back down to earth, which we had no clue how we would accomplish. Vern explained to us that we would climb down a different route. That entailed trekking down 20 ft. or so and then rappelling down on a rope the rest of the way. "Vern we have never rappelled before" we all declared, but he convinced us that it was not difficult at all and sent his daughter down first as a demonstration. She made it look easy and we had no choice but to do it also, lest we wanted to spend the night atop the peak. In fact it turned out to be not that hard at all and we all successfully rappelled down back to the base. We were famished by the time we got to the camp and devoured the delicious meal Cindy had prepared for us.