Sky Grulke on Bagatelle

People often talk about the “king lines” of their home crag. Whether it’s their favorite long, moderate romp or a nails hard test piece. Every climber can think of a few lines that fall in to that category. For Devils Lake, Bagatelle is a king line.

Originally toproped by Pete Cleveland in the 60’s (visionary for the time) and then lead on pre-placed gear by Tommy Deutchler. It’s remained as THE hard route in the park for decades. For most folks, a toprope send is a huge success. Bagatelle requires finesse, power, and iron fingers to just do the opening crux off the ground. There are a few, however, who live for the headpoint experience. They love the puzzle. Sky Grulke considers Bagatelle to be one of the greatest puzzles of all for himself.

He spent several weekends through two seasons toproping Bagatelle over and over. If you ever saw a headlamp coming down the CCC trail at 1030pm on a February evening, it was probably Sky.

I spent a Friday afternoon with him climbing a bunch of our favorite crack pitches (Upper D, Callipigenous, Breakfast of Champs) to warm up. We then dropped our topropes on our respective headpoint projects. He had said in passing a few times that he was feeling close on Bagatelle, but I don’t think he wanted to put any pressure on himself.

He never told me “I’m going to lead Bagatelle”

After sending two times on TR back to back, while walking towards All The Way, he quietly asked “hey man, do you think you can bring a few pads and your double ropes up tomorrow?” I smiled, we both knew what was in store for Saturday morning.

Often times, Sky is absolutely incapable of taking anything seriously, even while in the middle of a serious headpoint, he’ll be singing, cracking an inside joke, or making a reference to SpongeBob. With this king line though, Bagatelle, it was all business. After warming up on his solo circuit he took a walk. I flaked the ropes, laid out the pads so if he peeled off the crossover move on the first crux he would land on them, and asked Kenz to pull the anchor back from the ledge.

He walked back over, tied in, looked at me and said

“Orange on the right?”

“Yep”

“Well I suppose”

And with a classic Midwest goodbye phrase, he cruised up a headpoint of Bagatelle. The king line at Devil’s Lake State Park.