Devils Lake Climbing Guides
Topping out in Red Rock Canyon, NV
Overview
My first outdoor climbing experience was with Devils Lake Climbing Guides in 2015. My guide that day was Nick Wilkes, the owner of the guiding business (as well as a photography and web design shop).
Over the past 10 years, we have become good friends. We have hired each other multiple times for our respective services and also climbed together in Wisconsin, Nevada, Washington, and Canada!
Screenprinted Shirts
Devils Lake Climbing Guides offers private guiding on the purple quartzite bluffs of Devils Lake in Wisconsin. They also run many programs, from a summer Youth Adventure Camp to an annual Women’s Climbing Weekend. I’ve designed a handful of materials for DLCG over the years, mostly shirts, which are worn by the guides as well as the clients.
It’s been interesting to hear secondhand from Nick which designs have lasting power! The Rainy Wednesday image above is the first shirt I made for DLCG, but it has been surpassed in popularity by the black cross tee below. Rainy Wednesday is a popular bluff that is frequently climbed, while the two pieces of gear on the cross tee are nods to the style of climbing and protection used at Devils Lake.
This is the first of several Women’s Climbing Weekend shirts I’ve designed. We decided we’d show different climbing disciplines each year: bouldering for 2023, top roping for 2024, and trad climbing for 2025. I always enjoy creating series (part of why book illustration is so fitting for me), so designing a mini series of climbing shirts was very satisfying! By 2025 Nick decided to remove the year and use “DLCG” instead with the hope that it would give the tee a longer life.
Photos by Nick Wilkes Photography.