Devil's Tower

The little girl was scared. She knew she shouldn't have ventured out past the warm, safe edges of the village, and the dull amber haze of the fire burned over a distant hillside, melting the late afternoon sky into things not comprehensible to her. Then, suddenly, the brush filled with sharp rustling and a low, heavy growl and a bear emerged from the dark, running full gait through the meadow, a freight train headed for collision. Not far from where she stood a low rock jutted unevenly out of the golden dirt, flat-topped and like the rocks the elder's said were ancient tree stumps, she thought. Without so much a second's delay, she jumped up onto the rock and prayed silently to the great spirit to lift the rock up into the sky and protect her from this looming menace across the meadow. Just as she thought this was going to be the end, the earth shook with great fury and the rock lifted high, higher into the air and soon she was a thousand feet above the sweeping plains, the bear's futile effort to scale the vertical walls leaving great claw marks in the stone. According to the Kiowa and Sioux indians who have cared for this land for generation's, this is how Devil's Tower formed.

Devil's tower is immediate and disarming. It is so singular, so geometrically obscene that your instincts tell you it must be some sort of mirage, some hoax set up to lure tourist's to this backwater corner of northeastern Wyoming. Indeed though, it is real, a geological fluke; a giant plug of phonolite porphyry rock forming the heart of an ancient, eroded volcano. The climbing is superb. It demand's complete concentration, oneness with the stone in a way that allows us to discover the hidden weaknesses and cracks in the otherwise blank pantheon of sweeping columns and imposing roofs. There are no 'easy' routes at Devil's Tower, and even the popular 'trade' route, the Durrance, is stout 5.8 and features demanding offwidth and chimney sections that sweeping upward for hundred's of feet without a break in continuity or severity. The cracks are beautiful, parallel, and vertical, and they form at regular interval's of 5 or 6 feet all the way around the tower, in every form and variety from insecure fingertip locks to gaping offwidth's that eat the biggest cam's for breakfast. The thing with ratings at the Tower [which, like the Valley, need's no other moniker to distinguish it from other areas] is that while no single move on a route may be harder than 5.9 or 5.10, the combined pump and sustained nature of the climbing adds up to some of the most demanding climbing anywhere. Pitches are long, most clocking in over a hundred feet and many a rope-stretching 180 or even 200 feet.

After a relatively casual first day on the Durrance Route to the summit in 4 rope-stretching pitches(!) and an afternoon trip up the popular 5.9 handcrack of Soler, we elected to try something a little harder on Sunday. The morning sun greeted us bright and optimistic as we scrambled up the exposed and slabby approach to the super-classic 5.9 figner and handcrack 'Walt Bailey Memorial', often called the best route of it's grade at the Tower. At an imposing 30 foot block/dihedral blocking passage to the real start of the route [this was called '5th class' in our ancient guidebook], we elected to rope up. After climbing some solid 5.8 handjams on the 'approach', I knew Walt Bailey was the real deal. I set off on lead, brimming with excitement and also nervousness looking up the 180-foot pitch ahead of me, a singular lightning-bolt crack soaring upwards with nary a face hold in sight. The first 30 feet moved up and over a large, partially detached flake, and I savored the excellent and relatively straightforward movement between fingerlocks and sidepulls, stemming out to the left with my foot on good face smears. Above this, I moved left 10 feet and into the crack, and this is where the difficulties began. The fingerlocks were relatively good, but I realized soon that this lower 100 feet of climbing was going to consist of big moves off marginal feet on a steep, blank face between the good locks, with hardly a rest to be seen. I moved upward determined to reach the top, but found my progress interspersed with more frequent yells of 'take!' as the pump and sustained climbing took its toll on my arms. Finally, I crested a small bulge and pulled up into the most bomber handjam even, letting my feet cut loose and shouting out with joy, something that finally felt secure! More excitement was a little preemptive though, as the crack soon narrowed again to .75 Camalot ringlocks, my *least* favorite size. As I struggled to to cram my fat fingers into the stubborn crack, I realized my gear arsenal was dwindling a little bit. Time to run it out I guess! I smeared by feet high on little white feldspar crystal knobs, and lunged desperately at a nice looking hand jam. Miraculously, my hand sunk into the warm phonolite like a glove, and I locked off and peddled my feet up hopefully. 5 or 10 feet further and I was rewarded with a beautiful, steep handcrack, and my curses soon turned to shouts of exhilaration as I cruised upward on perfect jams, having so much fun I looked down from the chains to see 3 pieces of gear in 40 feet, the midday sun shining out over the vast plains, life so tangible and satisfying that nothing, nothing else mattered except now.