10 August 2017

How many of you know that Devil’s Tower in Wyoming is a National Monument? In fact, it is America’s first National Monument. This means Wyoming has our first National Park (Yellowstone) and our first National Monument (Devil’s Tower). We can thank Teddy Roosevelt for both of these.

We are sure most of you have seen the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” which caused the popularity of Devil’s Tower to increase exponentially. However did you know this year is the 40^th anniversary of the movie? Make you feel kind of old?

Meriam and I have driven past Devil’s Tower several times in our travels but chose not to drive the extra 30 miles needed to visit the site. Fortunately we decided to visit it this time. In fact, while we were in Red Lodge, MT a couple of weeks ago we happened upon Ted and Kate Melady from Jefferson (what are the chances of that). Seems they had just been to The Tower and loved it.

Devil’s Tower is much more than a rock jutting out of the ground. The surrounding terrain is quite interesting and the Park Service has done a great job in providing accessible walking paths around the monument. The Tower rises 867 feet above its base and is 5,112 feet above sea level. The area at its top is 1.5 acres. The diameter of its base is 1000 feet. The Tower formed about 50 million years ago when molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and then cooled. As it cooled it contracted and fractured into columns you can see today. Over millions of years, erosion of the sedimentary rock slowly exposed the Tower.

All of this is of course fascinating, but there is another aspect to the Tower we had not considered. Each day dozens of climbers ascend the rock face! These climbers take any of the 220 different routes around its face, depending on their level of climbing expertise. It normally takes the climbers from 4 to 6 hours to ascend and then descend their climb. However, the record time for climbing the Tower is 18 minutes…and the climber used no gear!

A view of Devil’s Tower from its west side at dusk.

The sides of the Tower consist of fractured columns of rock, each between 20 and 30 feet wide. The longest columns are 300-400 feet long. Notice how the top has been fractured vertically and horizontally.

We took this photograph early in the morning. This is its eastern face. Note the small white square I have placed on its left side. The photograph below shows why I highlighted is area.

This is a close-up of the area marked on the previous photograph. Note the two climbers as they are ascending this route. Remember that each of these columns are between 20-30 feet wide. More than 6000 individuals climbed Devil’s Tower in 2016.

It appears the climber on the left (in red) was the guide for this group.

“Oh no! I got my foot tangled in the ropes!”

Checkout the number of ropes used between these climbers.

The animals are so used to humans around the Tower this hawk seemed not to be disturbed by our presence. He was probably only 30-40 feet away. On the 1.3 mile walk around the Tower we also encountered numerous deer. Not far from the Tower is also the largest Prairie Dog village we have ever seen. Such fun to watch!

“Huh oh, where do I go from here”?

This climber is in the shade on the west side of the Tower

Again, climbers on the west side. It appears to us that this side was more difficult to climb.