Climbing Devil's Tower - Movie Script

Hi,  

I am writing a fictionalized movie script based on my experience climbing the Tower in 1976.  To be brief, it was a comedy of errors and we spent most of the night on top before we eventually got down at sunrise.   I would like to talk with others who have had unusual, scary or humorous stories about climbing in general, but especially if it was during a climb of Devil's Tower.  If you share your stories, I will share more of mine. 

Ok I'll bite, this chapter we'll call "How bad do you want to climb Devils Tower".

Early 90's my wife to be was a ranger at the Tower and I worked at the Climbing School in the Needles. Staying in ranger housing was the ticket to climb there, finding partners was the trick. I had my gear and planned on rope soloing Bon Homme. At the base of the Bowling Ally I met up with two Wyoming high school boys, they wanted to climb the Durrance rt but were uncertain about the route finding. Eventually a offered to tag along 3rd and keep them on track. I even offered gear but they had a full set of nuts and hexes and wanted to go with what they brought.

Everything was going fine thru the first half of the Durrance pitch, the last big hex went in a little over half way up the pitch, he's out of large gear the cracks are getting wider now what? he yell's down. "Now is when we find out how bad do you want to climb Devils Tower" I yelled up. It was a bit nerve racking standing on the ledge knowing he would come pretty close to hitting us if he fell near the top. My number 4 Camalot would have been a game changer at that point. Did I let the kid risk his life for no reason or allow him the chance to make his own choices? Luckily he was fine and we all made the top. And down the same day.  

Thanks for the story Tim,

My climb was in the fall 1976 or 1977 while I was stationed with the Air Force in South Dakota.  I had started climbing there in the Black Hills.  One day my Air Force and climbing buddy told me that a guy from out of state got ahold of him through a caving magazine contact and wanted to climb with us.  We ended up doing several climbs in the Hill and the needles.  What this guy really wanted to do was climb the Tower.  I was a novice climber, but because my buddy and this new guy were better than me, I thought i would be in safe hands.

Unfortunately, the day before we were to head to Devil's Tower my buddy had to cancel.  So, my first bad, or at least questionable, decision of this whole event was that I agreed to go and do this climb with a guy I didn't know very well.

So, thus started what I call a comedy of errors that was my climb.  I will share more of this story (it gets better) when I get another story from someone else. 

Not the most exciting or humorous, but the first time I climbed the tower, April of 2015, I was a poor student with minimal quality camping gear. I froze so badly the night before, I opted to spend the majority of the early morning hiding in the very stinky outhouse to escape the cold before starting.   We learned why nobody else was lining up to climb Soler that early in the season. 

Thanks for your story,

So, as promised, here is more of my story.  As noted before I was heading out to climb with someone I didn't really know.  Not the best of decisions.  We camped at the park, intending to get an early start on the Durrence route. Unfortunately, we slept in.  I don't think we got started before 9am.  Other than starting late the real problem was that our late start had us behind another pair on the route.  And these guys were really, really slow.

Now we were at risk of not getting the climb done before it got dark.  As we discussed our predicament, we found out that the climbers ahead of us only had one rope.  Of course, this meant that they would not be able to use the Meadows rappel route.  At this point we decided that we would invite this pair into our team so that we could climb faster and then safely get down.  

There are more decisions (good and bad) to my story.  But first, please more stories from you.

Cold Feet: 

Link above to a great book of short (mostly hilarious) stories of climbing around the world.  There is one chapter of a DT climb that will make you LOL, literally. 

I got an unplanned "young and dumb" summit shiver-bivy story! Back in spring 2009, I was a freshman at CU Boulder, and a fledgling climber. I had about 1 season under my belt of multi-pitch trad climbing, mostly just on stuff in close proximity to Boulder. That April, me and my partner decided to go check out the Black Hills, super excited to go climb in what was then an unknown area for us. My partner had a friend who we stayed with Rapid City. On Saturday we climbed in the Needles; the road was closed and snowed in, so we walked a few miles along the snowy road and had a blast climbing Needles Eye/Tricouni Nail, and some other classics. It was a windy, gray day, and we were the only people out there. We tagged Black Elk Peak (then called Harney Peak) at the end of the day before heading back down to Rapid. A storm came in that night, which dashed our hopes for climbing the next day. 

We woke up the next morning to a steady rain, but upon a quick check of the weather, saw that the rain was supposed to stop around midday. We decided to go full YOLO and go give the Tower a try before the long drive back to Boulder. 

We arrived at the Tower around noon, just as the clouds parted, the sun came out, and the rock rapidly dried up. We were psyched. My partner had a bit more experience than I did, but not much. We decided to try El Matador, which was a lot harder than anything I had ever climbed before, given the commitment factor. We also only had 1 rope with us. We heard second hand from somewhere that it was possible to rap the Tower using only 1 rope; whatever, we said, good enough for us, we'll wing it! We started climbing at 1pm. That crux second pitch took my partner probably 3 hours to lead. Lots of aiding/backcleaning. By the 4th pitch the sun began slipping behind the horizon, and by the 5th pitch is was totally dark. We summited around 10pm, but we were in good spirits since "all we had to do was rap, and we'd be on our way!" We reveled in being on top of such an awesome feature, even if it was dark and we couldn't see anything. Well, we went over to where we thought this supposed single rope rap route started (somewhere on the east face if memory serves), with my partner going first. A predictable chain of events occurred, with him dangling down in the pitch-black at the end of the rope, looking for rap anchors that weren't there. Then he had to perform the time consuming task of prussiking himself back up the entire rope. After he was back on top, we wandered around aimlessly in the dark up there, trying to find other anchors, with no success. At this point it was probably around midnight, with fatigue setting in. We decided to spoon together in a small semi-protected dip in the grass. As you are aware, a mid April night in northeastern Wyoming can get pretty chilly. We laid there shivering all night, using the rope as a pad/blanket, and my small pack as a foot cozy. I had a sweatshirt, and my partner had a thin puffy, and that was it. It was a pitiful site. 

At first light with zero sleep had, we eventually found a rap station in the vicinity of the Meadows rappel and decided to go for it. Surprisingly we were able to get mostly down the Tower with 1 rope, but the last rap to the ground necessitated leaving a couple nuts to rap off. Finally we reached the ground. We stumbled back over to the parking lot, anxious to begin our 6 hour drive back to Boulder; it was a school day after all, and I was already missing classes I did not to be missing. Before we could leave, a Ranger came out of the station and told us to come with him. He led us into the back room and admonished us for spending the night on top, stating how illegal it was, how much he could fine us, etc. We honestly hadn't known about that rule at the time, and we certainly weren't concerned with being in violation of the law after having gone what we went through. The ranger was lenient when he saw that we were just two dumb kids and that this wasn't a planned summit bivy. He let us off with a warning and sent us on our way. 

Good early lesson of not starting up a committing/challenging route late in the day with insufficient plans of descent from shady beta. Still, wouldn't trade that experience for anything!

So, to continue my story.  Our climb did end late.  It was almost sundown and started to look for the start of the Meadows rappel route.

Because it was getting dark, we couldn't find it.  One of in our group thought we could do some down climbing to find the rappel bolt.  At this point I finally started to make good decisions.  I knew that climbing down in the dark was disaster waiting to happen.  And besides, my contacts were killing me and I needed to take them out.  So, we went to a pile of stone on top and I took out my contacts (I hadn't brought my glasses) and announced that we all should huddle down and wait for the morning. 

That lasted about an hour or two, when one guy announced that his buddy was getting too cold, and we needed to do something.  I'll continue the story when you give me one of your stories.

Also, If there anyone out there in the northern Colorado area who recently (last couple years) climbed the Tower, I would like to interview you.  Let me know.

Hi,

More of my story.  We did finish climbing the Tower.  But, due to the delays we didn't get to the top until almost sunset.  At this point we immediately looked for the top of the Meadows rappel route.  Due to the failing light, we could not find the route.  It was getting darker, and someone suggested climbing down to find the eyebolt for the rappel route.

It was at this point that I started to finally make good decisions.  I said no!  Climbing down in the dark was the worst thing we could try.  Beside the hard contacts I was wearing were starting to kill me.  I told everyone that since I didn't have my glasses, I was finding a sheltered spot to spend the night.  We could get down in the morning.

As you could probably guess, this is not the end of my story.  More to come.  Please add your unique stories here as well.

In fact, I would really love to interview anyone who has climbed the Tower recently (last 10 years).  We could do this remotely, or in person if your located in Northern Colorado.  You can contact me directly at bob.crandall52@outlook.com.

Thanks