Devil's Tower National Monument (WY)

Devil's Tower is a 1347 acre park, covered with pine forests, woodlands, and grasslands. Also known as Bears Lodge, it is a sacred site for many American Indians, and is known to movie buffs as the locale for the ending of the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."


Devil's Tower rises 1267 feet above the nearby Belle Fourche River (5,112 feet above sea level) and is a popular climbing location. Unfortunately, we arrived on a raw 50 degree day with sporadic light rain, so there were no climbers today, which was a disappointment since I had my 300 mm zoom lens with me for the first time. Below is one of the local residents in the prairie dog community located right along the road at the entrance.

President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the nation's first national monument in 1906. Below is a view from the foot of the tower showing the boulder field leading to the base. The top is said to be about 200 feet by 400 feet and the summit is slightly dome shaped and rocky, with native grasses, cactus, and sagebrush. Chipmunks, mice and pack rats and the occasional snake are found on top.

The tower walls are actually composed of hundreds of parallel cracks that divide Devil's Tower into large hexagonal columns, making it one of the finest traditional crack climbing areas in North America. The longest of these continuous cracks are almost 400 feet long and vary significantly in width. It is similar to many pencils being held together by gravity. The next 2 photos demonstrate this:

The average time for two climbers to climb the Durrance Route (the easiest) is between 4-6 hours. It takes about one hour to rappel down, and there have been five climbing fatalities since 1937 (three while rappelling the Tower.) Climbers are not allowed to camp overnight on the Tower.