Climbing
In recent years, climbing Devils Tower National Monument has increased in popularity. The first known ascent of Devils Tower by any method occurred on July 4, 1893, and is accredited to William Rogers and Willard Ripley, local ranchers in the area. They completed this first ascent after constructing a ladder of wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock face. A few of these wooden pegs are still intact and are visible on the tower when hiking along the 1.3-mile (2.1 km) Tower Trail at Devils Tower National Monument. Over the following thirty years many climbs were made using this method before the ladder fell into disrepair. The man most famous for climbing the tower is Fritz Wiessner who summited with William P. House and Lawrence Coveney in 1937. This was the first ascent using modern climbing techniques. Wiessner led the entire climb free, placing only a single piece of fixed gear (piton) which he later regretted, deeming it unnecessary.
In 1941 George Hopkins parachuted on to Devils Tower, without permission, as a publicity stunt resulting from a bet. He had intended to descend by a rope dropped with him, but this failed to land on the tower summit. Hopkins was stranded for six days exposed to cold, rain and 50 mph winds before a mountain rescue team finally reached him and brought him down. His entrapment and subsequent rescue was widely covered by the media of the time.
Today hundreds of climbers scale the sheer rock walls of Devils Tower each summer. The most common route is the Durrance Route which was the second free route established in 1938. Today there are many established and documented climbing routes covering every side of the tower, ascending the various vertical cracks and columns of the rock. The difficulty of these routes range from relatively easy to some of the hardest in the world. All climbers are required to register with a park ranger before and after attempting a climb.
The Tower is sacred to several Native American Plains tribes, including the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Kiowa. Because of this, many Indian leaders objected to climbers ascending the monument, considering this to be a desecration. The climbers argued that they had a right to climb the Tower, since it is on federal land. A compromise was eventually reached with a voluntary climbing ban during the month of June when the tribes are conducting ceremonies around the monument. Climbers are asked, but not required, to stay off the Tower in June. According to the PBS documentary In the Light of Reverence, approximately 85% of climbers honor the ban and voluntarily choose not to climb the Tower during the month of June. However, several climbers along with the Mountain States Legal Foundation sued the Park Service, claiming an inappropriate government entanglement with religion.
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Famous quotes containing the word climbing:
“These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you’re climbing out of yourself.
If you’re going to smash into the sky.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“An old, mad man still climbing in his ghost,
My fathers’ ghost is climbing in the rain.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)