Let's start with a weird observation from Canada. Eryn, Chris and I went climbing on the Niagara escarpment a couple summers ago. On the way to the crag we noticed the strangest thing about the local community, they built all of their houses practically on top of each other and the whole cluster of 50+ houses was fenced in on all sides. So that's kind of strange sounding but the really odd part is that they did this in the country in the middle of a field. So you have tons of open land and space all around and yet the people all crammed themselves and their houses into these little fenced off areas. They looked like slums or compounds, it was very strange.
Ok this is the real story I wanted to tell, the long version (including everything up to) of the second day climbing at devils tower. As far as this story is concerned the first important event happens on the first day of climbing out west. This was on a 10 day climbing trip out west with Chris Allen, my climbing partner and best friend. So the first climb of the trip was to be a 3 pitch route up the backside of mount rushmore. Let me just pause here and tell you thus will be longer than I expected...sorry :) Back to this first climb. I believe it was called Benjamin Franklin. So we start up the climb, I lead the first pitch (longer climbs are divided into pitches so one person climbs a pitch and then the second person climbs up to them and then they start a another pitch). The first pitch feels considerably harder than the grade suggested (all climbs are rated in the guidebook, this rating or grade let's you know how hard a climb is before you start) so I'm working my butt off on the route that I thought I was going to fly up. This is where it all starts...I start getting scared and nervous. I don't want to fall, I don't want to fall and get hurt on the other side of the country, I don't want to fall and ruin the trip...at the top of the first pitch I'm already a bit of a mess. First pitch, first climb, first day and already I want my mommy...I tell myself to get over it and suck it up. While Chris is climbing I take in the absolutely stunning scenery and do some focused breathing. Chris reaches me and recounts how difficult and scary that section was, which makes me feel a bit better. Chris leads the next pitch and its a breeze. I take the third and final pitch. I head off feeling good about the second pitch, having recovered my confidence. I place a piece of protection about five feet from the anchor and continue up, and up, and up. I stop to look for somewhere to place gear for protection and find none! So I head up some more. Nothing. I keep going up assuming gear placements there only a little higher. Let me explain something, I am an east coast climber so a scary distance between pieces of protection is like 10 feet. By the time I get to the top of this climb at Mt Rushmore my last piece of gear is 30-40 feet below me and it is a small nut between two crystals that I placed in desperation. The only solid protection I had was the gear I placed five feet into the climb. Lucky for me the climb was easy. It really was very easy climbing but without any gear, facing an 80 foot fall before the rope would catch me, I was panicked to say the least. Honestly I was freaked out. More scared than I had ever been climbing. To make matters worse once at the top we could not find the rappel anchors. So here we are at the top of a 250ft climb, I'm freaked out and we can't find the way to get down. Great start to the big trip out west!! We used the internet on our phones to look at comments on climbing websites about the climb where someone directed us on where the anchor was.(definitely not where it was listed in the guide book) That was the end of the first day. Once we got down I looked at Chris and said "I'm done for the day dude, I'm sorry but I'm mentally fried" read as "I'm scared shitless and you couldn't drag up another climb". Beautiful area though, if you haven't seen the black hills of south Dakota I highly recommend you do. Moving on, a couple days later we head to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. If you have spent anytime driving out west you know that you get used to the vastness of it. As we are getting close, I see this big flat topped spike off in the distance. Even from twenty minutes away this thing looks scary. Mind you I'm already a bit shaken still from day 1 and completely lacking in confidence. As we get closer and closer I just get more and more nervous. By the time we got to the park entrance I was seriously shaking and contemplating ways to explain to Chris that I simply couldn't climb that thing. Im not just trying to make a good story here, I was literally terrified and had decided that I was NOT climbing that thing. It was the biggest and scariest thing I had ever considered attempting. We set up camp and made plans for the morning. This included taking a walk around the base and finding where we were going to climb in the morning. Somehow this calmed me down a bit. Being up close and personal made it seem more real and possible. By the time we walked back to the car I found myself starting to get excited. The morning came and we started up Devils Tower following the route called "Durrance". It was exciting and scary. There were points where that panic started to set in but nothing even approaching as bad as in the car seeing this monster from a distance. We climbed well and moderately fast. We really only ran into two problems. The first were the black flies at the top. They came in clouds and clogged every opening and mucous membrane on your head. These things were truly infuriating! The second big problem was, due to fear and heat we drank our water much faster than we should have. Chris finished his water with two pitches still left to climb! I finished mine just before the summit. This left about an hours worth of descent and the walk back to the car very thirsty and without water. The descent went off without any problems and once we got to the ground I could practically taste the water waiting at the car, little did I know Devils Tower had another surprise in store for us. Tourists!!!! They were everywhere! "Did you come from up there?" " You didnt climb that did you" "How did you get down?" and the most commonly asked "What does the top look like?" We must have spent an extra hour talking to tourists and taking pictures and video and explaining how, why and most importantly what the top looked like. For the record, the top is boring and plain. If it werent for the fact that it was on top of that beast of a tower it was a very forgetable patch of earth. We finally made it back to the car and then to camp where we ate what is still one of the best tasting meals of my life. Even though I hate canned beef stew, on that day it was the most wonderful meal of my life!! We spent the rest of that day and all of the next resting and recovering. The third day we decide to head up the tower again before driving to our next destination. We had looked through the guide book on the rest day and made a plan. Well that plan got put on hold when we got the route and found a dad with his kid moving very slowly on the route we had planned on going up. We sat and waited for a bit. I decided I was going to "run" up the first section of the climb next to the one we had planned on climbing. It was only a grade or two harder than what we had planned on climbing that day and looked like a lot of fun. It was awful....Not only was it hard and terrifying but the first pitch was 150 feet worth of non stop climbing!!!!! I really should have looked at the guide book better. It was so high in fact that I had have Chris tie a second rope on to mine so I could get down. All of my panic and fears from the days past came rushing back during this marathon of a climb, leaving me a wreck by the time it was over. After I finally got back down from this climb, which Chris didnt even climb, I looked at my watch saw 2pm and thought holy cow we really need to get moving (we had a several hour drive ahead of us and had find campsites). What I didnt realize until we were back in the car was that my watch was still set for East coast time and was I believe 3 hours ahead of our actually time. I was so distraught at the time that I didnt realize that there was no way 4+ hours could have passed during my single climb. Chris says he didnt think of it either. In reality I think he knew the whole time but could see how shaken up I was and decided to go with it. Thats just the kind of wonderful guy and friend he is. He didnt get to climb anything that day. He didnt complain, he didnt even point it out or bring it up. He could see I was done and needed to get down and he went along with it smiling the whole way. I am very lucky to have such a friend! Thats the end of the story. The third day is actually the part I set out to tell but I realized that it just didnt make as much sense with out the rest of it.
Here is the link to Chris' blog for that trip out west. http://devilstower2009.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html
You can navigate around and see what else we did on the trip. Good Times! :)
