Conquering Devil’s Tower | TheExpeditioner Travel Site

Sunday, January 8, 2017

I was taught how to trad climb by a guy who said it was like learning how to drive stick: once you start, you’ll never go back to automatic.

He taught me in Red River Gorge, a climber-famous area in Kentucky, on a 5.7 grade climb called Octopus Tag. All of it — the friction of the sandstone, the huge flakes and the chimney I could nestle in to — were much more forgiving than the off-width, granite cracks I found myself on while climbing Devil’s Tower.

It was around 9:30 p.m. at the end of a long day in May, and our motley crew of six 20-something college students were exactly one mile away from the tower. At least, we were according to our out-of-service phones.

The plan was to “take the tower.” With an almost respectable amount of climbing experience under our belt, our main goal was to just try and not fall while leading. We approached the tower with the assumption that we would be climbing six or so pitches of a 5.7, mostly off-width…