Devils Tower

2024 Fall Trip Map

Dramatic from a distance.

Dramatic from up close.

Judy got the calendar shot at sunset.

We took the loop trail around the base.  It’s a charming path, never losing touch with the tower, and with great views.

We marveled at the climbers working their way up the fissures.  We wondered aloud if many people spent the night on the face or did they all tend to work their way down by dark.

The park we are at has a little outdoor theater and presents a screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind every night at seven.  We watched it, again, until we got too cold and retreated to our rig.  While we were watching, with the tower as a backdrop, we got our question about overnight stays answered.  There were several groups of lights on various parts of the rock.  The tower was populated at night.  It was disconcerting though when suddenly one of the headlamps we were watching tumbled from high on the mountain.  It’s almost a thousand-foot climb to the top, and that light was most of the way there.  We had to hope it was only that someone dropped their headlamp and that it was not attached to anybody.  The next morning, we got the bad news that it was indeed a climber who had been moving around at night and made a fatal mistake.  With thousands of climbers scaling Devils Tower each year, there are very few falls and fatalities, but we happened to be distant witnesses to one of them.  We’ve spent some time today talking our way through it.  It’s going to take a while.