Let's see, we've been to Devil's Lake and I've been to Devil's Puchbowl, that can only leave Devil's Tower in Wyoming.

Here I am on our trip to the land of high altitude doing my traditional pose. We only bouldered that day but it was enough to get us to go back.

Luckily, in college we developed a taste for roadtrips. We went to places such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and of course Devil's Lake . This being the begining of my last year of college we needed a special road trip. What better place than the tower?

We had a free weekend before classes started so Shane, Mr. X (you'll know why I am calling him Mr. X when you read on), and myself decided we would do the tower. Shane and I both had to work Friday. We got off work and went to Mr. X's house. We all piled into Mr. X's car (subaru outback) and did our traditional stop at Kwik Trip to get the Megabuddies. Then we were off.

I think we left about 9:00 PM Friday and drove straight through to Devil's tower only stopping for gas and food. Because it was night time and we were in South Dakota, there was no traffic. Small town gas stations also were not open for the same reason. We almost ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota.

We reached the tower about 6:00 AM, signed in at the Ranger station and we were off. There were already 3 groups ahead of us. This slowed us down a bit because we had to wait for them to finish a pitch before we could start. Climbing was tough having not eaten much and having not slept but we still gave it a good effort. Here is a picture of Shane leading up the famous Leaning Column.

You can see the group in front of us just above him. Once all three of us got to the top of the Leaning Column, Mr. X became extremely white. You could smell the fear. I had trouble getting up the column because of my own tiredness and hunger. Shane however felt very good, so he says. We debated a while well the three of us stood 400 feet above the ground on a piece of rock about 2 feet by 2 feet which we had to share with 2 165 foot ropes and various other gear. We eventually decided that Mr. X didn't want to go on, I wanted to but physically couldn't, and Shane really had no choice. We bailed.

Once we had rapelled down, we went back to the car to sort our gear and smoke the traditional stogie. We also talked shop with many of the other climbers that were just hangin. Mr X. still had a very strange look on his face and wasn't saying much. It was early afternoon now and we left the park.

We drove all the way to Sturgis SD and stopped for food at Pizza Hut (when you have a tradition you have to follow it). Mr. X still hadn't fully recovered. The greasy Za didn't help. We left Sturgis and made our final stop before home at Wall Drug. We had promised so many people that we would get them Wall Drug bumber stickers. We made it just in time. They were going to close in about 1/2 hour. We got our bumber stickers and were back in the car in 15. It was now dinner time so we stopped at Taco Bell because we were broke.

Shane and I drove all the way home, most of which was in a heavy rainstorm, while Mr. X lay in the back seat crying. We had finally broken a man. We used to tease people that we were to extreme and that you shouldn't do things with us. I guess Mr. X just wasn't ready. Having not done much climbing before and not being an extremest like Shane and Myself, he just couldn't cope with it.

5:00 AM Sunday morning we pull back into Winona having not slept since Thursday, having drivin almost 2000 miles, and having climbed Devil' Tower. I slept all day. Classes started Tuesday, atleast I would have a good story to tell them.