DEVILS TOWER WAS FIRST "climbed" in 1893 by two enterprising Wyoming cowboys, William Rogers and Willard Ripley. The handbill for the event declared that there would be "plenty to eat and drink," hay and grain for the horses, and "dancing day and night." Over the course of a month, Rogers and Ripley drove two-foot wooden pegs into a crack on the south face, constructing a 350-foot ladder up the most difficult section. On July 4, to the roar of hundreds of picnicking ranchers and farmers, Rogers climbed the ladder to the top and planted the American flag.

The first free ascent of Devils Tower was put up by Fritz Wiessner in 1937. Wiessner, who'd pioneered

The climbing was spectacular. It was as though this hulking obelisk— its long cracks pulling me upward— was made to be climbed.

climbs from New York's Shawangunks to British Columbia's Mount Waddington, made his 600-foot ascent in five hours, using a hemp rope and a single piton. Today there are more than 200 routes on Devils Tower, ranging in difficulty from 5.6 to 5.12. (There's no nontechnical route to the top.) The Tower is most famous for its long, difficult finger-size cracks, the likes of which exist nowhere else on earth.

As a mountaineer's tribute to the Devils Tower centennial, our first day here Pat and I climbed a direct variation of the Wiessner Route. We swapped leads for four pitches. The climbing was simply spectacular. It was as though this hulking, fractured obelisk—with its splitting cracks pulling me upward—was made to be climbed. For a moment I felt ashamed. Here was this gorgeous, world-class pinnacle right in my backyard, and I'd all but ignored it. 

Clambering onto the top, Pat and I hiked across the circular plot of prairie to the summit cairn. 

"The sign's gone," I said.

"Has been for years," replied Pat.

The only other time I'd climbed Devils Tower was in 1976, when I was 17. I remember a wooden sign sticking out of the cairn that read no climbing beyond this point.

We were a group of rowdy high school athletes—two state-champion swimmers, a state-champion gymnast, a nationally ranked downhill skier, all novice climbers—led by our swim coach, Layne Kopishka, a regular Clint Eastwood. The night before our big ascent, we camped at the Devils Tower campground, gorged on hot dogs around the campfire, and engaged in typical adolescent hijinks.

In the morning, to cool my jets, Coach had me carry the unwarrantedly heavy backpack. We climbed the Durrance route, the Tower's easiest, and I struggled mightily in the chimney.

Beneath a hot, cobalt-blue sky, lacking any refinement whatsoever, shouting encouragement to one another, we muscled our way to the top.

On the summit we were exuberant and parched.

"I feel like an ice-cold soda," said Coach.

We all agreed, assuming he meant we should start descending. "Jenkins!" he bellowed. "Drinks on the house!"

I looked at him blankly.

"Open the pack," he instructed.

It was a scene straight out of The Eiger Sanction. Beneath the extra rope and spare jackets and clump of metal climbing gear was a plastic sack the size and weight of a bowling ball; inside was a six-pack of root beer packed in ice.

As we rappelled from the summit, helicopters were buzzing around the Tower with cameramen hanging out the sides. Far below we could see Hollywood sets and crowds of extras. Steven Spielberg was filming Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Typical Hollywood, the plot of this sci-fi thriller is lame, but Richard Dreyfuss does a superb job portraying Roy Neary, an ordinary dad who has an encounter with UFOs and is subsequently driven bonkers by an inexplicable idée fixe. He sculpts mountainlike forms out of shaving cream, mashed potatoes, and a giant pile of earth in the middle of his living room. (At which point his wife removes herself and the kids to her sister's.) Finally, Neary recognizes what has telepathically possessed him and madly drives the family station wagon right up to the base of Devils Tower, where he is eventually, triumphantly, taken away by the aliens.

Naturally, we all went to the movie as soon as it came out, absurdly hoping to see ourselves hanging off the Tower in one of the shots. We loved it anyway—an excuse for getting into the backseat at the drive-in.

For us, the climbing trip to the Tower had been a grand little adventure, nothing more. We came, we camped, we climbed, we scooted. Influenced more by Hollywood than history, we had no knowledge of the magnetic spirituality of the place. That Devils Tower might actually be sacred didn't occur to us in 1977. It was a rock, not a church.