Climbing Devils Tower:

Close Encounters of the Family Kind!

by Denise Cox

Devotion to rock climbing was spawned for both my husband Jandy and me when we were teenagers. Jandy grew up on the East Coast, and I grew up in Montana. Jandy made his way west on a climbing trip in a VW bus and made Northwest Montana his new home. We initially met each other at Rocky Mountain Outfitter where Jandy was working. I was looking for new climbing partners upon returning to the Flathead Valley in 1996. We thoroughly enjoyed traveling together and spent the first several years of our relationship B.C. (Before Children!) exploring Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Canada to climb at new areas.

I vividly recall parental discussions prior to our first son Fynn being born: we did not want to give up our pursuit and love of outdoor activities when we had kids. So, like numerous other parents, we decided that our kids were along for the ride. This meant bringing them on outdoor adventures in front packs, backpacks, ski sleds, bike trailers, car seats - whatever mechanism of carriage we could summon for the cause. Gus was born 3 1⁄2 years after Fynn and we were thrilled to have him join the adventures.

Climbing with kids usually meant combining forces with other parents to tag team the children. We shared many fun-filled climbing, backpacking, and hiking adventures with other families. One climbing family had kids older than ours who became our kids’ babysitters, mentors, and friends. Early climbing with Fynn and Gus required some creativity. This meant tying them in close to us on a top rope and climbing simultaneously with them. We discovered each parent climbing with another family’s children produced less whining. Fruit snacks were sometimes planted along a route to bait them up. Gus talked non-stop while climbing, so ascending with him was very entertaining. Our boys were born into the rock climbing culture and never knew anything different. A multi-family adventure for thirteen consecutive years was climbing at the City of Rocks in Idaho each June right when school was over.  

The pinnacle of our family climbing adventures took place in August this past summer in 2021. Fynn (age 18) graduated from high school in June and was preparing to embark on his next endeavor, which was an enlistment in the Navy. I longed for a family adventure that would be an appropriate sendoff for him and an embodiment of our time together since his birth. Gus (age 14) had just finished 8th grade and joined us as well. We decided to head out to climb at Devils Tower and the Needles of the Black Hills of South Dakota. Climbing Devils Tower as a family had been on the bucket list for years.

The Durrance Route on Devils Tower is listed as one of the 50 Classic Climbs of North America. It was first climbed in 1938 and is rated as a 5.7 trad route that is 4-6 pitches long.  Devils Tower, an otherworldly formation in the Black Hills in Wyoming, is a sacred site for many Native American tribes. Declared the first National Monument by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, it is also the setting of the 1977 cult classic, Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Durrance Route is the most popular route on Devils Tower, and as a result there were 3+ parties climbing ahead of us (every party ahead of us was from Texas!). As a family, we climbed the Durrance Route in 5 pitches.  Jandy led each pitch with me following and trailing two ropes as the lads climbed simultaneously one right behind the other. The climbing is notoriously a little harder than the 5.7 rating (some say solid 5.9+) with some old-school sections of awkward crack climbing and off-width stretches (ask the Texans who bailed as the climbing got tricky). All in all, it was an extremely enjoyable and classic route.

The rappel became a little adventurous as we descended with another group of climbers. It is not an adventure if you don’t get a rope stuck (thanks to more Texans who borrowed our extra rope and got it so stuck we cut it and had to leave it). We completed the last rappel as the sky darkened, and we walked back to our cars with headlamps and starlight. I marveled at the opportunity to have shared that day with my family.

The trip to Devils Tower was the culmination of all the family climbing adventures that began when Fynn was born. For us parents, the highlight was witnessing how comfortable and capable our boys have become in the climbing environment. Throughout our day of climbing Devils Tower, the boys exuded confidence, calm, joy, humor, and contentment. Encouraging each other during each pitch of climbing and spending time together at the belay stations is truly a unique morsel in time unlike anything else. With climbing comes a presence and mindfulness that is wholesome and satisfying. This is the magic of climbing for me and so many others. My hope is that these experiences in the outdoors will translate into our boys’ lives in a positive way. Thank you Fynn and Gus for sharing these adventures with us. (And yes, I know, sometimes you didn’t really have a choice!)