Guided Rock Climbing at Devils Tower: Trad Multipitch Routes & Cultural Closure

The first steps up the gravel overflow lot feel ordinary — pickup trucks, backpacks, the nervous laugh before a rope goes tight — until the Tower itself rises from the prairie like a man-made cathedral. Granite columns, actually phonolite porphyry cooled into hexagonal pillars, climb straight up from grassland; the rock does not ask you to look, it insists. Climbers gather at the base, harnesses clicking, as guidebriefs parse rope etiquette and the history that sits on the same stone: Bear Lodge, a sacred site for several Plains tribes.