Height: 400 feet (122 meters)
Location: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona.
Coordinates: 36.928903 N / -110.047509 W
First Ascent: June 9-13, 1957 by Mark Powell, Jerry Gallwas, Don Wilson, and Bill “Dolt” Feuerer via the 3-pitch Northwest Face (III 5.7 A4)
The Totem Pole, a sheer 400-foot-high pinnacle in the heart of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park on the northern Arizona and southern Utah border, is the tallest and skinniest sandstone tower in the United States, if not the world. The slender vertical shaft, topped by a flat sky-island summit, is barely 25 feet wide and sits atop a 300-foot talus pedestal. The Totem Pole, one of the Yei Bi Chei or Fire Dancers, a row of spires that resemble Navajo dancers who appear on the last night of the winter ceremony called the Night Way, is composed of DeChelly Sandstone, a dense 235-million-year-old sandstone that was originally deposited as ancient sand dunes.
The Totem Pole is located on the Navajo Indian Reservation and has been officially closed to rock climbing since 1962. It has been unofficially and illegally climbed since the closure but climbers have also been caught, jailed, fined, and had their climbing gear and vehicle confiscated. The Pole, however, has a long and storied climbing history that began with its landmark 1957 first ascent.
The Totem Pole was first climbed over three days in June, 1957 by Mark Powell, Jerry Gallwas, Don Wilson, and Bill “Dolt” Feuerer, a strong party of California climbers who were experienced in aid climbing up soft sandstone cracks, having previously climbed Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly and slender Cleopatra’s Needle on the New Mexico border. After scoping out the tower, they decided “the west face offered the best promise.” Powell described the route in a Summit Magazine article in 1958: “The bottom one-hundred feet, ending on a comfortable ledge, seemed reasonable; but the final three-hundred feet, split by a very wide crack with blank sections, particularly near the top, looked downright nasty.”
Don Wilson led the first pitch, climbing a short chimney and face to a ledge “beneath the beetling upper shaft,” the high point reached by two previous attempts by other parties. The party aided up flaring wide cracks on the west side of the tower using specially-made hard-steel angle pitons for the first two pitches. Many of the pitons were hand-forged by Jerry Gallwas and based on piton designs by John Salathe. Don led the last forty-foot section to a small ledge below the 110-foot-high summit block, placing pitons back-to-back in the wide crack.
After a rain delay of a couple days, the party returned, joined by Jerry Gallwas who had sped out from California, to the precarious summit block of the Totem Pole. Powell later described it: “The summit block, overhanging on all sides, is completely encircled by a horizontal crack, which possibly extends through the rock. Having withstood the elements for centuries, it is apparently securely attached, although the possibility of its tottering entered our minds and created a good deal of concern.”
On June 13, the party headed back to the Totem Pole, spending two hours to ascend their fixed ropes with jumars to a hanging belay from slings at the high point, an 18-inch-wide ledge. Gallwas led the final section, an exposed blank face scarred from lightning, by hand drilling holes in the soft sandstone for 10 two-inch Diamond expansion bolts and reaching the summit at noon. The others ascended a fixed rope in 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts, whipping sand across the flats below the tower and “furnishing Don and Bill a fabulous prussik, sometimes blowing them half way around the spire and forty feet from the rock.” On the 20-foot square summit, “a small cairn with a register was erected.”
In the late 1970s, the great desert climber Eric Bjørnstad, who had made the last legal ascent of the Totem Pole during the 1975 filming of the Clint Eastwood movie The Eiger Sanction, showed me the original summit register left by the team. Eric had removed it after his ascent for safekeeping and later donated it to the American Alpine Club archives for posterity.
I held that frail register and slowly leafed through its desiccated and crispy pages, noting the names of all the great American climbers that climbed in the canyon country in the 1950s and 1960s. These included the 2nd ascent party of Dave Rearick, TM Herbert, and Tom Condon on December 15, 1958 after their three-and-a-half day ascent; the 3rd ascent on November 22, 1962 by Layton Kor, John Auld, and Rick Horn in one-and-a-half days; the illegal 4th ascent by Tom Ruwitch and Roger Dalke in nine hours in the late 1960s; and the 5th ascent, a legal one greased by Hollywood greenbacks, by Eric Bjørnstad and Ken Wyrick in 1975.
I was a bit sad that my own name was not written there since Jimmie Dunn and I had backed off the Totem Pole after climbing the first pitch in 1973, then retreating back to my hidden VW Bug after hearing the resounding beat of distant Navajo drums and conjuring up visions of getting busted by the tribal police.
Location: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona.
Coordinates: 36.928903 N / -110.047509 W
First Ascent: June 9-13, 1957 by Mark Powell, Jerry Gallwas, Don Wilson, and Bill “Dolt” Feuerer via the 3-pitch Northwest Face (III 5.7 A4)
Totem Pole: World's Tallest Thinnest Tower
The Totem Pole, a sheer 400-foot-high pinnacle in the heart of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park on the northern Arizona and southern Utah border, is the tallest and skinniest sandstone tower in the United States, if not the world. The slender vertical shaft, topped by a flat sky-island summit, is barely 25 feet wide and sits atop a 300-foot talus pedestal. The Totem Pole, one of the Yei Bi Chei or Fire Dancers, a row of spires that resemble Navajo dancers who appear on the last night of the winter ceremony called the Night Way, is composed of DeChelly Sandstone, a dense 235-million-year-old sandstone that was originally deposited as ancient sand dunes.
Climbing the Totem Pole is Now Illegal
The Totem Pole is located on the Navajo Indian Reservation and has been officially closed to rock climbing since 1962. It has been unofficially and illegally climbed since the closure but climbers have also been caught, jailed, fined, and had their climbing gear and vehicle confiscated. The Pole, however, has a long and storied climbing history that began with its landmark 1957 first ascent.
Experienced California Climbers Make First Ascent
The Totem Pole was first climbed over three days in June, 1957 by Mark Powell, Jerry Gallwas, Don Wilson, and Bill “Dolt” Feuerer, a strong party of California climbers who were experienced in aid climbing up soft sandstone cracks, having previously climbed Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly and slender Cleopatra’s Needle on the New Mexico border. After scoping out the tower, they decided “the west face offered the best promise.” Powell described the route in a Summit Magazine article in 1958: “The bottom one-hundred feet, ending on a comfortable ledge, seemed reasonable; but the final three-hundred feet, split by a very wide crack with blank sections, particularly near the top, looked downright nasty.”
Difficult Aid Climbing Up Wide Cracks
Don Wilson led the first pitch, climbing a short chimney and face to a ledge “beneath the beetling upper shaft,” the high point reached by two previous attempts by other parties. The party aided up flaring wide cracks on the west side of the tower using specially-made hard-steel angle pitons for the first two pitches. Many of the pitons were hand-forged by Jerry Gallwas and based on piton designs by John Salathe. Don led the last forty-foot section to a small ledge below the 110-foot-high summit block, placing pitons back-to-back in the wide crack.
The Scary Totem Pole Summit Block
After a rain delay of a couple days, the party returned, joined by Jerry Gallwas who had sped out from California, to the precarious summit block of the Totem Pole. Powell later described it: “The summit block, overhanging on all sides, is completely encircled by a horizontal crack, which possibly extends through the rock. Having withstood the elements for centuries, it is apparently securely attached, although the possibility of its tottering entered our minds and created a good deal of concern.”
Bolt Ladder Leads to the Windy Summit
On June 13, the party headed back to the Totem Pole, spending two hours to ascend their fixed ropes with jumars to a hanging belay from slings at the high point, an 18-inch-wide ledge. Gallwas led the final section, an exposed blank face scarred from lightning, by hand drilling holes in the soft sandstone for 10 two-inch Diamond expansion bolts and reaching the summit at noon. The others ascended a fixed rope in 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts, whipping sand across the flats below the tower and “furnishing Don and Bill a fabulous prussik, sometimes blowing them half way around the spire and forty feet from the rock.” On the 20-foot square summit, “a small cairn with a register was erected.”
The Totem Pole Summit Register
In the late 1970s, the great desert climber Eric Bjørnstad, who had made the last legal ascent of the Totem Pole during the 1975 filming of the Clint Eastwood movie The Eiger Sanction, showed me the original summit register left by the team. Eric had removed it after his ascent for safekeeping and later donated it to the American Alpine Club archives for posterity.
I held that frail register and slowly leafed through its desiccated and crispy pages, noting the names of all the great American climbers that climbed in the canyon country in the 1950s and 1960s. These included the 2nd ascent party of Dave Rearick, TM Herbert, and Tom Condon on December 15, 1958 after their three-and-a-half day ascent; the 3rd ascent on November 22, 1962 by Layton Kor, John Auld, and Rick Horn in one-and-a-half days; the illegal 4th ascent by Tom Ruwitch and Roger Dalke in nine hours in the late 1960s; and the 5th ascent, a legal one greased by Hollywood greenbacks, by Eric Bjørnstad and Ken Wyrick in 1975.
I was a bit sad that my own name was not written there since Jimmie Dunn and I had backed off the Totem Pole after climbing the first pitch in 1973, then retreating back to my hidden VW Bug after hearing the resounding beat of distant Navajo drums and conjuring up visions of getting busted by the tribal police.
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