The Durrance Route 5.8 - Devil's Tower, WY

This is it. The whole enchilada sans the last pitch (Bailey's Direct Finish) because I ran out of GoPro batteries. I thoroughly enjoyed the struggle and the bruises after 500 feet of classic granite offwidth. This route is slippery, old school and very blue collar. Naturally, the day we had available to climb was forecast to be 90 + degrees so that didn't help the already low friction. We knew we would have to start very early not only to avoid crowds but also not fry in the summer heat. So we arrived at the base at 4:30 AM and got to work. Hope you enjoy the edit and if you plan on climbing I have included some beta below! Try not to bring a pack as most of this climb is offwidth. Wide gear is really nice to have on this climb. I brought a BD #6 and was really glad I had it on pitches 3-5 as well as the Bailey's Finish. On the P3 start the blue DMM Dragonfly I have placed is pretty marginal. Until you get a fairly good ways up and are able to place a #6 it's your only piece. Beware if you don't have wide gear a fall here would suck. Instead of the blue cam a nut would be much more bomber. The Bailey's Direct Finish is a great way to end this climb and goes at about the same grade as the rest of the climb. I'm glad we did this instead of The Meadow's Scramble. The end of the video shows the start looking up from the P5 belay. I looked for bolts at the top of the Bailey's pitch and could not find them nor an "express rap station" so I built a gear anchor. We rapped The Meadows but with two ropes we could've got down a lot faster. Next time we climb the tower I'll have to search again.