[Rockhounds] Re: South Dakota - Rapid City & Calcite vs. Devil's Tower

[pmodreski at aol.com]

Happy New Year, Rockhounds,

Just catching up on reading the past emails, and I wanted to add my two cents' comments about Devils Tower.? I was kind of surprised when BK wrote,



> Devil's Tower is cool, but it will probably be smaller than you
> expect. 

Because Devils Tower sure impresses one (or, it always has me) as being big and awesome when you see it, especially when you get up close to it.? But this did inspire me to look it up on the internet.? I see that the NPS website claims


Devils Tower rises 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River.

But that's a bit of a stretch for the height, because the river does not run right by its base by any means.? Looking at a map on topozone, with a summit elev. of 5112', it looks like the base of the vertical part of the tower is around 4500', so the real height of the pinnacle is something more like 600'.? (Another NPS web page says 
"Devils Tower is 867 feet from its base to the summit."
It obviously depends from where exactly you measure.)

Likewise, when (I think) Tim added,

"Yes, but there isn't room at the top to park a spaceship "

I thought, hey, well the top looks pretty big to me, I guess it depends how big your spaceship is.? Viewing things online again, the top looks pretty big when you see pictures taken from the land below, as on the National Monument homepage (the one that exaggerates the height), http://www.nps.gov/deto/
But when you look at a topo map, yes indeed, the true flat summit is indeed quite small, it looks like it's only about 100x200 feet or thereabouts.? Another website says that the flat summit is "about the size of a football field"; that sounds about right.? You could still certainly park a medium-sized spaceship there, and a really big one if you balanced it just right.

But what first got to me was when Carol C-W?asked,

"Was Devil's Tower the famous formation that's an integral part of the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? "

To which I thought, good heavens, doesn't EVERYONE know that, second nature?? Especially "rock people"?? Like asking what city the Washington Monument is in?? But I have to remember, maybe the movie hasn't had as big an impact on everyone,?and plus, can you believe, some people who may be be on this Rockhounds list, might not even have been BORN when that movie was released!? (Tis true, I checked the year--1977.? Time flies!)*

*And now---to make sure Carol doesn't feel like I'm?picking on?her---I'm going to admit something you'd never know if I kept it to myself; that when I just searched for Devils Tower on topozone.com, the first time I didn't come up with anything, because I searched for it as Devils Tower, state = SD.? Ooops!? Well, it's sure close to SD, and people often visit it as part of a trip to the Black Hills, hard to remember that the darned thing is really in Wyoming (plus that was what was in the?heading of the email thread--lots of excuses!)??????? ? : )

Cheers, Pete Modreski


-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Silverstein <ajs at frii.com>
To: rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com
Sent: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 5:05 pm
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] Re: South Dakota - Rapid City & Calcite vs. Devil's Tower



> Devil's Tower is cool, but it will probably be smaller than you
> expect.  They have a paved trail around it and I think it took us
> about an hour at a leisurely stroll speed to walk around it.

You can spend more time and get more of a view by following some of the
climbers' trails up higher on the pinnacle, to the point where it really
does become technical.  As far as I know, you don't need permission or a
permit to do this, and it's way cool.

Alan Silverstein
-- 


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