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My wife, Mary, and I, were moving out of our place in Rochester NY, to
go to Seattle.  I had done the drive by myself a few months earlier
and found Devil's Tower to be a very convenient halfway stopover (of
course the climbing looked appealing also).  After two and a half days
of driving, we arrived at Sundance, a small community (caters to
winter sports?) about 1/2 hour from the Tower.  We actually found some
cheap lodging ($35) for a place with a Hot Tub!  The only catch was
that our room was in this annex that shared a bathroom with other
boarders (European Style!).  No problem.  Sorry, I can't remember the
name but it was the more eastern Motel on the South side of the main
drag (they had regular, more pricey rooms too).  So enough about
lodging already, on to the climbing.

We didn't get an early start, and we figured it best to snag a
campspot before the climb, so we ended up registering at the visitor
center at 9 am.  The ranger told us that there were already 5 other
parties registered for the Durrance route with the first group at 6:30
am.  We arrived shortly at the "3rd class" approach "The Bowling
Alley" and decided to rope up.  I lead and it was easy but I was glad
I had a rope on.  Good luck! as I was belaying Mary up this section,
two climbers passed us on their way down.  They got tired of waiting.
I told them I was happy to see them leave.  I hope they didn't take it
personal.  They said that they'd attempted the route before and that
"There was no way that Durrance is a 5.6!"  I couldn't tell whether they
meant under or overrated.  I asked them directly, and they
said "the 2nd pitch is more like 5.9."  I wonder if they were just
trying to psyche us out?  Anyway, we arrived at the bottom of the
first pitch and began the wait.  The sun was blazing already (Durrance
is on the south side of the Tower), and it was cooking our feet via
our nice black rubber shoes.  A guy at a shop in Rapid City told us to
``bring a LOT of water''.  We brought 3 quarts (but left one at the
bottom of the third class stuff ,duh!).  We could have used a lot
more.  I was sipping water already and there were still two parties
ahead of us.  One was waiting at the base and the other was having
troubles on the first pitch.

After a long wait Mary took the first lead.  The first pitch follows a
wide crack between a detached pillar and the main part of the wall,
Mary easily passed over a bulge, the crux (5.6), some
stemming/chimneying moves where the pillar is broken and leaning
further away from the wall, and she's up.  The protection on this
pitch is quite easy, a quadcam (1.5 or 2?) near the bottom and then 3
or 4 fixed pins.  I followed without much trouble but the backpack
(heavy with water, food, rope, and miscellaneous) made some of the
chimneying moves strenuous.  I arrived at the belay a little tired and
got intimidated by my upcoming task, the second pitch.  It is vertical
and fairly long (1/2 rope) without any obvious rests.  There is an
offwidth crack on the right and a thin, tapering crack to the left.
Once I got far up enough to where I didn't want to fall, I started
getting seriously psyched out.  The holds are there, some better than
others, (Not even close to a 5.9, unless you refused to use the crack)
but a lack of places to rest while setting pro still upsets me I
guess.  Anyway, besides having to do it from less than easy stances,
the pro was straightforward. There are two fixed pins two feet apart
(near the crux?  the guidebook says three, so one must have popped
since publication).  After what seemed like a long session of
stemming, whimpering, and cussing, I made it to just below the last
move.  My arms were totally pumped because of all the unnecessary
clinging I did while vacillating over each next move, but I placed a
bomber hex in a constriction and pulled over onto the big comfy belay
ledge.  Actually the ``ledges'' are more like platforms, cross
sections of those big, sheared off columns.  Mary blasted right up
behind me and the hard part was over.  The next two pitches were
short, about 1/2 rope total, and straightforward.  Stay outside the
chimneys as much as possible.  Don't get sucked inside, especially
with a backpack! While we were on the third pitch someone on the route
next to us dislodged a grapefruit size rock that missed killing a
sunbather by a foot or two.  I wonder if those sunbathers knew about
the ``Bowling Alley'' moniker?  One more short pitch to go but we were
getting very thirsty (and I was getting irritable, sorry Mary).  We
ran out of water a while ago, I think it was about 2pm by the time we
had begun the third pitch (Fast we ain't! Glad there was no one behind
us.)  So anyway... the fifth pitch had worried us when reading the
route description as the guide says "jump traverse."  Well, we looked
at it in person and we were still worried.  You have to climb on a 45
degree slab around and under a roof in order to look at the 6-8 feet
of air you are supposed to leap from an awkward perch.  I figured I
could *probably* do it, but that was without the backpack (which could
be quite a hindrance crouching under the roof) and the second wouldn't
have the nice pin hanging over the void for protection.  I let Mary
look at it and we decided to avoid the problem by rapping down a short
ways and swinging over.  The next day we came back and watched a party
through the telescopes. As they came to the jump traverse they hemmed
and hawed just as we did, then solved the problem brilliantly.  They
just hung on the pin! Why didn't we think of that?!  I guess I'm just
programmed not to hang on the pro.  We did witness a delay for this
party when they had to reconfigure their protection as the first had
forgotten to protect the second on the "jump."  Anyway, past the jump
it was easy third class to the top.  The register area was swarming
with a cloud of winged beetles(?)  and we were thirsty as hell so our
stay at the summit was short.

Since the route was by this time fairly deserted (I guess people stay
away during the hotter part of the day) we decided to rap the ascent
route using double ropes. You could rap the route with a single rope,
but Hell, we carried that damn extra rope all the way up, might as
well use it!  That turned out to be a BIG mistake.  On the second rap
we got all the way to the base of pitch 2, and whattaya know, the rope
was hopelessly hung. It was 8 pm with the sun was sinking fast.  I was
quite dejected, tired and thirsty, staring at climbing up this pitch I
had such trouble on earlier.  We couldn't just leave the ropes there
until the next morning as we were still one pitch (plus some third
class) up and needed a rope to get down.  Suddenly, Mary said, OK I'll
just have to climb up, give me the headlamp (we only had one, some
boyscouts, we think, lifted Mary's light at a campground in Iowa. Of
course, she did leave it in the bathroom for a couple of hours.  Would
climbers consider this legitimate booty?)  We hooked her to the
``fixed'' rope with a prussik and up she went.  Luckily both ends of
the rope still reached the ledge.  What a woman!!  She ended up having
to climb all the way back to the top of the 4th pitch, in the dark, to
find the knot stuck ten feet below our rappel anchor.  She freed the
rope and cautiously rapped back down to me (with ONE rope this
time!).
 A few more raps and we were down where we quickly polished off our
stashed water bottle.  There was a ranger at the bottom making sure we
returned safely, and we found out that there was a party on another
route still up there. At least now we didn't look SO bad.  We met
another ranger on our walk out and she informed us that we had been the
campfire presentation entertainment that evening.  They could hear our
yelled communications down at the campground. I wonder if we gave a
good impression of climbers?  We made it back to our campsite at
around 11:30 pm, and had dinner.  Another group pulled into the spot
next to us about 45 minutes later.  It was the other group stuck on
the mountain!
 

Some quick reflections:

The little yellow guide book says "gear to 4 inches."  That worried us
when planning and we augmented our rack with a #10 hex and a #4
Friend, but we still had no 4" pieces.  It turned out that what we had
worked just fine (other bigger gear we have is a #3 Friend, #9 Hex,
and a 2.5 Tricam), and we're beginning leaders so I wouldn't claim any
of our placements to be ``creative.'' There are many good chock
placements and the two new big pieces we bought were quite useful.

One piece of advice to heed in the ``little yellow book.''  Watch out
for those ``rope eating cracks!''