[Note: The text below was not copied with permission. Since I don't have permission, I will at least put in a plug for the book.]

I had read about the parachutist on Devil’s tower in this book so I thought I would copy that section for the reader’s reference. In reading that story, there was another story about climbing on the Grand Teton with Hans Kraus (John’s old climbing buddy) and Glenn Exum in 1941.

Devils Tower rises 1,280 feet above the Belle Fourche River with a columnar vertical shaft towering 865 feet from its sloping foundation. It was formed eons ago when a mass of molten rock forced its way upward through a succession of sandstone layers until it reached a resistant mantle that stopped its progress. The dome-shaped mass cooled under the b the blanketing surface, contracted and cracked into huge, multi-sided columns, and crystallized into a granite-like rock. In time, the gradual forces of erosion from rain, head, cold, and wind, wore away, the overlying mantle and exposed the tall central shaft.

Wyoming ranchers Will Rogers and Willard Ripley had made the first ascent of the tower in 1893. Hoping to attract a crowd and raise some cash by an act of derring-do, they pounded handmade wooden pegs into a vertical crack up the side of the formation to create a ladder that would take them to the top. Rogers, decked out in a red, white, and blue suit, carried an American flag to the summit on July 4. Ripley, who had actually gained the top after completeing the upper section of the ladder, did not make his first ascent public until later. Babe White, "The Human Fly," make another unsuccessful attempt in 1927. But it wasn’t until ten years later that Fritz Wiessner, Bill House and Laurence Coveney became the first serious climbers to reach the top.

The trapped parachutist was George Hopkins, a wing-walker and stunt pilot, who parachuted from burning planes in motion pictures and collected U.S. sky-diving records. His 2,347 jumps were the most ever recorded, he had made the highest jump from an elevation of 26,400 feet, and he held the world’s record for the longest delayed jump of 20,800 feet. He had make a $50 bet that he would become the first person to reach the top of Devils Tower by parachute.

Hopkins had left Rapid City, South Dakota, at daybreak on October 1 in a two-passenger plane piloted by Joe Quinn. The morning had dawned clear and cold with a ground wind blowing about 35 miles per hour. When Quinn reached the appointed jump off point, his passenger bolted from the aircraft, taking careful aim at a small area he had pinpointed for a landing. But part way down, worried that he might overshoot the target, he partially collapsed his parachute to check his drift. Instead, he plummeted faster and faster. Skimming near the tower, he thrust out a foot in an attempt to anchor himself on a raised rock, and catapulted against a protruding boulder.

Hopkins had worked out a paper plan to climb down to the ground by pounding a sharpened Ford axle into the rock with a sledge hammer, attaching a hundred-foot rope to the axle through a hayloft pulley, and then adding another thousand feet of rope. He had calculated that he could scramble the rest of the way to the bottom freestyle.

But when Quinn dropped the axle and rope, the package hit the summit with a bounce and fell about fifty feet to snag on bushes growing out of the tower’s side. Quinn winged away toward Rapid City and it was not until late afternoon that Clyde Ice, a pilot from nearby Spearfish, was enlisted to make another attempt to drop a rope.

Ice had evacuated many flood and forest fire victims and had flown numerous mercy flights to hospitals. He figured a tower drop posed unique problems due to sudden updrafts that could ravage his 65 horsepower plane. So when he flew in with a second rope, he cut the motor, glided about six feet above the monument while his partner tossed out the line, then restarted the engine. The loosely coiled rope landed in a hopeless mass of tangles.

Hopkins had to spend the night on the rock. Ice returned just before dark to drop food, blankets, a tarpaulin, and a note promising they would get him off the next day.

Then it started to storm. Fog enveloped the top of the monument, and Hopkins crept into his make-do shelter to pass a miserable night in rain and sleet.

At dawn, Hopkins threw down a note stating that he intended to parachute to the ground. The National Park Service quickly squashed the notion. Instead, they sent for Rocky Mountain State Park ranger Ernest K. Field and Colorado climbing guide Warren Gorrell to do and alpine-style rescue. In the meantime, Ice airlifted the stranded daredevil a bearskin-lined flying suit, a megaphone, and a medium rare T-bone steak.

By the time the sky cleared that afternoon, over a thousand sightseers, photographers, press and radio reporters had gathered to watch the loner stranded on his "sky island."

Fiel and Gorrell arrived early on the third morning. The two rescuers examined the routes that had previously been climbed. Deeming them too difficult, they explored a number of alternative passages in various directions to no avail. When one of them slipped and was narrowly caught by the rope, they retreated to the ground.

People from all over the country call with suggestions that they lasso Hopkins or shoot a rope up to him by cannon, and it rumored that the Goodyear blimp, Reliance, was on its way with a special pick-up basket.

Late on the afternoon of October 3, Jack Durrance, who had successfully climbed the tower, telegraphed from Dartmouth that he was coming to help, along with a few other experienced climbers.

Day four. A new storm with rain and snow boiled over the Black Hills. News wires buzzed with the saga of "Devils Tower George," and the episode was featured in Time and Newsweek. Planeloads of curiosity-seekers circled overhead, and local motels and grocery stores tried to keep up with escalating hordes of tourists. Field and Gorrell muscled a thirty-foot extension ladder onto the top of one of the columns, and a Park Service mechanic pounded heavy iron spikes and a few two-by-fours into the upper portion. All was in readiness for Durrance to scale the rock.

But the Dartmouth climber failed to appear when expected. Storms in the Midwest had canceled all flights out of Chicago. Durrance was on a train headed for Denver. He would have to come the rest of the way by automobile.

About noon on October 5, after driving all night, Petzoldt and Rapp arrived in a snow-covered car.

"When we got to Devils Tower, a sleet storm had gone through the area," Rapp remembers. "The tower was nothing but a sheet of glass."

Petzoldt opened the car trunk to get his climbing gear and was deluged by reporters. Rapp put on his felt-soled shoes, and they pushed their way through the mob to the base of the monument. Buffeted by wind, they climbed to the top of the fixed ladder to investigate the route. The tower’s deep cracks were choked with ice all the way to the summit.

Hoping for a change in the weather, they climbed back down to the valley floor. When they reached the ground, a man handed them a note that Hopkins had thrown to the crowd.

"I do not want to be rescued by mountaineers," the message said. "I’m not a mountaineer. I got up here by air and I’m going to get down by air."

About midnight, with screaming sirens and flashing light, Durrance and three other climbers arrived in a cavalcade of police and highway patrol vehicles. He conferred with Petzoldt and the ranger and the rescue was set for daylight.

They started at 7:30 A.M. Durrance took the lead, tied into a 125-foot rope with Petzoldt and Rap. Field, Gorrell, and Chappell Cranmer were on a second rope, and Merril McLane and Henry Coulter on a third.

Durrance "climbed facing the wall, utilizing friction holds on the sloping column faces, and jamming his right foot into the larger crack when width permitted," wrote Field in a article for Trail and Timberline. He hammered wooden pegs and pitons into the rock as he progressed. The string of climbers followed him to to a point about 150 feet below the summit. Then, leaping from one sloping ledge to another over a crevice 500 feet deep, they gained a shelf that gave access to the top.

When they were within voice range of Hopkins, he peered over the edge. It was almost four o’clock. It would soon be dark.

"Well, George," Petzoldt said, "we hear you got up here by air and want to get down by air. You’ve got ten seconds to make a decision because we want to get down off this thing. It’s cold as ice."

"For God’s sake, come and get me," said Hopkins.

The rescuers, who had been climbing for eight hours, pulled themselves of the ledge.

Hopkins, ever cognizant of records, told author Dale M. Titler, "This was the greatest moment!" I knew for the first time I was really safe! The others followed until the largest assembly of men – nine in all – were gathered on the top of Devils Tower.

Durrance asked Petzoldt to get Hopkins down. Petzoldt tied Hopkins into a safety sling and demonstrated how to use the rappel rope, reassuring him that he would be belaying him securely until his feet touched the ground.

They started their slow descent a 4:45 P.M. In the gathering dusk, onlookers pinpointed them with spotlights, blinding them with the glare and making their progress more difficult. While the others followed, Rapp and Durrance stayed behind to clean up debris then joined their teammates at 9:30 amidst a loud roar of approval from the crowd.

Hopkins, ever ready with quotable comments, declared, "This was not exhibition jumping. It was partly to let people know just what a person can do with a parachute if he really knows one."

"It was the damndest example of human nature I’ve ever seen," Petzoldt told Bernice when he returned to Jackson the next evening. "I had a friend from Wyoming who was out in that crowd. Some of the comments this guy heard.! One guy said, ‘What’s the goddam fool fooling around with that rope for? Why don’t they go off?"

"Somebody else said, ‘Aw, hell, it’s getting cold. Let’s go home. Nobody’s going to fall!’"