Totem Pole

In May 1957, four Californians drove 700 miles into the heart of the Navajo Reservation, to Monument Valley, and climbed the skinniest, spindliest, most frightening formation they could find: the Totem Pole. Mark Powell, Jerry Gallwas, Don Wilson, and Bill “Dolt” Feuerer had achieved what was thought of as the impossible. They left an old Kodak film canister as a register. This was their third sandstone tower. In March 1956 Gallwas, Powell, and Wilson spent five very cold days ascending Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly. Later that year they ascended Cleopatra’s Needle. They climbed only three towers, but, in the words of Layton Kor, “They got the three best ones in the desert!”