Index (WA)

Tamara and Leon took a really long time to get out of bed, I just couldn't understand it because they went to sleep really early last night. I couldn't find the right remote for the cable channels, so I had to watch the local weather (which actually looked pretty good) get reiterated about nine times an hour. Eventually I just snapped and hammered on their door.

"Hey, wake up dammit!"

It was 9 am and the sun was blazing across the Seattle cityscape. We were burning valuable daylight.

After Tamara went off to work, and after we finished breakfast (burning some bread black in the process and thoroughly smoking out the apartment) we sorted our gear and fought our way through the traffic and out of town.

We reached the village of Index, about 50 miles away, in two hours. Traffic sucks.

The geography around Index is, well, severe. Mountains of the steep, jagged-edge type rise on the Eastern horizon looking like a slightly scaled down version of the Karakoram range. Leon explained that we were looking at the mere periphery of the Washington Cascades. I use the word awesome quite a lot, an indication of a limited vocabulary perhaps, but it applies most definitely to this region. Awesome.

In the immediate vicinity was Mt Index and through the window of a diner we stared droolingly at its snow covered austerity while consuming diner-food.

One of us said, "We gotta climb that sucker."
The other replied, "Yeah, this summer maybe."

Leila and I have already arranged a pre-impositioning on Leon and Tamara, we're going to try and get back over here this summer.

After our … um, lunch I guess you could call it … anyway, after whatever we drove to the climbing area about a mile away. Divided from the village by a tail-line and a narrow band of grimly determined green stuff (bushes and trees and stuff, you know what I'm talking about), the walls rise quite high against a ridgeline big enough to be called a … a … really … big … cliff-like thing.

Anyway, they where quite impressive and we had already picked out a modest line to climb. On the Great Northern Slab there was "Aries" (5.8) which climbed first an exfoliated fistcrack and then a superb thin corner crack to a flaring chimney. At least that's what Leon's freshly purchased copy of "Rock Climb Washington" says.

I lept up to the podium to do the first part. Not having read the guide properly I completely missed the fistcrack mention. Boy did I suffer.

Have you ever climbed a 5.8 fistcrack without actually using fistjams? The variation I am alluding to here is called aiding. After climbing up the first two yards, in standard free climbing fashion, I reached the giant undercling and regarded the fistcrack's impossible demands.

Leon swatted constantly at swarming mosquitoes while I struggled and hung on pieces, swore, pulled on pieces, swore some more, and finally flopped up onto the big ledge above like a low-tide walrus gasping for breath. I think I managed to climb about 15 feet.

I belayed Leon up.

"Hey, there's no friction!" He noted.

True.

He got up to the ledge and together we looked at the so-called superb thin corner crack. It's thin alright, too thing for fingers on anyone larger than a starving six year old child.

Hmm, maybe next year. Unless we were going to aid this as well. We perused an easier line to our left, it is called "Great Northern Slab" (5.6) and starts from this ledge with some easy climbing up to a pair of anchors you could use to moor an oil-tanker with, they were bloody enormous. Leon did this pitch and belayed me up after him.

He offered the next pitch to me. I'm glad he did because for me the trip had been slightly disappointing climbing-wise. None of my leads had been particularly difficult (none of the one's I finished anyway). So I climbed up and found myself rediscovering why I liked doing this stiff in the first place. It was just tricky enough to make me think and exposed enough to push the adrenaline button all the way up. I even managed to run out the last three metres to the anchors. Leon followed up and agreed that this was a very cool line to do. We were climbing with a single rope and were a bit worried about rapping down. Was it long enough. It was, just.

We hiked under the walls looking at the progress of a handful of other climbers (including one guy who was doing solo-aid), and a passing train. The mountains looked beautiful in the afternoon light. It took about 90 minutes to get back to Tamara's place.

The next few days we didn't do any climbing. Didn't do much of anything really. I just waited until I could get on the plane and back to Leila.

Leon and I did manage to go drinking a few times though, including a short pub-crawl on the last evening which was very entertaining.