A WALK IN THE PARK PART 2
A historical perspective of the
first and second free ascents of City Park
Index Town Walls, Washington
by Jeff Smoot
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Todd Skinner working out the moves
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If you haven't done so already,
Read Part 1!
During the winter of 1985, Todd had a newfound sense of urgency
that made it imperative that he begin working on City Park as
soon as possible. It seems someone had told him that Alan Watts
was coming to Index to free-climb City Park. Todd, of course, knew
what Alan had done on The Stigma, and he also knew that Smith Rock
was only six hours' drive from Index. In reality, Alan hadn't
actually said he was going to come up and try City Park. I only
said so to get Todd riled up. I honestly didn't care who freed
City Park, or when. I just thought, since both Alan and Todd
seemed capable of the feat, one of them ought to get his butt
up to Index and at least try it. I figured Todd was still on his
quest. I knew as soon as he heard Alan was going to try City Park,
he'd race up from Wyoming to beat Alan to it. Imagine the infamy
of losing the glory of making the first ascent of the hardest
crack in the world to a scrawny kid from Madras, Oregon! Knowing
Todd, he would be unable to resist the challenge.
Sure enough, there he was, camped out beside the Skykomish River
one Saturday morning in May, with staff photographer/belay slave
Beth Wald in tow. Todd had only just arrived, and had not yet set
to work on the climb. The first business of the day was to set up
a toprope and start working out the moves. Todd went first, did
the moves he could do, then allowed others a turn to work out the
sequential moves he hadn't been able to figure out. I got my turn,
and found the crack to be pure joy to climb-except for the
excruciating pain, that is. Once above the bolt ladder and a
couple of easier moves, the crack became thin and stayed that way.
The first twenty feet or so consisted of fingertip lieback and
jam moves, with one good knob for a foothold, then smears and
little features, a tough section to lead and place gear without
pumping out or barndooring off. After that, it was all jams, thin
thumbs-up finger jams and wrenching thumbs-down locks in pin scars,
some deep, some shallow, some allowing two fingers, others barely
accepting fingertips, all without much for the feet except little
ripples and crystals in the vertical granite. One section here
seemed much too thin and was much too painful, so I dogged up
two moves and continued. About midway up, the crack jogged a
little to the left, then continued straight up. This section
was more technical, requiring some sequential jamming and
liebacking. After that, it was all tiny pin scars, straight
up, perhaps technically easier but no less difficult. The final
section of crack was relatively easy, only 5.11a. I was amazed.
Even I had managed nearly every move. Of course, putting all of
those moves together in a continuous lead seemed far beyond
my abilities, and definitely way beyond my pain threshold. That,
plus the fact that I was basically a wuss when it came to leading
hard routes, convinced me to abandon all hope of freeing City
Park. Not that I ever had any such ambition. I was more than
content to be a spectator.
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Todd during the first free ascent
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If the crack had been intersected by ledges every 30 feet, it
would have been a reasonable four-pitch route of 5.10, 5.12, 5.12
and 5.11. Todd approached the route exactly like that. Each day, he
would climb Godzilla and set up a toprope, then work out sections
of the climb, breaking it down into sections which he repeated ad
nauseam until wired before moving on to the next section. Later,
he made a few tentative lead attempts, hangdogging his way up the
crack, figuring out where to best place nuts. The route soon
looked like a chalkboard, all circles and arrows marking the best
footholds, jams, and gear placements.
Some other notables showed up about then, including Russ Clune,
Bob Yoho, and Hugh Herr. We would watch Todd for awhile, maybe take
a turn belaying, or tie in and flail about for a bit on toprope. But
it got boring pretty fast, so we would wander off and climb routes
that were humanly possible. Hugh climbed a few routes, but got bored
because his feet didn't work well on the steep, featureless Index
granite, especially in the thin cracks. Even Alan Watts showed up for
a couple of days and gave the crack a try, but he tore a big flapper
and had to abandon all hope of making a free ascent. It would have
been interesting to have Alan and Todd taking turns trying to lead
the pitch free. Back in the old days, talented climbers would often
team up and push each other to greater heights of performance. One
tended to try harder when falling off meant your belayer might very
well snatch a first ascent away from you. These days, with fame and
fortune increasingly on the line, it was every man for himself.
Two talented climbers pairing up for a first ascent? Not anymore.
More like one talented climber recruiting belay slaves for the duration,
and guarding the route at gunpoint, to prevent anyone from even
touching the route. It was really quite gracious of Todd to let
Alan try it, although I suspect Todd was not the least bit displeased
that Alan's flapper took him out of contention.
Todd spent a few weeks working out the moves on each individual
section of the crack. During these days, I had pretty much abandoned
Index. I kept track of what was going on, which was not much other
than the usual toproping-the-crack-into-submission routine, day after
day after day. But when it seemed like Todd was close to getting
on the sharp end and trying it for real, I made sure to be there
to witness the big event. There were several rain delays, of course.
On rainy days, Todd and Beth would usually hang out in town, or
at their camp. On one drizzly weekday, they abandoned camp and
headed into the big city. By this time, Todd had the route all
but wired. After a rest day, assuming the weather improved,
he would go for it.
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One of Todd's many tricks
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On the appointed day, I arrived at the Lower Wall to find Todd
and Beth lounging in their camp, reading a newspaper. It was a
clear, crisp spring morning, ripe with potential. After some more
lounging around, the whole troupe headed over to the Lower Wall.
After Crazy Gluing his fingertips (one of his many tricks), Todd
soloed Godzilla, as usual, to warm up and to rappel the crack once
more to make sure all of the jams were dry and to re-mark some of
the critical jams and footholds, since the recent rain had washed
off all of his chalk. He moved fluidly up the flakes, scarcely
hesitating on even the hardest moves. He had it so wired, he
could have climbed it blindfolded. He trailed a rope on the
climb, and as soon as he reached the ledge, he pulled up a
second rope and set up a rappel. He started down the crack,
inspecting each jam, marking a foothold here and a pin scar there.
Suddenly, a torrent of profanity bellowed forth from above.
We all looked up, startled, expecting to see Todd plummeting
to his death, bleeding profusely, or fending off an animal
attack, such was the suddenness and intensity of his rage.
But no, he was still safely on rappel, only 20 feet or so
down the crack, apparently intact, but livid. Todd continued
his tirade. We still had no idea what was happening. Todd usually
did not swear this intensely except, well - except about every
time he fell off of a route. But this was a different kind of
swearing. He seemed to really mean it. What the heck was he
yelling about?
"There's grease in the crack!" Todd roared. More profanity
ensued. We were incredulous. Grease in the crack? How would
grease get in the crack? It did not register at first, but
the bright ones among us soon figured it out. The motive
became clear, but it still was beyond belief that someone
would actually do such a dastardly deed. After all, we had
not seen any Yosemite Valley locals lurking about. Todd's
disposition did not soon improve. He continued rappelling
down the crack, and continued cursing as he found several
more pin scars had been slathered in thick grease. But only
about 30 feet down from the ledge, the grease ended.
The saboteurs had apparently known that Todd was close to
leading the crack, and taking advantage of his previous day
away, had greased a section of the crack to thwart his
attempted free ascent. It would have been something for
Todd to have led through the crux in fine style, only to
stick his fingers into a hole full of grease and come
sailing off just short of his moment of triumph. But this,
too, was something. To be sure, Index was no stranger to
controversy. Pins and bolt hangers had been stolen, bolts
had been chopped, and even some trees had been cut down once
or twice, but this was entirely unprecedented. Smearing
grease in a crack. Outrageous!
Because of the rain, nobody hung out at Index that day.
I wasn't there either, so I don't know exactly how it
conspired. But as Harvey Manning pointed out in his
Foreword to Challenge of the North Cacades, "Climbers are
notorious gossips." In the aftermath, there was much tongue
wagging, the principal question being "Who did it?" A few
hard-core, lycra-hating traditionalist aid climbers made
the list of suspects, and through the grapevine, two climbers
in particular were named as the likely culprits. Who, you ask?
Well, let's just say . . . I'm not saying. But it was nice of
them not to damage the crack. A little grease didn't hurt
anything, except maybe Todd's feelings.
Anyway, after rappelling down the route, Todd was in a funk.
He couldn't believe it. Grease in the crack. Of all things!
But Todd soon gathered his senses, and did a most idiotic and
brilliant thing. He went back to his van, got out a butane torch,
and headed right back up there to burn the grease out of the
pin scars. This seemed insane. A wrong move with the torch and
he could burn through his ropes and fall to his death. But Todd,
like any good zealot, was not about to let sanity or reason
cloud his judgment. He was out of his mind in his zeal to
free climb City Park. He had, after all, invested weeks in
the project, driven thousands of miles, endured rain and
boredom, and so many desperate nights stuck in Index, Washington
in a van with Beth Wald. (Really, who would not go insane
under those circumstances?) In his depraved mind, the only
way he could think to get the grease out of the crack was
to burn it out. So he spent the rest of that day hanging
on the rope, carefully burning every last bit of grease
out of the crack. And it worked.
I came back on Friday. By then, Todd had burned out all
of the grease, and was ready to give it a go. It was kind
of exciting, in a way, but also fairly anti-climactic. I mean,
after spending nearly a month watching Todd climbing the same
120 feet of rock every day, it wasn't exactly a thrilling
prospect. But it was history in the making, perhaps the
most exciting thing to happen at Index since they put
the railroad through.
Todd ascended the bolt ladder with ease to the base of the
crack, then led cleanly up the first section of crack, to
where it jogs slightly right and shoots up the shield,
placing only a couple of nuts, and got halfway up the shield
before falling off. In his usual fashion, Todd swore mightily
when he fell. (In Todd's defense, I'll say that he does not
swear nearly as loudly or intensely as some other climbers
I have heard, but I'm sure the mothers of Index covered
their childrens' ears whenever Todd fell off the route.)
After a pull up the rope and a short hang, Todd lowered
off, pulled the rope, and rested. He was back on it again
about 90 minutes later, and got past his high point, only
to fall off again, a 30-footer this time. Todd was
running it out about 15 feet between nuts, which seemed
crazy but was also quite reasonable since stopping to
place protection burned precious forearm strength, a
rare commodity on such a strenuous pitch. Besides that,
in a few places he simply could not let go to place
protection. Todd had once theorized that climbs would
someday become so hard that it would be impossible to let
go to place protection. Here was his theory in practice.
It was alternately fascinating and horrifying to watch
him lead out so far above wired nuts in pin scars. I'd
recently taken a short fall and sheared through the
cable of an RP, adding 20 feet to my fall. I'd also had a
wired nut pop out of a crack, resulting in a 30-foot groundfall.
Even when aiding City Park, I did not fully trust half
of my placements, but took solace in the fact that I had so
many nuts in the crack that some of them would probably hold
a fall if one blew out. To me, the idea of taking a 15-foot
runout above a #3 RP on 5.13, with the next piece 15 feet
below, seemed downright stupid. But as Forrest Gump so
aptly put it, "Stupid is as stupid does." If Todd fell and
hurt himself, he was stupid; if taking such long runouts
allowed him to free climb City Park, he was a veritable
genius. So far, it seemed to be working.
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Todd during the first free ascent
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After a long break that lasted well into the afternoon,
Todd made his third try of the day, and got even higher
before just missing a move that would have all but assured
success. After the obligatory bout of cussing, Todd lowered
off, pulling all of his gear except the highest piece, and
took another long break. He had one more shot today. If he
didn't succeed, it would be Sunday or Monday before he
could try again. With the weekend coming, and the possibility
that saboteurs were lurking, ready to slather the crack in
grease once again, or worse, he wanted desperately to
finish it today. To calm Todd's paranoia, I offered to
hang out at the base of the climb to protect against
sabotage. After all, I had experience in this field.
Luckily, I didn't have to fend off an attack by
grease-wielding saboteurs.
The crew returned late in the day, later than I thought
prudent if Todd was going to have a shot at freeing the pitch
in daylight. Not that it would have been unusual for Todd to
climb in the dark. At Suicide Rock the previous spring, after
goofing around on Hades (a recent 5.12+ face climb that Todd
led in pretty poor style) and The Pirate (a 5.12d pin scar
crack similar to City Park but slabby), Todd and his gang had
started up the classic Insomnia (5.11b) at dusk. Thinking
better of attempting the climb in the waning light, I
started hiking out. I arrived at the road as the sky went
black. An hour later, Todd, Beth, and Bill came crashing
out of the woods. Naturally, none of them had a flashlight.
With Todd, everything was an epic. So it would be this
evening. Todd took his time roping up and preparing for the
climb. He was meditative and serious, not his usual
jokester self. With his eyes closed, he pantomimed the
moves, complete with placing gear and chalking up, all the
way to the top of the crack. When he was finally tied in
and racked, it was getting dark.
Todd climbed quickly up the bolt ladder to the crack,
plugged in a Friend, made a couple more moves to a knob
foothold, placed an RP, then downclimbed and rested. After
a short rest, he fired up the first part of the crack, a
thin jam-and-layback section, to the first horizontal
seam, where the crack kicks back just over vertical,
and placed a nut. It was twilight now, really too dark
to be climbing a 5.13 pin-scar crack, but Todd was still
on, still moving up. He passed through the first crux
beautifully, sticking a thumbs-up pinkie jam-the thinnest
move of the route-perfectly, and continued up another 20
feet to the fixed pin without placing another piece of
protection. He clipped the pin and placed a cam in a
slot below the pin (a good idea since the pin was cracked),
did the technical crux moves to establish in the upper half
of the crack, and muscled his way up the tiny pin scars,
his feet deftly finding purchase on tiny ripples and crystals
despite the impending darkness. Another 20 feet up, just a
few moves short of the end of the hard climbing, Todd placed
another nut, then cranked up another move, then another, to
the horizontal break at the base of the final "easy" finish.
He had all but done it. Just a few moves of easy 5.11 jamming
to go. There were shouts of encouragement and congratulations
from below as Todd placed one last nut, shook out his arms,
and prepared to complete the climb.
Suddenly, like before, a flurry of profanity rang out from
above. "Goddamn it!" Todd shrieked. "Goddamn it!" The woods
echoed with obscenities. In answer to our collective,
disbelieving "What?" Todd answered breathlessly, "I missed a
spot! There's still grease in one of the jams!" Although he
had carefully burned out the grease from each pin scar, he had
missed one, in a critical spot. He hung on there helplessly,
having just completed the hardest moves of one of the hardest
crack climbs in the country, and whimpered like a baby. We asked
if he could just skip that jam, but he said he couldn't. He tried,
reaching up and sticking his fingers in a lower pin scar, then
reaching for a higher slot, but backing down. His forearms were
flaming. He couldn't hang on there for much longer and still
have strength to finish the pitch. If he didn't figure out
soon how to bypass that greasy hold, he was going to pump out
and fall off. By the sound and looks of things, Todd was giving up.
"Todd, to your right is a ledge," I yelled up. "If you mantel up on that ledge, it's 5.9 to the top."
"What?" he yelled back desperately.
"Reach right to the ledge and mantel up. It's a 10c mantel, then it's 5.9 to the ledge."
"A mantel? I hate mantels!"
But quickly realizing he had no other option, except to let
go and try again another day, Todd reached tentatively to the
right to touch the ledge, then committed to it, shifted his
weight over to the ledge and hung from both arms. He pulled up,
shifted his right hand and pressed down, and with a big groan
muscled his way up, then got a foot on the ledge and stood up.
He stood there for a long time, shaking one arm and then the
other. He did not have any protection left to place; he had
carried only what he needed to protect the crack. It got darker
and darker, to the point where we could barely see him against
the fading sky. But finally, he started moving again, slowly,
up the flake, then a 5.9 mantel, and in darkness he did the
final moves and pulled unceremoniously up onto the ledge to
complete the first free ascent of the first pitch of City Park.
Unfortunately, Todd did himself and his reputation no favor
by getting back on the route the next day, a Saturday. All dressed
up in his flashiest lycra tights, he hangdogged his way up the
route, posing for photos. Of course, Todd needed photos of himself
free climbing the route, to go with the articles that would
announce his heroic triumph. But a lot of climbers were out
at Index that day, watching him dogging around on City Park.
Naturally, when they read later how he had free climbed
City Park, they had some doubts.
Of course, it could be accurately be said (and has been
said, I am sure) that Todd hadn't free climbed the entire
crack. True, instead of the 5.11a finish, he had, out of
necessity, taken a 5.10c variation to the top of the pitch.
But then, the mantel was probably harder, considering Todd
had never done it before, had not rehearsed it several times
as he had the crack finish, did it on-sight, in the dark,
despite being fully blown from having just done a 5.13
to get there. Under those conditions, an on-sight 5.10 mantel
would be pretty tough. (If you disagree, try doing 100
pull-ups in 10 minutes, then do a 5.10 mantel, or any other 5.10
move, and see how well you fare.) But in fairness, he had not
really climbed the traditional first pitch of City Park. It
was a shame that one crucial pin scar was still greasy, because
Todd would easily have finished the crack and there would be
no question about it. But even so, he did free climb the pitch.
Jokingly, he renamed it "Grease Monkey" in honor of his
would-be saboteurs. (Thankfully, the name didn't stick.)
Disappointingly, he rated it "only" 5.13c, probably to avoid
having Alan Watts come back later in the year and downrate
it as he had on The Stigma.
It wasn't Alan Watts, though, who repeated City Park in better
style. That summer, Hugh Herr returned to Index.
On to Part 3
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