The First Rule of Index...
You Don’t Talk About Index

Late December 1982: The 1973 Ford Pinto turned northeast on Lake City Way in Seattle. Inside, two University of Washington students drove through heavy holiday traffic, an hour later passing the soggy logging communities along Stevens Pass Highway. They turned left, crossing the north fork of the Skykomish River to the tiny, thickly forested town of Index, population 160, below a two-tiered granite cliff: the Upper and Lower Town Walls. The men crossed railroad tracks to the Lower Town Wall and built a bonfire, illuminating the lichen-covered rock above. The men ascended a fixed line in the dark, scrubbing holds and drilling. Using Boeing surplus bits, they installed quarter-inch Rawl split-shaft buttonheads, naming their route Terminal Preppie.

The following year the U.S. climbing scene erupted in controversy; many saw the practice of rap-bolting as anathema to the ground-up style that had defined American climbing to that point. The spark that ignited the powder keg was Alan Watt’s rap-bolted 5.12b Watt’s Tots, at Smith Rock. Meanwhile, a posse of Seattle men quietly and without controversy installed over 200 routes on rappel at Index. The men didn’t speak much about the routes. The Pacific Northwest, with its rugged, glaciated terrain, has a long tradition of producing high-end mountaineers. The area’s endemic Alpine tradition and Nordic heritage imbued Washington rock climbers with a stoic temperament; here, you’re expected to suffer alone, quietly, and in nature, keeping your accomplishments to yourself. 

The first rule of Index is you don’t talk about Index. 

Break this rule and things can get messy. Consider that in 1986, the late Todd Skinner set up camp along the Skykomish and went to work on a splitter seam — City Park (5.13c), at the Lower Town Wall — what would be the hardest crack climb in the country at that time. Skinner made certain photographers were there to document his move-by-move rehearsal for the climbing press. Skinner’s willingness to spend a month rehearsing painful finger-locks in the same crack was incomprehensible to the locals. Weeks later, Skinner found his project plugged with railroad grease. He blowtorched the grease out of the crack, sent, and went on his way. While most Index regulars from that era did not condone the anonymous sabotage, it was clear the charismatic, freshly-bronzed, media-savvy Skinner and his sensational Camp IV stories didn’t fit the Northwest mold. 

The second rule of Index is you don’t talk about Index. 

Still, if you measure a crag’s merits by rock quality and the influential climbers who there perfected their technique, there can be no doubt Index holds a very special place in the pantheon of granite climbing areas. Index locals know the bullet-hard, fine-grained granite, the splitter cracks, and the faces pimpled with dime-sized chickenheads and edges rivaled anything those Californians have down south. On a clear day at least. 

In an area with over 100 inches of rain per year and where, like Squamish, British Columbia, rock faces quickly grow over with sheets of moss and lichen, modern Index ethics are best described as exercises in self-flagellation. Desperate locals have been known to wrap the wrists of their raincoats with duct tape, to practice their solo-aid climbing in the near-constant drizzle. “Routes at Index were products of enormous amounts of work,” recalls Greg Child of his years here spent wire-brushing new routes. “We were frustrated young men, wandering the forest looking for new climbs, getting rained out, getting mossed out.” 

But let’s not forget: this is Index and you don’t talk about this stuff. America’s most reclusive crag has incubated big-wall techniques and rap bolting, but speak not. When you come to these wet, moss-choked woods, you’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. You’re not special, as that Tyler Durden voice in your head might tell you — not a beautiful or unique snowflake; just another maggot passing through. So listen up — this is the unauthorized, quirky history of Index. A story of the Washington climbing prodigies who met early, tragic ends, and the local climbers who developed the unique traditions appropriate to the climate and vegetation here. The story of Index, the real birthplace of clean climbing and rap bolting. Before you ask why you haven’t heard of Index remember: the only rule of Index is you don’t talk about Index.