INDEX CLUB

1991 — Rise and Fall, 5.12a/b, multi-pitch sport; Greg Child and Andy DeKlerk
“I almost died on that route,” says Greg Child. The year after achieving renown for his ascent of K2 sans oxygen, Child teamed up with Andy DeKlerk, an accomplished Himalayan alpinist from South Africa, for this six-pitch sport route on the Upper Town Wall, the second multi-pitch sport route in Index. The route features highly technical, quintessentially Index moves: ticky-tacky, arty, delicate crimps and foot matches on micro-features on high-angle granite slab. “Quite surprising how many small holds there are on those cliffs,” says Child, “albeit covered in moss.” Amidst a final wire-brushing and drilling, Child was temporarily distracted and rapped off the end of his rope. He hit a ledge 16 feet below, fell 25 feet farther, then barrel-rolled down the forested slope, landing in a blackberry thicket. Spitting out blood, Child took stock: he had a broken right ankle and was alone, 25 minutes up a very steep climber’s trail… and it was getting dark. Child inched over to the climber’s trail and began a three-hour combat-crawl through the pitch-black forest to the parking lot, then drove one home one-footed, using his left foot for the accelerator, clutch and brake. 

Child, who has summitted Everest, K2, Gasherbrum 4, Trango Towers, and a host of other dangerous, remote peaks, was chagrined by the lowering accident in his own backyard. As soon as his ankle healed, Child and DeKlerk returned to climb the route, naming it Rise and Fall as an allusion to the rappel accident and the Shakespearean tragic plot of misfortune following a heroic accomplishment. 

Child was a prolific Index climber, establishing over 20 routes between 1984 and 1992. When asked about rap-bolting controversy and the lack of it at Index, Child explains, “In other parts of the country there was a fanatical ethics police. People were freaking on each other in places like Boulder. Index was a moss-covered, backwater, do-anything-you-want, get-lost-in-the-drippy-forest type of place. There were no real ethics police in those days — you could really invent your own brand of climbing.” 

1992 — Amandla, 5.13b/c, sport; Andy DeKlerk
You’ll find Amandla on the Lower Town Wall, where it traverses right from the flared corner of Numbah Ten to a right-leaning finger crack, and finally to a steep arête. It was the hardest route established since City Park went free six years earlier. 

After establishing many test pieces in South Africa, DeKlerk lived as an ex-patriot in Seattle for a decade, in part to avoid military service during his country’s blighted Apartheid era. DeKlerk named his route “Amandla,” the Zulu rallying cry “power.”

During his years in Seattle, DeKlerk not only dodged military duties, he also avoided academic opportunity, in the form of a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University, to climb instead. DeKlerk racked up a string of impressive alpine accomplishments including his sick Alaskan feats (Moonflower on Mount Hunter, and mounts Foraker, Huntington, Dickey, and Barille); difficult Himalayan ascents (Gasherbrum IV, North Ridge of Latok II, Everest in 1996); and hairball climbs in the Canadian Rockies (North Faces of Alberta, Templeton, Robson and North Twin). Between alpine accomplishments, DeKlerk routinely climbed hard 5.13+ sport in the Northwest and was a fixture at Index. 

Six people in the last 17 years have repeated Amandala: Justen Sjong, Michael Orr, Hawk Berry, Ben Gilkison, Andrew Philbin, and Sonnie Trotter, the latter calling it “very strenuous, solid 5.13 for sure, maybe even a little on the stiff side.” Seattle native Ben Gilkison since extended Amandla to a ledge, the most natural finish with a 60m cord, calling the Full Amandla (5.13d). 

Regarding the potential for more hard routes at Index, DeKlerk remarked “Some of the corners and aretes on the upper wall have potential for really stiff routes. There is huge potential for thin hard routes and really long pitches also. 

About the 1990s Index scene, DeKlerk recalls the time he found a severed pig’s head atop one of the Lower Town Wall routes. “There are some real weirdos that live in the forest around there,” says DeKlerk, laughing.