Kyle Higby Frees Smith Rock's Longest-Running Project

Throughout the 1980s, Alan Watts and other climbers rebelled against traditional climbing ethics of leaving the rock undisturbed, choosing to instead bolt new lines in Smith Rock in Oregon. This began modern American sport climbing as we know it. Then, in 1989, Watts bolted a line on the iconic freestanding tower, the Monkey, but he couldn’t climb it cleanly. For the last 36 years, that project has remained unsent. Even local crushers who had sent one of Smith’s hardest lines, Just Do it (5.14c), couldn’t string together the moves.

In June, Kyle Higby, a relatively unknown young climber, finally grabbed the first ascent, naming the route the Tailbone and grading it 5.14a. The story of the Tailbone is a classic one. It starts with  the early development of sport climbing, takes us through changes in the sport’s center of gravity, and concludes with the unlimited potential of the unknown dirtbag.

A new route for the cameras

For those in the Smith Rock community, Alan Watts needs no introduction. Watts, along with other locals, went rogue and bolted lines that couldn’t safely be trad climbed at the famous state park in Oregon. In 1983, he put up the first sport climb in America, Chain Reaction (5.12c), which many will recognize from the front of a Clif Bar. In today’s climbing world, where sport climbing is the norm, it’s easy to forget just how bold and controversial Watts’s bolting practices were at the time. Smith Rock quickly garnered fame as a cutting-edge climbing spot.

The origin of the Tailbone lies with, of all things, a now-defunct NBC television show called Sportsworld. For one episode in 1989, producers wanted Watts, along with Wolfgang Güllich and Ron Kauk, to bolt and send a new line within three days. They originally bolted Just Do It, but realized that the 5.14c was too hard for them to send that quickly.

As a replacement, Watts bolted the line that would become the Tailbone. The route consisted of the bottom 40 feet before the Backbone, a 5.13a that begins on a large ledge. The trio had always been drawn to that part of the Monkey tower.

“The Monkey’s face is almost 400 feet high. The Backbone is just one of the most amazing looking lines you could ever see,” Watts says.

The Tailbone also proved too hard for Watts and the other climbers. “We had to put on a TV show that couldn’t just be us falling on the same sequence over and over again,” he says. For the show, they ultimately ended up doing what Watts admits was “a stupid traverse.”

The original line posed many challenges: “It was an obtuse arête, so you couldn’t really pinch it the way you would if it was sharper,” Watts says. “It’s just really small holds, bad feet … It was the sort of thing where it was just hard to hold onto the rock at all.” The line represents what Smith Rock is known for: technical, precise climbing that demands top-tier footwork.

In the intervening years since 1989, several local crushers have attempted the route. Drew Ruana, who sent Just Do It at just 15 years old and later established The Assassin (5.14d), the area’s hardest route, couldn’t make it work. Neither could Ryan Palo, a strong climber who also sent the famed 5.14c, along with To Bolt Or Not To Be (5.14a), another Smith Rock classic. The route was not only technically difficult, but also mentally demanding: Getting through the sustained crux meant skipping a clip. A fall after that point would mean taking a 30-foot, albeit “safe” whipper.

According to Watts, as sport climbing became more widespread, Smith Rock and its unsent lines faded from the center of the climbing world. Climbing began to embrace the steep, juggy, knee bar kind of climbs at crags in Colorado and Spain, and the techy vert style of Smith fell out of favor. 5.14s became small potatoes as elite climbers sought to FA the first 5.15a and harder routes. Watts’s line sat dormant, waiting for the right climber to come along and be inspired by it.

Kyle Higby enters the scene

Kyle Higby, 25, started climbing when he was 19, and quickly fell in love with the sport. He visited Smith Rock for the first time during a summer break during school, and immediately felt drawn to it.

Higby loved the people of Smith Rock and its unique vibe. “Out west, people cherish time to be outside,” he says. Compared to the gray and dreary skies of Rochester, New York, where he was living at the time, sunny Smith Rock was a welcome change.

When he graduated college, Higby decided to embrace the dirtbag lifestyle, packed up his stuff in a van, and booked it out to Smith Rock. Like many climbers seeking to test their skills, he sent several technical testpieces on the Monkey, including Spank the Monkey (5.13d PG-13). Watts, ever the salesman, talked up the unsent project to Higby. The young gun took a look, put up a top rope, and was quickly hooked.

Higby describes the 30-meter route has having three distinct 10-meter sections. The first chunk he calls hard 5.12c; the second 10 meters holds the crux.“The strain is continuous, so you barely get to stop to clip, let alone chalk up,” Higby says. “The feet are really difficult to use. They’re either tiny or sloping the wrong way … You’re just doing all these moves on the same terrible feet and you could just pop off.” Survive this series of hard moves on poor feet and the route ends with another 10 meters of slightly runout slab climbing.

Higby describes the main challenge not as fighting a typical forearm pump, but rather bodily exhaustion from sustained compression. “You’re squeezing so hard to keep tight for some of the positions. I would suddenly fall because I couldn’t hold tension anymore,” he says. “It was almost like muscle fatigue.”

He admits that the climb required him to commit to the bit. “You clip a draw at the start of the crux, and then you have 20 more moves before you’re at the next draw,” he says. He pulls the route’s hardest moves about 10 feet above his last clip.

Throughout his time in Smith Rock, Higby gave the Tailbone 10-20 redpoint burns. On the last day before he was scheduled to leave Smith, Higby tried the Tailbone more time and took a huge, upside-down whipper. He was utterly exhausted by that burn, but after an hour of rest, he decided to give it one more go and ultimately sent it.

“Doing that route, it was one of the only times I’ve ever been emotional getting to the chains,” Higby says. Years ago, doing any route on the Monkey felt like a pipe dream. “It’s very inspiring. It was always something I looked at like ‘I’ll never be on that level.’”

Watch Higby climb the Tailbone:

A Smith Rock renaissance? 

Watts hopes the FA of the Tailbone returns climbing’s collective consciousness back to this iconic crag. Smith Rock doesn’t have a 5.15a yet, but Watts thinks there’s one out there and that Higby is more than capable of doing it.

“It’s been a long time since I got a phone call talking about some new route at Smith Rock from Climbing Magazine,” Watts says. “It’s fun to have a new generation that is interested not just in repeating what was done a long time ago, but actually doing new routes and cleaning up old projects.”