Climbing Index

After waiting for way too long (god damn it Colin!) we finally got on the road on our way too Index. This trip was my first time to Index but will not be the last! I had high expectations from all the rumors talking this place was kind of like a little Yosemite and as I was soon to find out all the rumors are...true! As we came around the corner the first cluster of beautiful granite came into view followed by several other walls that fan out to the right above the town, each one at least five pitches tall. The wall had shelves, cracks, and was over overwhelmingly big.
We pulled into a parking lot on the right side of the road and had all our gear ready for the small approach in under ten minutes due to the adrenaline shot of having such a big wall so close. We walked over some rail road tracks to what I think was Lower Town Wall. After that we made our way to the right along the base of the wall. We passed one guy that was solo aid climbing and two more groups that were all aid climbing. I had never seen so many people aid climbing at one location but I sure wasn't going to! After walking around the corner from the aid climbing groups we got to another portion of the wall that had a tunnel dead center in the wall with water pouring out under the doorway. There was a guy that was digging a trench to relieve the water that had built up in the area (swamp). I asked him if he knew of any wall higher up on this side. He said he didn't know but had seen people paragliding off the top two weeks prior. I guessed there were but decided to wait until I had a guide book to explore any further up the hillside.
After climbing three easy cracks that made us feel like an absolute beginner climbers we made our way out of Index hungry for our next visit that I hope will not be far out in the future. I have a feeling if I keep climbing here I will become much better at crack climbing and the next stop will be Squamish on my list of climbing meccas to visit. On our way out of town I got a copy of the Index Climbing Guide which is essentially just a bunch of old topos with a plastic binder keeping it all together (I need to laminate these!). A pretty good book for information but really nothing to it and I guess it can be downloaded at http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/index/ Overall it was a great trip and I can not wait to return with the guide to get some more climbing in on such perfect rock!

-Owen