Outer Space

I first met him through a chance encounter in the Seattle climbing community, and we soon became friends and started climbing together. It was fortuitous as we shared some spectacular routes. And one of our finest moments was on a wall that was all about granite jam cracks and chicken heads, the stark yet inviting Snow Creek Wall. I’d been looking forward to it. First climbed by the inimitable Fred Beckey in 1960, now only seventeen years later, we would ascend the elegant route known as Outer Space.

Outer ‘fucking’ Space! I could hardly wait. I hoped that I was ready, feeling a mix of both confidence and doubt as we hiked up the trail to access the wall and the base of the climb. I had done my homework, practicing my hand and foot jamming techniques, repeatedly cranking up Classic Crack, the well-known one-pitch practice route on Eight Mile Rock. When practicing climbing routes, we sometimes climbed top-roped, so we could focus on the technique involved in getting up the route, and not have to bother with the fiddling and fatigue experienced in the process of placing protection. That’s how we climbed Classic Crack.

Classic Crack was good training because it was difficult. It angled off the ground before getting vertical and made you work hard for every bit of its length. It was named as such because it was a classic jam crack. And once you felt reasonably confident and comfortable in it, you could expect that you were ready for the longer multi-pitch routes that would require the technique of jamming.

Jamming might be better explained as a wedging technique. You would wedge your hand into a crack and expand it by twisting and or otherwise manipulating it in the crack to make it larger and exert pressure on the sidewalls of the crack. The goal was to provide enough friction resistance that your hand could hold your body weight without pulling out. Foot jambs were similar, often achieved with a twisting technique. Foot jams and hand jambs were often used simultaneously. I had trained hard and thought I was ready, and I tried to stay with that thought for our attempt on Outer Space. Of course, any leads on Outer Space would require protection.

The Outer Space route is a six-pitch technical rock climb that finishes with three very exposed pitches up a solitary crack that runs up the steep shield-like face of the wall. For all practical purposes, it is a vertical ascent. The narrow hand crack, while not uniform, could be protected with either pins or nuts. Since we had officially entered the era of clean climbing, few pitons were used anymore, and we carried only racks of Chouinard Equipment stoppers and hexagonals, known simply as hexes.

In the early seventies, Yvon Chouinard, who had been making the best chrome-molybdenum steel pitons in the world, recognized that repeated use of pitons was badly disfiguring the rock on the popular climbing routes. He decided to create a better solution.

British climbers had been experimenting with machine nuts, the kind you screw onto a bolt. They threaded single nuts on nylon slings, which they would place into a crack to protect from falls. The process was to wedge the nut into a downward tapering crack, a place of convergence, and clip your rope to the sling with a carabiner, and resume climbing. Basically, if you inserted the nut correctly, you couldn’t pull it out by pulling down on it, but it was also easy to retrieve by pulling up, and, best of all, it didn’t disfigure the rock.

Yvon and his partner Tom Frost took the concept to the next step by developing their innovative stoppers and hexes, machine-tooled aluminum nuts designed specifically for climbing protection. They introduced the new concept, which they named ‘clean climbing,’ in their 1972 Chouinard catalog with an article titled, “The Whole Natural Art of Protection.”

And in that catalog, they offered their new stoppers and hexes for sale, effectively competing with themselves and killing their forged iron piton business, but creating a whole new business segment in the process and advancing the art of climbing. The ethos of clean climbing was groundbreaking. Climbers everywhere recognized it. And the techniques and tools were rapidly adopted by the climbing community.

It was with those new tools that we approached the base of the wall. We hiked two miles up the Snow Creek trail, crossed the creek on a weathered footlog, and climbed a few hundred feet up loose terrain to the base of the climb. We were warmed up and ready. We uncoiled our rope, sorted our gear, put on our rock shoes, taped up our hands, and prepared to go. 

The plan was to swing leads, with Rainer taking the first pitch. I would follow, cleaning the pitch and continue past his belay. I would lead the second pitch to its conclusion and anchor in and belay Rainer up. And so, we climbed. Rainer led the third pitch, which held the 5.9 crux, the one most difficult move of the climb, and he finished it off in style and continued to the end of the pitch to set up his belay. I soon joined him and was ready to lead the fourth pitch.

I also wanted to lead pitches five and six. I asked Rainer if he’d be okay with that. I felt a surge of satisfied joy when he said yes. The last three rock pitches all rated 5.8, ascending a singular crack that ran mostly straight up. The granite was excellent, and those leads required the jamming technique that I had so assiduously practiced at Eight Mile Rock. I set off purposefully, placing my taped hands ceremoniously into the crack. I took a deep breath and inserted the toe of one EB-clad foot into the crack, and began moving systematically, rhythmically up.

The climbing was magnificent, with beautiful, solid, clean, crystalline granite, dizzying exposure, and sensational views up, down, and around the immediate area. My hands and feet began to hurt from time to time with the action of wedging and twisting, especially the toe jams. The route had another feature, one that many climbers would use. The wall hosted curious rock formations called chicken heads, protruding granite nubbins of various sizes, some just the right size and distance from the crack to either grab with your hand or stand on with your toes.

Since they were readily available, I used them from time to time when my toes were yelling at me to get out of the crack and give them a break. And when I wanted to pause and place protection. They were a gift. I sometimes felt like I was cheating when I’d use one as a small step. The crack was just the right width for my hand and toe jamming, and with the chicken heads conveniently nearby, those pitches, even though of continuous difficulty, were a sheer delight. And I was so thankful to lead them.

As I climbed the last pitch, I slowed down a bit, not from fatigue but more as a conscious decision to more fully enter the present moment, to more deeply savor the exquisite route. I paused for a brief time in what I like to think was a Zen moment, my Zen moment, just being there, and after pausing in that vertical meditation, resumed the work of ascent.

Finally, topping out and setting up the final belay, I was overcome with the exhilaration of the accomplishment, and at the same time, the disappointment that it was now over. As I belayed Rainer up the final pitch, I recognized another climber emerging from the top of a nearby route.

It was Clark Gerhardt, one of three owners of the Swallow’s Nest, and a renowned climber himself. He had just completed Galaxy, the route next door. We greeted each other. Cool. Rainier finished the last pitch, and we packed our gear, coiled our rope, and then made our way down the grassy ledges into the brushy gully and finally back to the base of the wall and down to the creek crossing and the trail. As we descended, our conversation was rich with talk about the magnificence of the climb.

This is an excerpt from ‘We Could be Heroes,’ a chapter about several mountaineering adventures with Rainer Burgdorfer. These stories are told in my mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, which is available as an illustrated eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

I was later to regret that I have no photos of Outer Space as I was too busy with the task at hand, pun intended. It was just too vertical. We were continuously focused and active. And truth be known, I routinely climbed without a camera on some of the more challenging routes by choice, not wanting to have one more job, that of documenting the climb. The photo of me practicing in Classic Crack was probably taken by Jeanette Grabos.