INDEX — This little mountain town is rock climbing nirvana.
A rock face, like some great granite sculpture, reaches up, up, up behind the town.
It’s called the Index Town Wall and, for decades, climbers have come from near and far to test their mettle on its granite crags and cracks.
One popular section of the rock face, the Lower Index Town Wall, is in danger of being shut off to climbers.
In March, “No Trespassing” signs suddenly popped up around the wall.
For the first time in more than 50 years, climbers didn’t have access. The private landowner revoked access to the property after quarrying companies expressed interest in the cliff, said Jonah Harrison, an avid climber and Seattle attorney.
“This is a valuable asset to climbers,” he said. “It’s one of the best on the West Coast.”
Granite is considered the creme de la creme of rock climbing, Harrison said. And the Lower Index Town Wall is granite riddled with huge cracks to grab and edges that provide challenge and variety.
As early as the 1950s, mountaineers practiced scaling the sheer walls that zoom up 500 feet and higher, he said. In the years since, climbers have established hundreds of climbing routes.
A local group of climbers is moving to buy the land so it can be preserved for climbing. The group, Washington Climbers Coalition, negotiated an option agreement with the owner to buy the 20-acre property for $115,000.
The goal is to eventually hand the wall over to a land trust or to Washington State Parks, said Harrison, a member of the coalition who helped negotiate the agreement.
This climb is far from finished.
Under the agreement, the group has 18 months to raise money to buy the land.
Climbers must raise thousands of dollars more than that to build restrooms and improve a nearby rutted parking lot if the group hopes to have the cash-strapped state parks take over the wall, Harrison said.
A fundraising goal won’t be announced until later this summer.
There’s also the issue of access. Climbers park in the parking lot just outside town and then walk over a private rail line. Negotiations are needed to secure formal permission to cross that rail corridor, Harrison said.
Local climbers have help.
Access Fund, a national climbing advocacy group based in Boulder, Colo., helped negotiate with the property owner and provided a $10,000 loan to secure the agreement. The American Alpine Club and other powerhouse climbing organizations have pledged to help flex their fundraising muscle.
“There’s been a long history of climbing at the wall,” Access Fund spokesman Joe Sambataro said. “It’s a pretty unique resource.”
On the East Coast, it’s more common for climbing groups to purchase private land for preservation, he said. Here, it’s relatively new.
Sambataro described Washington State Parks as “still an interested partner” and said the Access Fund would continue to help local climbers navigate the purchase of the land.
In the meantime, the landowner has reinstated public access to the land for the next 18 months.
Thursday afternoon, Dave Back worked his way up the baking hot granite rock.
He moved to Index recently from Seattle just so he could spend more time here. When he’s not focused on gripping granite flakes with chalk-coated hands, he sometimes catches a glimpse of a breathtaking view.
“Where in Washington could you get this kind of scenery?” he said, after scaling a climbing route named Godzilla. “It’s not even a five-minute walk from the parking lot.”
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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