I had just started getting into climbing right after 5.15 was realized in 2001, pardon the pun, with Chris Sharma’s ascent of Biographie.  It was incredibly cool despite the fact that I had no idea of the magnitude of the send, but I knew it was important.  This book, however, is about the decade or so that a few choice climbers spent in pursuit of the first 5.14.  And what an adventure it truly was. So strap up your shoes and cinch down your harness, it’s time to make history.

Summary

We touch on the classic locations like Yosemite Valley and the Stonemasters, Joshua Tree before the yuppies invaded, and Smith Rock with the legendary Alan Watts from it’s infancy to it’s ultimate crowning achievement, but we also make stops in Colorado, Seattle, and even the Gunks.   He quickly goes over the decade of evolution from pins and pitons to the expanded use of chocks and stoppers in 60’s up to the start of the installation of bolts on some choice routes in the 70’s.  The initial installation of bolts was to either create a safe anchor or protect long, run-out stretches between obvious placements.  The ethic of the era was still to do everything from the ground up.  If you fell, you started over, be it 30 feet or 3,000 feet off the deck.  This also included installing bolts on lead, either by finding suitable perches or hanging precariously from hooks on tiny nubbins.  Seriously, it’s a wonder some of them could still climb with the weight of their huge brass balls.

The first “hangdogger” we meet is Ray Jardine in the Valley.  A contemporary of Ron Kauk and John Bachar, but completely ostracized for hanging on his home made SLCD’s to work moves or sections of the hard 5.12s.  Mean words were thrown but nothing was more hurtful than the moniker of “hangdog.”  That is until he started cold chiseling is way up the blank section of The Nose to avoid the King Swing and the rest of the Stonemasters ran him out of the Valley for good.  But his work on hard FA’s left a sting, despite the hangdog-style in which they were completed, and the locals sought to send his lines in a “pure” or “clean” manner just to prove him wrong.  Tony Yaniro, on the other hand, saw the potential of the efforts and went on to put up the first 5.13 in Yosemite, Grand Illusion in 1979. 

The bolt wars brought to the United States from the Euro ethic reached its height in the 1980’s.  A large portion of the center section of the book follows both the installation of bolts across the country as well as the Euro Invasion of characters such as German Wolfgang Gullich, Frenchman Jean Baptise Tribout, and Englishman Jerry Moffatt coming across the pond to send our hardest lines in their similar hangdog style, but in record time.  It was also a time of newer inventions such as climbing shoes that were allowing climbers to stick to the smaller holds and jam in tighter cracks, better and lighter pieces of pro, and even training regiments like the Skinner Box to achieve the necessary finger strength to pursue this hard climbing.  Things were coming together for climbers and 5.13’s were being established across the country and the world, but 5.14 continued to elude even the top tier.  

In 1983, Smoot pays a visit to a crumbling mudhole in Oregon and finds a new ethic in bolting, placing bolts on rappel. *Audible gasp*  This allowed for routes that had potential to be world class to get their bolts AND provide a safe way to clean these routes of their brittle surface layers of rock.  That mudhole is now the cleaned up and world-renowned Smith Rock.  A couple years later in 1985, Todd Skinner shows up to try all of the local test pieces that laid in wait, but sadly none of them were quite 5.14 and he would have to keep searching.  Coaxed by Jeff to come up to Seattle to try City Park, the hardest crack in Washington at the time, Todd put the work in over the course of a couple of weeks.  Grounded by the infamous Pacific Northwest weather for a few days, Todd returned for his redpoint attempt and found axle grease in the upper portions of the crack.  Irate that the locals were attempting to sabotage his send, he got a torch and burned the grease out of the crack.  Thinking he got it all, in the fading light he fired through the first 100 feet with practiced ease until the final hand jam only to find more grease.  Opting for an easier exit off the crack to mantle then 5.9 ledges to the top in the dark.  He returned the next day for the real send in gaudy lycra to put on a show for those that sought to thwart him.  When he hit the dirt, it was with a bittersweet smile.  This route was hard, the hardest Todd had ever climbed, but it was sadly not 5.14.  City Park clocks in at 5.13d PG/R.  A few months later, Todd Skinner’s goal of being the first to climb 5.14 would be swept from under him.

In 1986, French hardman Jean-Baptise Tribout made another trip to America after hearing about the new sport mecca of Smith Rock.  With his partner, Jean Marc Troussier, they crushed the hardest routes Smith had to offer, including the long standing project of local legend Alan Watts, Rude Boys (5.13c), and the hardest sport climb in the U.S. at the time, East Face of the Monkey Face at 5.13d.  A couple of days later, history was made and Tribout sent To Bolt or Not to Be, the first 5.14 in America.  Climbers are well known for their ability to climb hard and party harder and that night was no exception for his victory.  Everyone in the park, climbers and on-lookers alike, wanted to shake his hand and share a drink.  A pull-up contest was started and Tribout blew the competition out of the water with 80 pull-ups followed by tearing his shirt off and drinking a a full beer in one go.  He probably smoked a cigarette in one drag and kissed the prettiest girl in attendance to boot as he oozed French cool and magnetism. *citation needed*

There is plenty more to story.  The handful of characters I talked about aren’t half of the ones that Smoot hangs out with in his adventures writing for Climbing and Rock & Ice or touring slide shows with Todd.  Competition continued to fuel the fire now that the grade had been unlocked and more 5.14’s were completed through the rest of the 80’s right up to Lynn Hill’s utterly historic ascent of The Nose in 1993, the last plum to be picked until Tommy Caldwell’s and Kevin Jorgensen’s ascent of the Dawn Wall in 2015.  It took 8 years to go from 5.13 to 5.14 and it was a wild ride for those involved.  It took 15 more years for 5.15 to be established.  We are 19 years from that ascent and 5.15c/d just barely exists, but after reading this book, the same sentiments about ‘will 5.16 ever exist?’ were weighed back in the 70’s that 5.14 might never be thing.  It took the dedication and competition of folks with massive talent, drive, and near reckless abandon.  A shirking of the ground-up style in exchange for hangdogging and top-rope rehearsal, foregoing traditional practices of placing gear on lead for bolts, and cleaning routes on rappel.  Without these changes in ethics, we would not be where we are today, with 5.16 somewhere just beyond the horizon.

Conclusion

Jeff Smoot is a great story teller, as he should, being a professional writer.  It doesn’t come from his use of a thesaurus or a string of adjectives to paint a word picture, but it comes more from a practiced ease of telling the same story over and over around a campfire.  Your buddies have heard it a million times, but it sounds fresh and awe-inspiring to the newcomer and many chapters could add the phrase “I remember a time when…” or “back in our day…” and it would not feel out of place.  To the casual reader, the book feels part meandering narrative and part homage to the late Todd Skinner, and while Smoot is a close compatriot of Skinner in the 80’s, the story has to wander because so much was happening at the time.  It certainly paints a picture of the dream that we all wish we could follow even forty years later; pack it all up in a van and head to the mountains.  The romance of the sport and pursuit of new and difficult adventures speaks to us as climbers and Jeff captures that attitude perfectly.  At the same, this is not a look backwards through a telescope.  Many passages are lifted from his notes and writing at the time when it was all happening so the words feel lived in and alive with the excitement of the day, not just fond reflections.  That’s what makes a good writer, the story should be timeless.  But even then, with the words of someone on the front lines, I doubt the full extent of the insanity of the era could truly be understood unless you were there.

There was one big lesson that I took away.  I’ve been climbing seriously for 18+ years, and in the middle of this career I was serious about competition, about travelling, and about projects that were hard (for me).  I got decently strong, I have a college title, and even uncovered and cleaned a couple FA’s.  While those things were important at the time, I do look back with some regret at the people I either cut loose, ignored, or put undue stress upon in my pursuit to be as good as I could be or spend every available minute at the gym training, at the crag, or on a road trip.  I think we see that same reflection from Jeff when he talks about Todd, a man so driven by passion that he would leave in the middle of your birthday party if it meant he could be trying something hard in the next state over by morning.  The qualities of a champion such as dedication and determination can be admirable, but climbing, by it’s very nature, is a social sport and the people are just as important as the rock.  I think about what I may have missed and the people who may have had their feelings hurt because I was consumed by what I wanted rather than their needs.  So, the lesson; don’t let your own drive separate you from what actually makes this sport great; the people we meet.  While hard climbs are cool and the dirtbag lifestyle is romantic, if you have to step on people along the way or leave them hanging in the wind, it might not be worth it.  A few injuries later, in my mid-thirties, and having been that person used for a belay and then left stranded in a foreign country because of someone’s “psych,” I can say that I have had just as much fun, if not more, running support as a belayer, spotter, scorecard keeper, or tour guide, at the comp after party, or around the campfire as I did pursuing a project.  As the book winds down, I think Smoot gets it too.  That sometimes you can’t just drop everything to go climbing, because you have responsibilities to other people or maybe it’s better to spend the day taking photos and making friends that last a lifetime rather than constantly rotating belay partners because your previous one got fed up, and he is sad that Todd never got the chance to slow down and appreciate that side of climbing because he wanted just one more go.

Overall, the book was a great romp through history, and if you appreciate any of the significance of routes, locales, or even grades, this is a must read.  I went through several different versions of this review, but I think Jeff Smoot’s wandering narrative style started to rub off on me.  It is a good book to get lost in as you experience the race to 5.14 through the eyes of those that lived it rather than reading a history text book.  At a clean 300 pages, barely half of Smoot’s original submission to his editor, it can be read in a weekend or two, or while on a climbing road trip to keep you psyched.

Verdict: Read It!

Where to Get It: Amazon  I highly recommend the paperback version rather than the audiobook.  The old black and white photo inserts throughout really make it a work to leave you marveling.

-Tylor Streett, will never climb 5.14, but that doesn’t mean he won’t keep trying to be a better belayer for those looking to climb hard.