Washington Column, Astroman Route

By: Josh Smith | Climbers: Josh Smith, Scott Crane |Trip Dates: October 17, 2001

Photo: Josh Smith

® The author(s) and naclassics.com | Back to climb page NAC Home page

For those who don't know about it, and I'll admit that there are a few and then have the grace not to condemn you for your unfamiliarity, I'll give a brief run-down on Astroman. Astroman is a series of cracks in a wide variety of sizes that run almost straight up the thousand-foot East Face of Washington Column in Yosemite National Park. Washington Column itself is nothing spectacular in the staggering splendor and grandiosity of Yosemite. Most people, I imagine, see it first as a nubbin of rock in the valley far below Half Dome, then they don't notice it again. Unless, of course, they're on their way to climb it. For a time, Astroman was considered one of the hardest free climbs in the world, at least by the climbers in Yosemite. Since that time in the 70s, it has been far surpassed both in length and in difficulty, but it was, and still is, iconic. It has been described even recently as one of the best climbs in the world, and many climbers who have never been to Yosemite can sit around a campfire and talk about the more legendary and difficult sections of the climb. They'll describe the 130 foot long 'Enduro Corner' that forms the physical crux of the route, and the dread 'Harding Slot' which gapes like a hungry maw four-hundred feet up the face, an overhanging body-sized fissure that masticates strong climbers and, if they're lucky, spits them up out the top like over-chewed blobs of processed meat. If they're unlucky, it spits them down. It has been climbed with no equipment but shoes and a chalk bag by Peter Croft and Dean Potter, it has been climbed over seventy times by one obsessed individual, and its name still draws climbers from around the world.

I'd looked at Astroman from a distance in the summer of 1999 when I'd gone to Yosemite to climb Half Dome. Part way up Half Dome, I'd had to wait on a ledge while two men from Utah climbed by. One of the climbers had turned to look out the valley and said, "You can see Astroman from here," and I had told myself, "If he's sitting up here at this time next year, I'll be over there, looking at him." An attempt in the summer of 2000 had ended when my partner badly twisted his ankle while approaching the Rostrum. In a mind-boggling feat of pain-denial and strength, he had gone on to climb the entire Rostrum on a purpling foot that he could barely force into his climbing shoe. For the rest of that trip we were limited to climbs that required virtually no approach or descent, which ruled out a serious attempt on Astroman.

In the summer of 2001 I asked Scott Crane if he'd be interested in going to Yosemite and taking a run at Astroman. In a characteristic laid-back manner, he said that yeah, he might be interested. We had climbed several long routes that summer, and we had been climbing quite well together. I had been climbing for seven years, nearly twice as long as Scott, but he balanced this difference in experience with seemingly superhuman energy and enthusiasm. For training, we climbed the 'Black Dagger' on the Diamond, did a couple of routes in a wilderness stronghold outside of Durango, made a few trips to Moab, and climbed 'Scenic Cruise' in the Black Canyon. At the beginning of the summer, Scott had never led a 5.10 trad pitch, but by the time we were ready to leave in October, he was solidly into 5.11, and Astroman didn't seem unrealistic. Our goal was, of course, to on-sight every pitch, but even I realized that we'd have to be terrifically lucky to pull off such a feat. I had climbed the entire Rostrum without falling, but I had been repeatedly warned that Astroman was a different kind of difficult altogether.

Scott, who had just quit his job, drove to California and picked me up at the Fresno airport, and we drove out to the Valley. I was in a dissatisfied funk; at a strange place emotionally following the break up of a long relationship. For me climbing usually cuts through the choss and allows me to embrace a clean inner core of being, but it hadn't been working of late, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to be in the Valley.

People often talk of climbing as a means of exorcising personal demons. The well-known alpinist Marc Twight has made a career of writing agonized, existential essays on the nature of pain and toil and the self-discovery that is found by walking the razor edge of oblivion in the mountains. His essays are quite popular, and they must touch a chord in many people. However, I find the attitude expressed in them puzzling more than inspiring. My own biggest challenge has been in slowing myself down to the pace of the world around me. It is in my nature to be constantly reaching beyond where I happen to be, to be constantly in motion and focused on what happens next rather than what is happening now. Climbing is a powerful tool for making one live in the moment; it supersaturates reality and brings the Now into precise, almost divine focus. Every detail of existence becomes sharp; both the past and future vanish into a rhythm of decision, movement, strength, and confidence. That pleasure is heady and addictive, and it is wonderful to get lost in the feel the wind and the sun and the stone and to forget that the future and the past exist. However, my climbing adventures had played at least a part in the dissolution of the relationship, and I had lost much of the pleasure that I associated with doing long hard routes.

I tried, as much as possible, to be in the present and to be excited about our project. We had both trained long and hard for this trip, and I didn't want to blow it for both of us because of my emotional state. Scott had also been going through a rough period with his girlfriend, but it didn't seem to affect his enthusiasm or energy. I did my best to emulate him and bring my focus back to the rock and the climb. However, for me the climb had somehow lost its mythic status and become merely a series of hard pitches up a steep rock. I wondered privately if my loss of drive would infect us both and lead us inevitably into failure.

We stayed for two nights at Camp 4, my first experience with that unique experiment in cooperative habitation. Scott and two other friends had managed to get a campsite, but we quickly found that possessive thinking has no place in Camp 4. My first night there, a tent popped up mysteriously in our site just before dark. The next morning, we heard a great deal of female giggling and rustling coming from the tent. We looked at each other speculatively as two young women popped out of the tent and headed off towards the parking lot. A verbose and annoying Belgium youth on a world-around wanderjahr had also dropped a bivi sack between two of our tents. Our second night there, the two German women multiplied to eight. They took over the picnic table, started a fire in the fire pit, and attracted a steady stream of curious and questing men from distant parts of the camp.

Scott and I had decided on one warm-up day and one rest day, then Astroman. For our warm-up day, we cragged on the Cookie Cliff. I attempted 'Butterballs' (a slippery, thin 11c finger crack) as my first Valley lead and was spat off twice. With a decided lack of humility, we went from the Cookie to the incredible 20-foot 'Separate Reality' roof crack, which I attempted to lead. I was again ejected at the crux, but the experience of climbing that roof was tremendous, and Scott and I decided that if we had time, we would come back later in the week and work out good beta for pulling the handful of hard moves.

Our rest day consisted of a trip up to the base of Washington Column to scout both the approach and Astroman itself. We lay at the base and looked upward. I tried my best to imagine what it would feel like to be up there. The 'Enduro Corner' looked like an Indian Creek style splitter. We decided Scott would take that, and I would attempt the boulder problem, the 'Harding Slot', and' Changing Corners'. The Harding Slot looked terrible through binoculars, and I couldn't imagine how the "5.11 chicken wing dyno" required to enter the slot would be executed. That night, we spread out our gear and put together a rack. To me, it seemed huge. We carried almost exactly what the Yosemite Free Climbs book recommended: RPs through full size nuts, doubles or triples up to a #3 Camalot (with a couple of extras in the hand sizes), and one #4 Camalot for the wide sections. We would each take a small pack, which we would haul with the trail line when necessary. I was carrying 100 ounces of water in my small pack and not a whole lot else.

On the morning of the climb we arose at the seemingly late hour of 5:45. We knew that it wouldn't be light enough to climb until after 7:00, so there wasn't much point in getting up earlier, but it seemed inappropriately late for such a serious route. We stumbled clanking through the forest and managed to get lost before we found the river crossing. "Good start," I thought. However, we weren't much delayed, and we were at the base of the route and racking up by 7:30 a.m. My psyche still hadn't returned, and I hoped that diving into the climb wasn't a huge mistake. I have never retreated from a climb for reasons other than weather or injury, and to do so on a climb I'd trained this long and hard for would be difficult. However, undertaking a route that I knew was at the absolute limit of our abilities without feeling completely ready also seemed wrong.

Regardless, we taped up, tied in, and Scott launched up the two first pitches, which he intended to run together. He wandered over the easy terrain and up towards the 10a lieback corner. In true Scott fashion, he moved to the left of the clean corner and executed a series of acrobatic-looking moves out over a small roof before rejoining the main line. I followed, carrying my pack. It was slowly becoming full day, and the entire climb hung above us. The top seemed oppressively distant. When I reached the 5.10 section, I looked at the corner. It looked like nice fingers. I looked at Scott's variation, which appeared loose and hard. I grunted up to the roof and twisted my body awkwardly, then managed to lever myself up onto the face. The rock was loose and gritty and completely unchalked, and I would have called the moves 10+. Scary. And the pro wasn't all that good. Once again, I was grateful to be climbing with Scott. His strength and endurance are coupled with a "go for it" attitude that sometimes makes him difficult to follow. Big brass balls, perhaps sometimes so big they block his vision, can be an asset on a hard route.

I arrived puffing at the belay and then scooted directly to the left to take a look at the boulder problem, which is the technical crux of the route. It was short, maybe ten feet tall. I had been thinking, "5.11 boulder problem, no problem!" but it looked hard and very thin. Scott suggested that I skip it and go directly off of the belay. He pointed up, where a series of flakes lead to a nice looking hand crack. I shook my head and took the rack. At the left side of the boulder, I moved up as much as I could and slotted a tiny nut. Ugh. I stuffed in a 00 TCU. Ugh. Oh, well, I thought, and pulled upward, moving stiffly. My foot scraped off and my fingers popped from the layback. The 00 followed me down the rope, back to the ledge. "This is scary," I said. Scott again suggested I try to go straight up off of the belay. "No, I'm going to try again." On my second try, I got no further, hampered by timidity and a lack of commitment. I moved back to the belay to look at the variation. It looked very easy, and I could actually see two places for protection. I stepped into a stem, placed a small piece, then another, and was into the solid hand jams that lead to the base of the Enduro Corner. At the belay I looked down at Scott and said that I didn't know why anyone did the boulder problem.

"History and tradition," he said, and I suppose he was correct. However, I also suspect that between the time that it was first climbed free and today, someone pounded a pin into the wall, making a placement above the belay that had been absent previously. I looked up at the Enduro Corner. We were two pitches up, and so far we hadn't climbed much of the original route. Well, there was no getting around this one.

Scott joined me at the belay and thanked me for taking the pressure off of him by falling on the boulder problem. "No sweat." He was obviously excited about the next pitch, and was delighted to now have the crux of the route. He racked up and launched upwards, stabbed in a piece, then another, then moved upwards towards a fixed bong. He was moving well and was nearly to the bong when I noticed that he was crouched deeply in his stem and was wobbling. "Place, place, place," I whispered, and then he was airborne, plunging towards the belay. He hit the end of the rope, then my foot. His head was level with mine, and he hung just out from the belay. Two more feet up and a few inches in and both of his ankles would have been shattered. I felt vulnerable and a little shaken; if he'd landed directly on top of me, he would have broken my neck. Fortunately, the geometry of the pitch was such that he had fallen outward.

"Darn," said Scott, and immediately began hauling himself back to his high point without further comment. He assessed the next few moves, then began climbing again. He moved to a rest, then kept going. From the belay, it looked as if the pitch went on forever. Scott fell a couple more times but was into the chimney quickly. Finally he called "Off belay" and began hauling the packs. For me as second, of course, the pitch was much easier. Without the penalty of placing gear, I was able to move between the rests easily. The pitch seemed as hard as the 5.11 splitters we'd been doing in Indian Creek, but certainly no more so.

The pitch above the Corner looked easy--one of the two gimme pitches on the route. The climbing went fast, finishing up with hands-to-fists through a bulge. When Scott reached the belay, I said, "Yeah, yeah, I know, you're getting all the hard climbing and I'm not doing anything." He seemed to agree with me. The next pitch looked horrifying, actually, a series of flared slots and chimneys that terminated just below the Harding Slot. Scott reracked our meager selection of wide gear on his harness and stuffed his over-sized body into the flaring chimney. A long, grunting battle ensued as he worked his way upward, and half way up the pitch, he executed a powerful layback. I was again amazed by his strength and drive. Most of the pitch was wide, and we had two #3s and one #4. The pitch was not only hard, it was fairly insecure and scary, and Scott was chewing right through it with minimal gear.

I joined him at the belay and we both looked at the Harding Slot. I realized that this was where I was going to get mine. The pitch looked hard, very hard, and I wasn't too excited about it, and I still couldn't make heads or tails of the "chicken-wing-dyno" instruction on the topo. I assumed I'd just make it up as I went along and hope that once I got into the slot, I'd be OK. I took off my helmet so that I could fit into the Slot and adjusted my knot so that it would ride low. The thin hands crack leading into the slot proved to be much more slippery than it looked. Not much rain made it under the roof to wash it clean, obviously, and large amounts of chalk had reduced its friction. I climbed as well as I could until I was starting to enter the horizontal flare of the slot. I grabbed the "exit jug" that was theoretically my ticket into the Slot proper, and my shoulders got stuck in the chimney. I tried to pull myself upwards to cement the wedge, but was unable to generate the required power.

"Falling!" . . . Shit. Two hard leads, two falls. I thought I knew how to climb! I pulled myself upwards, then launched into the slot again without pausing for reflection, pissed off by my lack of skill and ability to make the move. Again I was airborne, and my leg was wrapped around the rope. I ended up upside down, swinging, feeling like an idiot, glad that the route was so severely overhung. Once again I pulled myself upwards, once again moved towards the jug. Then I grabbed my piece, clipped a sling into it, and stepped upward into the slot. I chimneyed upwards, then managed to stab a final piece into the back of the tight crack. This is it, I thought, the fabled Harding Slot. It didn't seem as tight as I'd been told. I inched my way upwards, then reached my hand out to the edge of the crack. It would be possible to place more gear in the back of the crack, but I felt secure and decided that it would be easier for Scott to follow if he had no gear to clean. Again, I inched my way upwards, using my toes and my shoulders for purchase. One inch, two inch, puff, puff, puff, pause. I could see the top of the slot, fifteen feet above my head, and the "S" path was obvious. I felt no sense of claustrophobia, even, which was at odds with most of the stories I'd heard of this section of the climb. I am not a large person, which, I think, accounts for the comfort I was feeling. I was even almost enjoying myself, though I was panting at an incredible rate. I reached the belay hot and tired, then pulled up the packs and took a drink. According to the topo, this was our last opportunity to retreat with ease. Indeed, there were rap anchors here, though rapping down past the Slot would be challenging.

Scott climbed the lower section well, then fell repeatedly at the entrance to the Slot. He moved up a short way, then moved to the outside to attempt laybacking the edge of the crack. That proved to be as strenuous as climbing the inside of the chimney, and he also was tired when he reached the belay.

Neither of us said much as Scott racked up for the next pitch. According to the topo, it would be relatively easy, with one tough section in the middle that could be climbed at 10c (wide) or 11b awkward. I baked in the sun and fed out rope. Then I heard Scott yell, "Josh!" and the rope came tight. Well, I thought, that's the first time I've ever heard Scott sound scared. He yelled that he was ok, and soon the rope was moving again. When I followed the pitch, I saw that he had taken the 5.11 variation. It did look much cleaner and more traveled than the 5.10 variation, and the difficult section was only a few moves long.

Once again we had a fantastic belay ledge, and I looked up at the Changing Corners pitch. It looked dicey, and the point at which the line switched from one corner to another was obvious. I racked all my small gear very carefully and then moved upwards. I executed the 5.11 mantle, then delicately balanced from one side of the arete to the other, changing corners. I could see an RP-sized crack and that was it. Oh, boy. I moved from tiny edge to tiny edge and slotted a small nut, then kept going. Twice I climbed up, climbed back down, reset my body, and moved through. Accustomed as I am to climbing on basalt (which is characterized by thin edges), I felt both happy and solid. When I finally reached the belay, I felt like I had climbed really well for the first time that day, and I was delighted we were up there and on the route. I almost wished we could go down and start over. Scott followed the pitch quickly and cleanly, and we celebrated with a snack.

According to the topo, the next pitch was 205 feet and could be linked with a 60m rope. Humm…. Scott racked our big pieces and stepped out of my sight into the crack. He again moved quickly, running out 190 feet of rope. This crack, the second "gimmie," was a much harder grade of 5.9. It was wide and a little painful, and at 3 inches, largely unprotected, though there was one ancient fixed friend in the crack. At the top of the crack, a roof protected a traversing ledge that was about four feet wide and flat. I happily walked to the belay. One pitch left.

But this, truly, was the scary one. I had been warned about this pitch, and I had dreaded it since I had heard about it. Hard, runout face climbing on questionable rock. It had scared John Long, it had worried my friend Kennan who is twice the climber I'll ever be, and I suspected that I was in for an experience. I complained enough that Scott said, "Want me to lead it?" which of course shut me up.

The bottom section was easy hands, but that ended on a pedestal directly beneath a flake. I made unprotected moves off of the pedestal to the flake and stuffed a blue alien behind it. I stuffed a nut, too, and did my best to put them out of my mind. If I fell and they pulled, I would hit the pedestal, and I wanted larger gear. I moved up, bearhugging the flake as instructed by the topo. Off to my left, I could see fixed copperheads, which I would have been delighted to clip, except that they were three feet out of my reach. I inched up, found a stance, looked down. I would probably hit the pedestal regardless if I fell from here. Above me was a two-foot roof with hand jams at the back. Sweating, I yelled down, "Be with me, Scott!" Scott's laconic, "Yup, I'm here," drifted up from below and did little to reassure me. I moved up gingerly, tried to be balanced, high-stepped, and slotted the handjam. To my delight, the crack took a gold Camalot, and I quickly ran out the last twenty feet of fourth class to a large tree. Scott followed the pitch without pause or comment, though he did later admit that it would have been a scary lead. We both agreed that it was insane for anyone to free solo the route, 'Changing Corners' and the last pitch in particular. Where such delicate climbing is involved, all that separates a free-soloist from death is a few crumbling handholds and a few insecure foot placements, and handholds can break, and a rainstorm or fatigue can erase the footholds. We decided that such feats were simply beyond our comprehension.

We walked that last 100 feet or so to the top of Washington Column. It was 4:00, which made us feel like we'd been climbing pretty quickly. I was still unsure of how I felt, and I wished I could have taken greater joy at being on top of the formation. I wished that I had managed to climb without falling, but that was only a vague wish. I had never really strongly believed that either of us would be able to on-sight every pitch, though if we decided to go back and climb it again, our chances of doing so cleanly would be much greater. The weather on top was perfect; warm but not scorching. Half Dome towered across the Valley, and North Dome sloped away above us like a half-buried elephant. We'd come to climb Astroman, and we'd done so, and I wondered what that meant. I suppose there are myriad lessons I could draw from the experience, the chief one being that all anyone brings to an event or experience is him or herself. It is good to set goals and then to see that they are accomplished, but the true spirit of an adventure only comes from within, and even a route as staggeringly grand as Astroman can be demeaned if approached with the wrong attitude.

The descent down the North Dome Gully was obvious, and we followed a well-trod switch-backing trail back to the base of the route. It would be quite difficult to follow it after dark, however, even with a headlamp, unless one was quite familiar with it.

Conclusion:

Astroman is an amazing route. It is well worth training for and doing once, twice, or however many times. I do think it is deserving of its reputation, because it is very hard, significantly harder than the Rostrum, though similar in character. Its difficulty stems from the fact that it simply does not let up, and even the 5.10 is hard and consistent and draining. Many harder, longer routes have been done in the years since it was established, but it has, I think, weathered the years very well, and it should be treated with the utmost respect by anyone contemplating climbing it for the first time.