1859 Sept | Oct 2012_opt

Outdoors
adventures
photo courtesy of Alan Watts
photo courtesy of Mike Volk
Suddenly Smith Rock
was a kaleidoscope
of climbers in brightly
colored Lycra tights
and muscle shirts
pushing the limits on
tough sport climbs.
LEFT TO RIGHT Alan Watts sends one
of his projects at Smith Rock. Jean Baptiste
Tribout left and Jean Marc Troussier
with a friend in the Dihedrals, 198.
The Sporting Watts
Necessity was indeed the mother of invention
in the case of piton pioneer Jack Watts’
son, Alan Watts.
Alan Watts’ first climb at Smith Rock was with
a group of friends from Madras High School
when he was 14. Ironically, while Watts and his
father climbed together all over the Cascades
until his early teens, the two never climbed together
at Smith Rock.
"I basically taught myself how to rock climb
and, by my late teens, had started to really focus
on it,” Watts says. “But it wasn't until I was in my
early twenties that I started to get good at it, and
it became my life."
One day in 1982, Watts, then 21, got tired of
climbing all of the established routes and decided
to rappel down big walls to scout their potential.
"I kept seeing all these amazing lines that
looked like they wouldn't go from the ground,
but on rappelling down them, I'd see that they
had plenty of good holds and were indeed
climbable," Watts recalls.
While rappelling down a potential route,
Watts would drill bolts, into which he could
clip protective devices on the ensuing ascent—
a technique later referred to as “rap bolting.” It
was a bold move for the Madras native who had
been a traditional climber since childhood.
In contrast to traditional methods, where
climbers place removeable protection pieces as
well as fixed pitons, Watts tactfully drilled steel
loops, or bolts, at intervals along harder climbs
where traditional gear would not work. In doing
so, Watts opened faces and routes that climbers
previously considered beyond human capability.
With partners such as Chris Grover (now
an executive with climbing gear maker Black
Diamond Equipment in Utah), Watts literally
turned Smith Rock into his own private climbing
area, controversy and all.
A 2010 Rock and Ice magazine feature entitled
"10 Who Influenced” credits the younger
Watts with inventing sport climbing. The story
cited his February 1983 climb of the difficult
5.12-rated Chain Reaction route at Smith Rock
State Park as the first sport climb of record.
Chain Reaction soon lived up to its calling.
This route wasn’t known outside of Oregon until
1986, when it was featured on the cover of
Mountain magazine, the most influential climbing
magazine of the time.
As word about sport climbing spread, controversy
swirled around Watts in the climbing
magazines and among climbers.
To most climbers, sport climbing was akin
to cheating—drilling into rock to affix permanent
bolts in places that would normally be
too dangerous to climb. At the time, American
climbing community icon Royal Robbins
disparaged sport climbing, saying it was as destructive
to the rock as dirt motorcycle riding
was to public lands.
Unfazed, Watts, then 25, headed to the Yosemite
Valley to climb alongside some of rock
climbing's most adamant traditionalists. "I didn't
fear for my life while I was there, but I was scared
that my car might get trashed,” Watts says of the
time spent in Yosemite's Camp Four, where he was
considered a heretic.
While in the Yosemite Valley, he temporarily
suspended his bolt placement sport climbing
technique. "I'd hang on a rope viewing a
route from top to bottom and then come back
later and climb it from the ground up without
any falls,” he says. “The Yosemite climbers
were against my concept at first, but soon
some were giving me credit for climbing the
hard routes they couldn't master by traditional
techniques.”
Prior to going to Yosemite in ’85, Watts had
made the first free ascent (placing protection
as he climbed) of the east side of Monkey
Face, a route that would long hold the distinction
as the hardest route in the country.
Continuing to push the boundaries of
climbing, Watts, by more traditional means,
began to work on a route called “To Bolt or
Not To Be.” Rated an extremely difficult 5.14,
this route superseded all others as the most
difficult rock climb in the U.S. at the time.
In 1986, French climber J.B. Tribout arrived at
Smith to witness climbing’s new playground. In
one push, he flashed up Watt’s project, To Bolt or
Not To Be. Publicity of this climb sparked worldwide
interest in sport climbing and made Smith
Rock famous beyond American borders. Suddenly
Smith Rock was a kaleidoscope of climbers
in brightly colored Lycra tights and muscle
shirts pushing the limits on tough sport climbs.
On a typical day in the ’80s, it wasn’t unusual to
hear a dozen foreign languages echoing between
Smith Rock’s big and bolted walls.
122 1859 oregon's mAgAzine SEPT OCT 2012