Gunsmoke

The route "fluid space" was actually named Gunsmoke on the first ascent by Tom Griesan/Rick Westbay in 1985. There was no vibram (till we added some ;-) and no other signs, so to the best of our knowledge that was the first ascent (unless someone climbed it barefoot and without chalk, haha). So I thought I would go ahead and add a "new" route just for fun. :-)

The crux is obvious and about 15-20 feet up. It used to be quite a bit harder. It was somewhere in the 5.12+ range. Someone pulled some chockstones out of the crack for footholds. When first done there was basically nothing for your feet. Also someone broke a big flake that is a crucial handhold on the left near the crux and it lowered that hold about a foot. You used to have to more or less "statically" dyno to that flake and be careful you didn't break it, haha.

We watched the guy who broke it (we were above him on our 2nd ascent) and he fell to the ground right in front of his GF, but he was luckily ok. He didn't have all the super small high tech (read strange) gear we had....not that we tested it out...LOL It probably would have come out, frankly.

I didn't add pics because that was when we only had film, haha, and I haven't scanned any climbing pics. I also have camcorder footage, but I have no way to play those old tapes.

It starts out super duper thin/non-existent and slowly opens up to perfect hands out a roof/overhang then goes to sort of a combination of offwidth/chimney-ish moves with fists in the crack ending in very large fists. I had to stack my thumb on the end of my fist and do some face moves to get to the ledge. If you know Rick Westbay and have seen his meathooks, his fists fit perfectly, haha.

It's an awesome pitch. It ends on a nice ledge. You can continue to summit by merging with another route right there and go left out those roofs where you can experience big air.

Just a couple dozen feet to the left of lighting bolts - super obvious. Brad Shilling and Dave Brower were climbing lighting bolts just to the right of us at the time...

BTW if you happen to approach it from the west on that plateau, beware of the "hard $hit" (appropriately nick-named) going up the cone, haha. It looks like dirt from far away, but it's actually like a shale, and can be very dangerous. Rick and I found out the hard way, haha. We had to do some running dyno jumps to get over/up it.

Approach from the east unless you want to $hit ur pants...haha. Oh and don't descend in the dark (been there done that).

The bottom isn't protected easily, if at all, and requires the smallest cams or other small high tech gear. The rest is classic desert bomber cams. I haven't been there in eons, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone added a bolt, which I would consider shameful. :-)