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Wednesday morning I hiked to the Heybrook Lookout as a little warm up hike and then drove back down the highway a couple of miles to Index and hiked to the top of the Index Town Wall. What is the Index Town Wall? Well, visible from various points across the valley and even from Highway 2, you can see a wall of rock, at the base of which is the small town of Index. The rock wall extends laterally for maybe a half mile or more and over 1,000 feet vertically. It’s extremely popular for rock climbing and you’ll find multiple climbing groups on most days.
I’m not a climber but I can see the appeal. As a hiker, there is a way to get from the bottom to the top without a rope although as you might expect it’s quite the workout.
The hike itself is ~2.75 miles round trip (assuming you don’t get lost) and over 1,300 feet of elevation gain. The first 1/4 mile is just walking along railroad tracks so you’re climbing all that elevation in around a mile. I consider myself to be in good hiking condition but I was still taking breaks on the way up. It took me about an hour and a half to get up and about half that to come back down.
The main problem though with this hike is not the vertical elevation gain over such a short distance, it’s really the lack of marking on the trail. There are multiple little trails along the base of the wall as well as you climb up the wall. Most of these trails simply dead-end at established rock climbing routes. The actual trail to get to the top isn’t really marked and without some sort of guide you could spend the day wandering around just trying to find the correct route. Not that this would be all bad, you would still get a good workout and see some amazing rock surfaces. The goal though is the view from the top and that can be frustrating to get to. I’ve hiked the trail to the top four or five times now over the past few years and even this time I had to backtrack a bit to reorient myself to the path. Of course that’s my own fault for not paying attention to my gps routing. I’ve recorded the trail every time I’ve done it and all I have to do is look at the recording to see the main route, but looking at your phone is for wimps so….I get to backtrack.
