History of the Future is a technical aid route that entails many head placements, thin nailing, a few hook, cam, and nut placements, and a little expando. The route consists of three pitches and was intended as a “base route” because the rock is blank above the third pitch and the upper half of the wall would entail low-angle easy climbing, which is unappealing. It’s a route for those wanting to play with aid hardware.
Pitch 1: Free climb up a low-angle slab to a right-facing flake that accepts cams up to a #5 Camalot. From a small shelf at the top of the flake, continue up on thin hardware then traverse left via two expanding flakes to the first belay. The smallest size SMC shallow angle and ballnuts are useful for the expanding sections on the upper part of the pitch.
Pitch 2: Traverse left along an arch on circleheads, then continue up past more head placements and a few rivets. For some strange reason, the David Bowie song Suffragette City was stuck in my head while placing circleheads along the arch (I’m not a Bowie fan), hence the “Circlehead City” name.
Pitch 3: A short crack and five rivets lead up and left to the main feature of the route – a nice, clean right-facing corner. The move from the fifth rivet to the corner is very reachy. Ascend the corner on heads and beaks, including a few pins and small cams on the upper part of the corner.
Rap the route in three rappels with two ropes.
See topo for details.
History of the Future is the farthest right route on the east face of Washington Column and starts about 250 feet to the right of Bad Wall. See photo-topo for location. Note that Bad Wall is drawn and labeled incorrectly on page 196 of the 2014 Putnam-Sloan big wall guidebook. Tora Bora stays left of History of the Future.
See topo rack list.
This route was put up when beaks were only available in the #1 size. #2 and #3 beaks could be useful in addition to at least eight #1 beaks. Bring plenty of heads and circleheads (mostly #2 and #3); any that were left fixed are probably junk by now.