Simon Yamamoto Climbing Zombie Roof 5.13a

Zombie Roof is Squamish’s classic 5.12+ horizontal crack found at the Smoke Bluffs, it was named after a Frank Zappa song called Zomby Woof. It’s on many climber’s tick-lists.

The story about how Zombie Roof came to be goes back to the 1970s when some Squamish climbers visited Yosemite. They met with valley locals like Jim Bridwell, Ron Kauk and John Bachar for a tour of the hardest new free routes. One of the cracks they saw was the test-piece Separate Reality, a now-classic 5.12 roof crack first climbed by Kauk. It was one of the first 5.12s in North America. In 1986, Wolfgang Güllich famously made the first free-solo of Separate Reality.

After the trip, the Squamish climbers went to work looking for a similar roof crack back home and found what would become Zombie Roof. After several attempts, Peter Croft made the first free ascent in 1982. Croft went on to free-solo Zombie Roof, which was repeated by Will Stanhope 30 years later.

Watch Simon Yamamoto make an ascent of the classic roof crack below.

Zombie Roof