The Cast of Hueco

After a three-year hiatus, I’ve finally gotten to spend some time down in the miserable city of El Paso where my trash was eaten by feral dogs, where I woke after a windy night to a glossy patina of ice on everything, and where a great metropolis of winding chasms and toppled brown boulders rises from the flat desert floor to be populated by an unlikely crowd living in trailers, tents, even a teepee.

I returned home to Flagstaff from Hueco Tanks after a week-long trip with bruised fingertips a few problems checked off my tick-list and many more added. I’ve been on trips to Hueco as long as a month, but this short week was more productive than any other pilgrimage. I managed to climb Diaphenous Sea in about ten tries, flashed Taxing The Pipe, Javalina, and Something Different. But climbing was only part of the fun of Hueco, as is usually the case, and it’s giving me plenty to write about.

Flashing Javalina

The cast of Hueco is as variable as the curving, curling features of the rock itself. Every year, there’s a different set of guides, a different crew of tent dwelling dirt bags asking for cigarettes or other things smoke-able. This trip I managed, through one of the truly seasoned Huecoers, GP, to camp for a dollar a night on some obscure land where with each step I sank an inch into the un-trodden dust. I camped, climbed and rested with my friend Matt and his brother Ryan. Both are from Wisconsin, tattooed and hilarious. Ryan is an Alt photographer and set up a photo shoot in a windstorm with a liberally pierced woman from El Paso who got a ride to the Rock Ranch from her parents. He told me once that I was “flashing shit like a chick on Mardi Gras.”

The Round Room

Other friends were down there too. Our guide the first day climbing was my old friend Kate, who was one of my climbing coaches when I was 16 and first started climbing. Kate lives at the Wagon Wheel Co-opt in a Teepee and is spending the season guiding. On that same day we ran into another old friend of mine, A stocky Israeli from Los Angeles named Yair. Yair was the person who, in the climbing gym, showed me the possibilities of bouldering and got me hooked on the sport. We climbed only once on this trip, but he gave me the beta I needed to climb Diaphanous Sea. Of course, there’s GP too. I met GP a few years ago in Groom Creek and climbed with him quite a bit just before we both migrated away from Prescott. Of course, there were new people as well. Corey is a friend of Matt’s and climbed with us every day but one. He helped us navigate through all the various mazes of regulation and we rewarded him with food. Corey led us on one of the more entertaining tours I’ve ever been on. We penetrated deep into West Mountain where the extra-terrestrials of Hueco live, at least according to folklore.

On West Mountain

                                                                                  Our Campsite from West Mountain

On our last day, we woke to freezing rain and tremendous winds. Matt and I had to take Ryan to the Greyhound station so he could catch a bus to San Antonio. As we drove west, the weather worsened and it looked like climbing wasn’t going to be possible. We got a big breakfast and relaxed a while before we went back to pack up camp and leave.  As it happens in the desert, the clouds parted, the sun melted the ice and dried the rock. We would be able to climb after all. After picking up Corey, we went to North Mountain and warmed up. I tried Dark Age a few times. This is one of the problems that has been on my mind for years now. The rock is perfect, the top out scary, and the movement some of the best in the world. Matt and Corey both did See Spot Run, the classic V6 that Dark Age feeds into. As is always the case with the last day in Hueco, I couldn’t climb what I really wanted to, I fell off Dark Age twice in a row on the same easy move just before the top hold of See Spot Run. But leaving Hueco with an almost send like mine on Dark Age, or a few years ago on Barefoot on Sacred Ground, makes the return even better. It gives me something to train for and something to dream about.

Black clouds came from the east just as we turned right onto Montana. Big raindrops fell and splattered on the windshield and the smell of rain came off the pavement. We had a long drive ahead of us, nine hours of sitting, eating fast food, drinking coffee. Always though, with a presence like that of the storm to the east, the return to Hueco, it’s boulders, and all who call it home, will gently build in my mind.

Hueco Moonrise