Caballo Lake: Happy Dirt Day!

Covered in dirt, but happy to claim a route as my own!

The thing I most wanted to do for my birthday this year was go climbing, and at our last OMTRS team meeting when Bob Almond dangled the lure of putting up a new route at Caballo during our, I was hooked. Marta Reece joined us and we packed up all manner of first ascent equipment; bolts and drill of course, but also crow-bar and chisel, brushes and work gloves. After all, putting up a new route isn't just about climbing some un-climbed line, it's also about cleaning it of loose and dangerous rock, landscaping any inconveniently growing shrubs and dangling from precarious perches  to slowly hand drill bolts. Sounds like good times!

I took the Honda CR-V instead of the Tracker this time, which was pretty comfortable for the three of us plus two dogs. However, I wasn't as willing to bounce it up the rocky road, so we had to hike about 1/4" mile up the road, before veering off on the trail to the Grey Wall. We started off with a couple sport routes that are new additions to the wall since I was last here. I led up Two Face, which was as good as I heard. A clean and solid 5.8, abundantly bolted. There was a crux bulge section down low but the holds were good. The upper section had beautiful stemming in a water worn groove.

Bob jumped on the next climb over to the right next, what I later learned was The Bat, another Lance Hadfield route. I wasn't watching him that carefully as I was scouting out a new line on the lower angled wall to the left of Two Face, but he cruised up it. On coming down he said it was hard, but I decided to pull the rope through and try leading it anyways. Again it had very ample bolts, but was much steeper than the previous climb, and some of the sequences began to require some good technique. There were a coup[le of good rest ledges though so every time I was getting pumped I could reach one of the eldges and rest up a bit. the final crux cam at a steep and hand-hold-less section, around the 10th or so bolt. I took several hangs here trying to work out a sequence, and finally had something that sort of worked. it was very balancy though and I didn't feel good on it at all, and eventually just ended up grabbing the next draw and pulling myself past. My confidence so shattered we turned our attention to the new line I wanted to try.

The line I had chosen was a protectable looking crack on the lower-angled wall to the left of the route, Two Face. I racked up generously, including a bolt-kit and hook in my arsenal, from below it was clear that the crack system petered out about 75 ft up, and while the angle wasn't steep, there was a potentially blank section below the logical finish to the first pitch, a wide ledge with a large acacia bush on it. Worrying about the upper section almost became a mot point though, I had to struggle at the very start to get around a large bush which blocked the start of the crack. I finally turned the bush on its left side (without decent pro) and established myself in the easier crack above. Protection as pretty good, although always a little odd to place. The limestone crack system isn't like what I'm used to. the cracks flare open in wied ways, and often get wider as you go deeper in, making walking cams a hazard. Even though I felt like I had to fiddle with gear, I felt that there were adequate and strong placements. Small shrubs and hedge-hog cactus were easily cleaned out of the crack system, revealing good holds and fun climbing. A broad ledge about half way up had a ton off loose rock on it so I spent some time cleaning it off. I also spent a long time on this ledge digging the dirt out of hueco that was hidden behind a hedgehog cactus. All of the dirt seemed to blow right on my sweaty face, and the hueco seemed impossibly deep. Once excavated though, it became a good large-cam placement, and protected the "blank-looking" slab above.

I anchored myself on the broad ledge and began the business of drilling a rappel anchor. Bob and Marta took off to explore cliffs to the north as I tap-tapped away. Bob recommended 5" bolts for the limestone, and it took me over an hour to get two bolts installed. On rappel, I cleaned out more of the plants from the route, including the large brush at the start, which I had decided was the crux. Using my rock-hammer, i bashed at it until most of the branches fell away, revealing a large hueco and root system. I dug out a lot of dirt from that hueco, it seemed to be about the size of a 5-gallon bucket, and the plant's roots were stubborn.

On the ground looking up, the line looked completely different, fairly clean, and direct (contrasting my own dirty appearance). And a shiny and inviting rappel anchor glinted about 100ft up. This is my Dirt Day route! I hesitate to grade it, the crux was definitely the start, but with the bush gone this might be easier. I would guess it's only 5.7, but after my schooling on the neighboring sport climb, I'm not sure my grading abilities are on target. I guess people will just have to climb it so I can get a second opinion. Unfortunately, by the time I had finished, the sun was going down and we had to hike out, neither Bob nor Marta climbed my new route.

Before cleaning: The line follows the shade border

After cleaning, now go climb it!

Low Horns #1-#4

Marta Reece and I had a wonderful, but windy day traversing the Low Horns. Neither of us had done them before, although Marta has been up to some of the saddles between them. A group of OMTRS climbers had made the traverse (getting as far as #2) a few weeks back and it was still fresh in my mind as something I really wanted to try. Instead of approaching from the west as the previous group had done (and Ingraham describes), we started from Aguirre Springs, hiking up the Pine Tree trail's northern side for about a mile before striking off towards a shallow canyon which leads up to Low horn #1. The going was not bad at all, Marta had scouted it out earlier and we only had a couple short sections of bushwhacking through apache plume before we were on scree/rock underneath the north-eastern walls of the Low Horns. Skirting underneath this wall was pretty easy going, if not steep. Near the top, there was a bit of 3-4 th class scrambling options but getting to the summit was pretty straightforward. So far so good, we were on top of Low Horn #1 at 10am, only 2hrs after leaving the car. The only problem we were having was wind/cold, the recent warm weather led us to expect a calmer day and Marta was visbily shivering while we were on the summit. I donned my wind-breaker and was ok, but Marta had neglected to bring a wind-breaker, so I gave her my extra fleece layer and hat to keep her warm.

There was a funny pyramid-shaped wooden sculpture at the summit of Low horn #1, but no register or rappel gear (aside from a suspect and rusty piton). I recalled that Bob Cort had retrieved their rappel gear from a few weeks back, so we left our own sling and rapped down to the saddle between 1&2.

#2 looked a bit harder than it's northern sister, a couple of wide/dirty cracks went directly up the north face. These are what the previous party had climbed, but I thought there might be an easier climb on the NW sid eof the face, so I racked up and led that way. Turns out the NW side wasn't easier, and had a crux section to bypass, a steep angling 4" crack. I portected this with a small nut (my only piece of pro for the pitch), and carefully led through what felt like a 5.7 move. Maybe it wasn't this hard, I was in my approach shoes (5.10 Exums),but I was worried a little bit about Marta, she seemed hesitant to take on technical climbing. I set up a top-rope belay so that I could coach her through the crux, but she cruised it without much help from me at all. We left another new summit register at the top and then continued north to #3. The time was 12:00.

We were fortunate to have the previous parties rappel gear to use, and made the short rappel down to the saddle between 2&3. While Marta was rapping, I scrambled down the west side of this saddle and retrieved some more of Bob Cort's webbing/rap-ring, gear that would come in handy for us later. #3 was only a short pitch, but instead of taking a direct line up to the top, we opted for what appeared to be an easier route via scrambling left on mossy steps and gaining the peaks east ridge. I remained roped up for this, but the climbing stayed below 5th class. It was however very loose and quite dirty to gain the east ridge. Once on the ridge though, the rock was better, and formed a perfect 3ft wide ramp up to the summit. Marta came up without a problem, and then a belayed her down to a rappel point down a ledge to the SE. A couple old pitons/slings were here, but we scrambled even lower and left our own sling. My 60m rope was not quite long enough to gain the saddle, but there were a series of ledges at different heights which one could scramble down from. As it was, we ended up only 2 m above the saddle, and simply down-climbed to it. Marta had a hard time with the rappel due to the high wind; the wind put tension on my thick rope and acted like a fireman's belay, and iot took her a few minutes to move down from the anchor, forcing the rope through her ATC a foot at a time. The time was 1:00.

Low Horn #4 looked easier than the previous two, and we decided to tackle it un-roped. Again we stayed to the east, and turned onto the east side just below the summit. Nothing was harder than 4th class, but the moves turning around the corner had excellent exposure, and I stayed close to Marta to help her if needed. She appreciated my coaching but refused any help of rope, so I guess she felt fairly comfortable, despite the exposure. the summit of #4 was larger than the previous 3 and we took some time to eat and relax in the sun. the wind was still moving pretty well, but we found a relatively sheltered spot. While we were relaxing we were scoping out Low Horn #5, which seemed much more massive than anything we had climbed yet, From our vantage point, we could see a section of smooth slabby boulders which might be difficult to scramble over (or protect). On top of these an old rappel station was visible, further evidence that this section would pose some technical difficulties. It was 1:30 and we were beginning to think about a descent, especially if the next peak was going to be extra difficult.

the south side of #4 wasn't steep enough to warrant a rappel right away, but still had some challenges. I ended up belaying Marta down a 15 ft hand/fist crack, and then down-climbing it myself. This put us on a little shoulder 60ft above the saddle where we found an ancient looking rappel anchor, a twisted hemp rope! Lichen was covering it, and the knots looked like they had mostly disintegrated, but it was certainly the rappel anchor. We used our own webbing for the rappel, but I was almost out of webbing, having only 24" left. Down at the saddle, we decided not to press on, and descend down the gulyl between #4&5. A short 30ft rapel was needed to get past an overhanging chimney, but fortunately, we found a perfect spot for my 24" of webbing and Marta busied herself making the rappel anchor. While she was setting up the rappel, I scrambled up the North ridge of #5 to see how bad the slabby-looking section really was. Turns out, it wasn't bad at all. I was able to extend myself on the slabby bulge and was only 2-4" shy from a good hand-hold/crack. A little hop was all it took and I was up at the rappel anchor, and easy sailing to the top of #5. I didn't continue on though, time was getting late and we were committed to going down, so I took the rappel anchor carabiners (2) and rope (old and sun-faded) and down-climbed back to Marta.

By the time we rapped past the little chimney it was almost 3:00. The descent down the gully between #4&5 was pretty decent. Not as nice as the ascent up #1, but not too much bushwhacking and hardly any thorny plants. We were back at the car by 5:00. Overall, a very nice outing. It would have been extremely pleasant had it not been for the wind, but this added difficulty made the traverse more interesting. I can see how adding on the remaining two horns would take 2-3 more hours, but it is definitely worth trying. I left new summit registers at each of the peaks we hit, and found no evidence of any old registers on them (James Stockton had already removed the one they found on #2, and gave it to me last week). I was very impressed with Marta's abilities, she certainly is getting some legendary status on the rescue team. I thought someone had told me she was 72 years old, and during the descent I mentioned this to her. She quickly corrected me in her brusk style, "I'm only 59". Only 59 and as fast a hiker/scrambler as anyone on the team, remarkable. We could all aspire to be as tough as her.

The Wedge and Lost Peak: Peak Bagging

Due to the happy alignment of a holiday from work, but my son's day-care being open, I had all of veterans day to myself. I learned that a few OMTRS climbers would be attempting the Wedge's Normal Route, and they let me tag along.

We left Cruces at 7:30, kind of a late start for these short days, but Marta was going to guide us on a "secret" trail that start's near the Aguirre Springs camp-ground, and since the gate doesn't open until 8am, we couldn't start any earlier. the "secret trail" probably isn't much of a secret to area climbers that frequented the Organs 10 or so years ago. But to Bob Cort, James Stockton and myself, it was brand new. Instead of hiking along the Pine Tree Trail, Marta showed us a faint path into "Ghost Fire canyon", a canyon which neatly bisects the Pine Tree Trail loop, cutting the distance nearly in half. It never would have occurred to me to try to take this short-cut, since I would assume that off-trail bush-whacking would be difficult in this area. But Ghost Fire canyon was easy going, not too steep and easy to follow. Somewhere along the canyon was a neatly made fire-ring atop a boulder. Kind of an odd place for a fire ring, and there wasn't any evidence of recent fire, thus we learned of the canyon's namesake. The canyon intercepts the Pine tree trail at a huge boulder near the half-way marker.

from the half-way marker, the going gets a bit tougher, but was still not as bad as I expected. My previous experiences trying to get to the Lost Carabiner route had me thinking that approaching from the east was foolish. And if we hadn't had Marta as a guide, indeed it could have been. We wanted to get into a drainage tumbling down from underneath the Wedge, but instead of starting up this drainage where it intersects the Pine tree trail, we hiked up the ridge-line just south of the drainage. This avoids a terrible thorny bushwhack in the lower portion of the drainage. About half-way to the base of the cliffs, at a beautiful stand of flaming red maples, we dropped into the drainage and struggled through a short section of thorny underbrush before emerging into easier terrain, namely steep scrambling on rocks and through maple forests. The drainage we were in continues up to a the ridge-top between Lost Peak and third Peak, so before we got too high up it, Marta showed us a spot where we could traverse south into the next drainage system, which climbs directly up to a saddle on the south side of the Wedge. We were almost entirely hiking up through steep mapled forest, a week or so past prime foliage. Yellow leaves blanketed the ground, kept us from seeing our footing, and provided soft cushioning for any miss-steps.

Once we got closer to the ridge-top, I recognized the route from the time Scott Jones and I had descended this way after climbing Shillelagh. A steep gully climbs up the east side of the wedge, topping out on a shoulder near the summit. This section gets pretty steep, and the scrambling gets more interesting. One section, which Ingraham's description calls a 3rd class jam-crack, would probably be a 5th class climbing move if it were higher off the ground. Marta needed some assistance from a rope to get past this move, which involved an awkward off-width/chicken wing transition. Once at the shoulder, the last bit of climbing to the summit was pretty straightforward, but also the most exposed. The climbing was 4th class, but for almost 100 ft up an exposed face. Marta opted to put on her climbing shoes, and even James seemed a little nervous, but all 3 of us managed to get up it without too much worry. I say "three", because Bob Cort had diverged from the Normal route a little lower down. He took a left leaning ramp up onto the South ridge of the Wedge. We were speculating whether he'd need a "rescue" from us, but he met us on the top happy as a clam. The route he took involved some exposed climbing, probably more exposed than what we had done. I can picture the huge drop off to the west over the immense west face of the Wedge, and I can imagine what Bob had had to pass over. Something for next time. Our summit time was 12pm, not bad at all.

We didn't spend too much time at the summit, just enough to eat some lunch and look around. We left a new summit register, and took the old ones down (hopefully I'll be posting them up soon on this blog). Then we rapped off the summit on the east side, and scrambled north to the saddle between the Wedge and Lost Peak.

We were all pretty eager to summit Lost Peak and the route up the South face looked pretty straight-forward. Marta was a little uncertain about it though, not having much experience on 5th class rock. I was offered the lead (thanks guys, just what I wanted!), and meandered up the route with out too much fuss. The climbing was easy, but there seemed to be hidden cactus in all the cracks and ledges, which kept things interesting. The summit was pretyt small, and a bit windy, I had a hard time communicating with the rest of the group below, which made me a bit nervous because I was going to belay up all three climbers on the two ropes I had led on. James had given me his BD guide, so I rigged it up to auto-lock and waited until climbing started. I thought that they would put Marta in the middle of a rope and send her up first, but instead they put Marta on her own rope, and Bob tied into the middle of one rope and started up first. Marta cam up behind him and James took up the rear. Marta was doing great, and at one point I had to warn her to slow down because she was right at Bob's feet. Even on top-rope, if Bob took a fall, the rope would stretch/settle and he could knock Marta off, hurting her and possibly putting that much more strain on the anchor system. Simply avoided, Marta hung back while bob neared the top, and that is when our near-miss disaster occurred. Right as Bob was cresting the top, a loose rock about the size of a large dog cam loose. Amid our screams of "ROCK" both Marta and James hunkered down. The rock missed Marta by not more than a few feet, leaving a rock-scar right next to where she had been climbing. James was in a better spot and was missed entirely, but Marta was a little shaken and had been hit by shards/smaller rocks. Thankfully no-one was hurt, but we all became sober-serious real fast.

While we were recuperating on the summit, Bob Cort had scoped out the descent off the north side and we were already eying Third Peak as our next possible goal. However, by the time we had the rappel set and were all down on the saddle between Third and Lost, it was 3pm, and we decided we'd better start heading down unless we wanted to do some serious head-lamp hiking. the "4th" class route up Third peak was right in front of us though, tempting us to try it. It looked pretty reasonable, only a half-rope length to the top, but fairly exposed to the east. We would have probably had to rope-up for it, which would have taken too long, so down we started. The gully/canyon between Third and Lost Peak was similar to our approach hike, steep and mapled. Near the bottom of Third Peaks cliff face, there was a steep section to negotiate, which we did by passing our packs down, and climbing underneath a huge boulder/chimney. this spot was one of the most beautiful spots of the hike, a sheltered boulder/chimney with a flat landing zone, guarded by a towering lone fir tree, surrounded by yellowed maples. Perfect! I almost forgot I was in the arid/hostile Organ mountains.

We made it back to the Pine tree trail at 5pm and opted to take the trail down rather than the "secret short-cut". With light fading, it made sense to take an easy trail, even if it meant an extra mile or so. Bob set a furious pace down the trail and we were back at the parking lot in about 30 minutes, almost without incident (or head-lamps). Just as we were about to congratulate ourselves on getting down without anybody getting hurt, Bob twisted his ankle a mere 100 yards from the trail-head. I guess if there was a place to get hurt, he picked it pretty well. He was able to hobble out on his own power, and luckily, is not seriously injured.

Bob Cort posted pictures, see his link.

Halloween SAR mission

It's been a long time since OMTRS has had a good mission. We got a call the night before Halloween, and it was supposed to be "just outside Silver City". This is pretty far, but reasonable, so I opted to join in. Turns out the mission was closer to the Cat-Walk trail, an hour past Silver City. Oh well. Another piece of mis-information from the middle-of-the-night call was that we were searching for 3 gay hikers. Our sleep-deprived brains didn't realize until 2 hours into the drive out that this was actually "3 day hikers". At least we had lots of laughs about it.

We arrived at the trail-head to Mineral creek around 8:30 am. The hikers had spent a chilly night somewhere out on this trail. They were attempting a thrrough hike, hiking a few miles up MIneral creek, and then taking the log canyon trail out of the canyon to the south. this would have put them on a rd a mile or so east of the town of Mogollon, where they were staying at an inn. When they hadn't come in from their hike, we were called out. Due to another SAR mission the same day, not many teams had responded; OMTRS brought 7 people, and 2 other people from Grant county had also arrived. The initial plan was to send a team up the Mineral Canyon trail, and another team in from the other end (log canyon trail). I was to be on the team starting at Log canyon, so we hopped back in the car to speed off to Mogollon, about a 40 minute drive on circuitous roads. Not 5 minutes after leaving, we got a call on the radio that one of the hikers had made it out and was at the Mogollon Inn. We were to interview him and report back.

The hiker who had made it out was Bud, an 80 year old hard-man. His daughter and son-in-law were still out. The group had made slow progress and the hike up the steep log canyon trail had really taken something out of them. His son-in-law (who also has a prosthetic leg) was immobilized by leg cramps near the top of the canyon's rim. It was about 4 in the afternoon. Bud left them at a spot near the top of the canyon rim to go get help. The trail back to Mogollon wasn't that far, but somehow he got off trail. When it got dark, he hunkered down for the night with his dog, and in the early morning, bush-whacked his way south until he reached the road. He told us his companions did not have warm weather clothing nor matches to make a fire, and were not in good enough shape to descend back down the log canyon trail. Based on this information, the entire SAR team opted to move the incident base to the trailhead to log canyon. I was put on a hasty team with Bob Cort and Marta, and we were to quickly locate the subjects and bring them warm clothes, hot food and drink. A second team was on stand-by and was prepared to help with extraction. Due to their close proximity the the trail, we were guessing that they were in pretty bad shape and would need assistance getting out. We also learned that two locals had already headed down the trail to try to locate the subjects.

Bob, Marta and I found our first "clue" only a short ways up the log canyon trail. A note had been written with rocks on the ground in a clearing. It stated "Went To Car". It was very close to the log canyon trail-head, and din't make that much sense to have come from our subjects. Why would they turn around here and go all the way back down into the canyon to their car when they were so close to getting out? We tried to determine if the sign was fresh, but could not tell. It is possible the sign could have been left earlier by some other hikers and be completely un-related to our search. We let the Incident Commander puzzle this out and kept going. At the rim of the canyon, we found a second clue, a ginger-chew candy in its wrapper. It did not look old, and was probably dropped by someone in the last day or so. It also roughly corresponded to the location where Bud said he had left them the day before. However, there was no sign of the subjects. We continued on, descending down the to the canyon floor.

Near the base of the canyon, we ran into the two locals. They were heading back up the log canyon trail, and had not seen any signs of the subjects. Our team was directed to search for clues along mineral canyon. We searched a short ways east up the canyon and found no evidence of recent passage. Going west down the canyon, we found a couple foot-prints, but it appeared to us that they were heading up canyon. These could have been from the day before when the group had hiked up. While the Incident Commander was digesting this information, we became less certain that the foot-prints were heading up. They were not very clear, and were only a single set. We were thinking that we would be told to continue down the canyon back to the subjects car and verify they were not somewhere in the canyon, but the Incident Commander told us to head back up the log canyon trail. We learned later that perhaps our communication from the canyon had been misunderstood. This is understandable as radio communication deep in the canyon was a little spotty. Apperently, the incident commander thought we had ruled out the possibility that the subjects had come back down canyon. This agreed with Bud's assessment as well. The search was then re-assigned to a series of gullies and ridges between the log-canyon trail on the town of Mogollon.

This Google-Earth map shows the rough route our search team took. As teams searched but did not find any clues in the terrain near Mogollon we began to worry we would not find the subjects at all. A helicopter was flown in and made fly-bys up mineral creek and over all the nearby ridges, but did not find anything. We were finally called back to the incident base around 4pm. They were just starting to make calls for more search teams when a phone call came in that the subjects had been located in an RV park. Somehow, they had managed to hike all the way out Mineral creek, and down the road without being detected by us (and they didn't have the keys to their car at the trail-head). relieved the search was concluded.

I learned some good things on this search. This was the first search I had been on where we had found legitimate clues. Our team became proficient at recording the GPS coordinates of each clue and then radioing them in when we could get a good link. We covered a pretty good amount of terrain (~5 miles according to google earth) but not too quickly that we couldn't look for clues.  The poor radio communication from us to the base turned out to be one problem that may have falsely led us to not search the rest of mineral creek canyon. We were relaying messages through other teams, but this can tend to create mis-information. Our other clues has also led to some false information; the locals in Mogollom were questioned about the rock message, and suggested that the message had been there for a while. We learned later that the subjects had indeed made this message as a not for Bud/searchers. Despite being so close to the log canyon trail-head, they had no clue how close they were and opted to turn around and go back down familiar territory rather than risk an unknown. With hind-sight, it is apparent we should have left someone at the mineral creek trail-head to "contain" the search area.

Overall, a very nice day hike through beautiful canyons and with a happy ending.

Little Squaretop: The Lost Carabiner Route?

Scott Jones following the chossy and deceptively difficult 4th pitch.

This is a placeholder until I can do complete justice to this climb. Scott Jones, Bob Almond and myself had a crazy long day to climb the "fabled" Lost Carabiner Route on the east face of Little Squaretop (LST). Despite my good intentions of setting a "high" base-camp to reduce the approach to the route, we still had a horrendous 3-hour bushwhack to reach the base of the route. We also summitted late (4:30 pm) and Scott and I had both run out of water already. The descent took over 5 hours and half of it was through the same terrible bushwhacking as the beginning of the day, only on the return it was dark and we only had one head-lamp for the three of us. We collapsed into camp at 10pm. I was retching and severly dehydrated. Scott had muscle spasms that kept him from being able to walk. Bob, the only one to carry enough water for himself, took care of use for a few hours while we decided that our original plan of hiking out that night was not feasible. Labor-day morning we high-tailed it out of there.

Would I do it again? Yes! Maybe bring more water and try a different approach, but hey, I love a good adventure.

A cool moss covered piton at the top of the 1st pitch. While I'm not sure we were on Ingraham's Lost Carabiner Route, we found several "lost carabiners" along the route we took.

East face of Little Square Top. We roughly followed the distinct line directly up the middle of the big white face.

Scott Jones, who crazily did not wear his shirt during  bushwhacking

Bob Almond, who wore his shirt during bushwhacking

NRE: West Face Corner Route

I set out with a bunch of OMTRS climbers to the North rabbit Ear (NRE). The exact route we were planning on wasn't set when we started hiking up, but once we got close to the base of the cliffs we settled on a plan. Zach and I were to try a line up the West Face. the rest of the group were going to cruise up Boyer's Chute.

The line Zach and I chose was a large corner system on the far right side of the west face. It didn't look overly steep or difficult from the ground and we were hopuing we could meet up with the rest of the team on the summit. We separated from the rest of the team in the Rabbit Ear Canyon and headed up the gully between NRE and MRE. Right at the point where we were about to pass the south arete of the West Face, we took to the rock. We scrambled up a left trending ramp system which opened up onto a huge ledge on the west face. This is probably where the Ingraham "West Face" route starts. From this ledge, we could look down on the other team at the start of Boyer's chute. We racked up on the spacious ledge, then scrambled up the right trending ramp until we were at the base of the corner system. Here we set an anchor and I started up the first pitch.

There were two bulges in the corner system I had to overcome to reach a big roof. The first one wasn't too hard, but the second one was hard for me, like a V0 problem. The crack provided good jams, but the feet were awkward and the bulge made it so you could not easily see you foot placements. I was breathing heavy at the top of the 2nd bulge and rested up on the nice ledge. An old piton and rappel slings were here. The undercling out the roof looked intimidating. There was a line of holds on the face that could be used to bypass the roof, but I couldn't reach them without doing a crazy dyno, something I wasn't keen on. So instead I tested out the intial moves to the roof, placed high gear and down climbed to the rest-stance. With gear already placed high, I was good to commit to the undercling. It was strenous, but straightforward. To do it right, I had to get my feet up high and smear in the face, putting a lot of weight on my arms. Fortunately it was only 12ft long. At the end I took a breather, than placed a piece back in the undercling behind me to help protect Zach, before setting up my belay anchor. This pitch wasn't too long, but I was tired and at a perfect belay spot to watch Zach. Besides, trying to press on would give me terrible rope-drag.

I had a great spot to watch Zach and took several pictures of him through the crux. He peeled off in the undercling, and jerked me off my feet, slamming my head into the rock near the roof before the anchor held me. I had stupidly given myself a long tether to be more comfortable on the ledge and had not anticipated the direction of pull from a fall. I was stunned but managed to hold onto Zach. He was fine, but I looked battered and was bleeding in a few spots. Thankfully I had my helmet on, if not I could have been seriously hurt. Zach fired the undercling on his second go and by then I was ready to tackle the steep corner/crack above us.

The first 40 ft of the second pitch were perfect, nice jams and stems, good protection, beautiful rock. At the top of a steep 5.9 section of crack there was a low-angled slab beneath a roof/headwall. I rested up and checked my options. To my right there was a steep crack that broke through the roof, but it looked hard and I was already tired. Directly in front of me was a shallow corner system that went right up to the roof and I climbe dup this to see if I could then undercling/traverse left to escape the roof. A fixed wire was at the top of this corner, but the traverse left did not look good. The rood did not provide any undercling holds. I clipped a long runner to the fixed wire and down climbed to the rest stance. A faint seam/slab lead off left from the rest stance and it looked like a few balancy moves would gain a nice ledge system and an easy exit. I committed to this slab, and quickly found it very sketchy. Almost nothing to hold onto, and very thin feet, my pro further than I'd care off to my right, I sucked it in and stuck it out, breathing hard and sweating loke mad. Somehow I managed to get past the few crux moves. it felt like 5.11 slab, but I'm pretty out-of-shape, so it probably wasn;'t that bad. Either way, I was super-psyched to ahve on-sighted this and quickly srambled up to a ledge and belayed Zach up.

After un-clipping from the fixed wire, Zach down-climbed and looked at the slabby moves I had led, and then decided he couldn't do it. He pendulum-ed off to the left to try to find another way, but ended up having to prussic up.

After these two difficult pitches, I was looking for easier climbing above. We were on a nice ledge beneath a big headwall, and I picked my way up weaknesses in the headwall, zagging left, then right, until eventually I trended right far enough to get around the head wall and onto the shoulder which joins with the Davis route. This may not be the most aesthetic pitch, but it worked for us. The upper portion of the Davis route was a steep brushy gully. Steep enough to have some 5th class climbing, but not hard enough to need a belay. We simul-climbed up the gully, weaving around trees and boulders. At one point I spotted a piton and headed towards it only to be thwarted by a steep headwall and too much rope-drag to commit to the move. Instead I traversed around the difficulty and continued to the top of the ridge. At the top, we were in time to spot the other OMTRS team on the final headwall of Boyer's Chute. Zach and I coiled up the rope and scrambled over the last knife-edge like ridge to join them on the summit.

Thunder-claps threatened our relaxing stay on the summit and the whole group descended down the South Face. We had enough ropes to set up the rappels simultaneously which made the descent pretty quick. The hike out seemed to take fore-ever, we were all pretty beat, but we had a great day, and were all in high spirits.

La Cueva: Purple Poot Revisited

I made a short trip to La Cueva after work today, something I'd like to start doing more regularly. I got to la Cueva around 4pm, but had to park all the way up at the visitor's center due to some road construction being done at the La Cueva picnic loop. Checking in with the "ranger", I learned that with the construction going on, the park/gate is closed at 5pm. Fortunately for me, he offered to leave the outward gate open as long as I closed it on my way out, so I headed out to climb.

The trail from the visitor center takes you right to the Hermit's Cave, which is pretty close to where I wanted to go anyways. I had invited some other climbers to join me, but no one was around so I took all my rope-soloing gear with me. I found some nice shade on the easy slabs under the route I had dubbed "Purple Poot Slab". This is a low-angled, broad lichen covered slab, with several route possibilities leading to the summit ridge. I had climbed it once before on January 13th, 2006 with Liz, and found a single old 1/4" bolt to rappel off of. It had a small purple poot sling on it at the time. Right now, the whole slab was well shaded, and it felt perfect for climbing. Despite the valley getting into the low 100's, and not much breeze being present, the well shaded wall was pleasant climbing temps, a little warm but not hot or oppressive (unlike last weekends sunny melter on Rabbit Ear Slabs). When climbing Las Cruces in the summer, shade is key.

On my own, I decided to explore the left-hand side of the slab, a dirty corner. I rigged up the soloist and started up to the corner. Before even reaching the corner I had some misgivings, I couldn't place any pro until stepping up on some loose foot-holds, and it looked even chossier the higher up I could get. After fiddling around a little bit, I opted for traversing a little to the right and up the heavily featured and easy looking face. this time my judgement was spot-on. the face was very easy (5.4ish) and had slightly better rock. I was able to place a few tri-cams in pockets along the way although I would hardly call it well protectable. There was a logical anchor point before the summit on a broad ledge roughly level with the top of the left-hand corner system. I decided to anchor here, clean the route I had climbed and attempt to top-rope the dirty corner back up. I had nearly rappelled down when Bob Cort showed up around the corner.

I had invited Bob along and was hoping he would show up. It's not that I don't like rope-soloing, but it certainly leaves something to be desired. Bob was interested in leading directly up the middle of the slab, so I left my rope on the left-side and flaked out Bob's rope over to the right, at a thin seam/crack in the middle of the slab. Looking back on my journals now, I think that the start the Bob did was not the one that I had climbed before. I had started at the far-right corner. The start where Bob led up had a "crux" 5.6 move at the start about 10ft up but without any prop. Actually Bob was able to place a wire at this spot, but it was a very marginal placement. After the start though, the climbing was pretty straightforward. Bob led pretty much up the middle of the slab. After the big ledge 2/3 of the way up, he opted for climbing the face instead of staying in the right corner as I had done. He ended up a little bit beyond the purple poot and belayed from the hidden alcove above.

I seconded up and also cleaned my solo-anchor on the way. I brought up my rope as well so that we could descend in s double-rope rappel. When I got to the belay, we both explored the summit a little bit. The summit is a great ridge to explore, you can scramble pretty far off to the west, and there are ways to get up to the other summit blocks as well. despite scrambling around and searching, I didn't find any fixed gear for rappels.

From the alcove belay, a short crack/face climbed up to a summit point and we decided we'd check it out to see if there was a better rappel station from up there. I started out leading up a steep finger crack, but after realizing that it involved a tricky move, (probably wouldn't have been that hard, but I'm still a nervous kleader on steeps) I opted for the more straight-forward route up to the top. It looked like it would be possible to down-climb east and perhaps reach the anchors at the top of Banana Splits, but this seemed a little out-of-the-way and it was starting to get late. We rappelled off a horn of rock back down to the alcove, and then did a double-rope rappel to the ground off of the single 1/4" bolt with the purple poot. The route can no longer be called the "Purple Poot" though because I cut the poot off, and tied on a new piece of bright orange webbing for our rappel.