Two Weeks Outside of Potrero

So, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, I spent nearly two weeks in Los Estados Unidos from Dec. 15th until Dec. 28th, which was excellent.

First, I drove from Mexico to Austin on Wednesday, December 15th, and got to go out to eat with my friends Justin and Caroline, who recently got back from a 3-week trip to Tanzania. So we traded stories about our respective foreign countries while eating delicious Brick Oven pizza.

The next day, I flew from Austin to Seattle where mi novia picked me up and took me out for sushi! I was very excited to see her =)

The next day we made breakfast, and went climbing, and got ready for her birthday / holiday party, which was a blast. We had apple vodka + sparkling cider, sangria, guacamole, chicken roll, ugly sweaters, and mistletoe. And we even made a late-night hotdog run, much to my amazement.

Thanks to Brad for lending me an ugly sweater =)

Love this photo =))

Saturday, well, initially Nicole was going to work but we slept in too late and that ended up not happening, which was fine with me.

We left in the evening for Vancouver, super psyched to go hang out in Canadia. Unfortunately, someone stupid (ahem, me) left their passport in Texas because he somehow didn't think about the fact that Vancouver is in a foreign country. So... on the spur of the moment, we decided to change direction completely and book a hotel in Portland (where passports aren't required), and spend the weekend there instead.

It ended up being pretty awesome actually. We were able to recoup half the cost of the Vancouver hotel (for the second night), and got a pretty posh room in downtown PDX as our home base. The room was really nice, the bed was super comfy, there was free WiFi, and even a jacuzzi in the bathroom. So over the weekend, we went out on both Saturday and Sunday nights, we had brunch at Mother's Bistro on Sunday morning (with delicious french press coffee), we had doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnuts, and coffee at Stumptown. And we saw Black Swan, and had some delicious pasta. All in all, it was great.

Nicole had to work on Monday and Tuesday, so those two days weren't as exciting, but we did get her car fixed on Monday night and went climbing on Tuesday night at Stone Gardens. It's good to do some bouldering for a change after so much sport climbing.

Wednesday night we stayed up late with some friends since Nicole didn't have to work on Thursday, so we got to sleep in before my flight on Thursday evening. It was really kinda sad when she dropped me off at the airport, I realized how much I was going to miss her again /-:

I flew to Denver that night, where my brother picked me up at the airport quite late. It was well after midnight when we got home.

I spent a few days in Fort Collins with my family, celebrating Christmas and whatnot, and it was great, except for the part where I had a 7:20am flight on the 26th, and had to be awake at 3:30am for the airport shuttle to pick me up. I didn't trust myself to sleep and get up, so I just stayed up all night and slept on the shuttle / flights. But I was a zombie for the rest of the day in Austin, and got almost nothing done except for an oil change which took TWO HOURS. They were super busy but still, ack.

Anyway, my plan was to drive back into Mexico yesterday, but my buddy Justin was flying back into town in the morning and I thought, oh hey, wouldn't it be cool if I stayed an extra day and we did a code jam together before I leave Austin? So that's what we did.

So I drove back to Mexico today instead. It was completely uneventful of course, even though I crossed directly into Nuevo Laredo this time. The nice thing about taking so many road trips is that it gives me time to listen to all of my audio podcasts. Anyway, now I am here! And it's super crowded! It's hard to get anything done in the kitchen during dinnertime. But at least it's warm and sunny here, and I have a tent to sleep in, and I can climb!

Cast of Characters

I think today, instead of posting yet another multipitch report, I'll just talk about some of the very interesting people I've met here at El Potrero Chico at camp.

Sean and Kris - Some of the first people I met here at EPC. They both drove down from Boulder, and they're pretty good climbers and cool people. Sean is bald and bearded, and Kris looks a little bit like Jesus. They did a lot of multipitches together here, but I never climbed with them. They left a couple of weeks ago.

Sean rockin it.

Shanna and Lesley - I also met these two pretty early on. They're actually from Seattle, and flew into Monterrey, and have been here a bit longer than I have. They left last week or so for Oaxaca, to take spanish classes at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca for a couple of weeks. They did their first multipitch climbs here, and like Sean and Kris, I have never climbed with them. Not sure if they are coming back here or not, but they are cool. I kept running into them around town and offering them rides, since they don't have a car. For a while they were renting a house nearby to La Posada and they had a few dinner / drinking parties at their place.

Bjorn - He's Swedish, he wears glasses, and he's really funny. His girlfriend is studying medicine in Monterrey. I've gone cragging with him at least once with him and his Swedish friend Simon who was in town for a bit. He's been here about two months I think, and is leaving around Dec. 15th. He's always up late on his computer, and always makes hot tea before he goes to bed. Good guy.

Bjorn - photo stolen from facebook

Chris - Met this guy a few days after I got here. He drove here on his motorcycle from Kansas City, and he's a young photographer, and he does a lot of weddings. He took some interesting long exposure photos of me at camp where he lit me up with a headlamp. I forget the name of the technique, but it came out looking pretty sweet. We cragged a few times before he left, as he was only here a week.

Chris, Beth, and Dave at Wonderwall

Max - Max has been here since Halloween. He's pretty young, very chill, and climbs hard. I haven't actually had much time to talk with him yet, and initially I thought he was with Sean and Kris, but they left and he didn't. He's still here for the foreseeable future, another longtermer like me.

Dave - This guy has been here over two months, and I knew a little bit about him before we met because he has a blog about EPC. He's a pretty funny guy; he has a huge tarp over his tent, and he adopted a dog named Candela. I haven't climbed with him, or even heard of him climbing since I've been here. Lately I guess he is focusing more on work and learning spanish, and his Mexican girlfriend...

The Quebecoi - Melanie, Veronique, and Oliver are from Quebec, and they primarily speak French, though their English is really good. I haven't really climbed with them, though I have climbed next to them a few times. They are really fun. They drove here from Quebec and arrived around the same time Ames was here, for Thanksgiving weekend. They are leaving around Dec. 15 as well.

Gringo Disco - Max, Oliver, Melanie, Me, Erik, Dave

Siggy - Siggy is from Iceland, and he's a commercial airline pilot. He even has the aviators to prove it. He's pretty new to climbing, so his friend Katelynn has been "showing him the ropes". He's done a lot of ice climbing but almost no rock climbing, so he's learning. He's been here since Thanksgiving or earlier.

Katelynn - She's from Canadia, and arrived about a week ago. She's apparently a full-time climber, and I think she's planning to go to south america for more climbing after this? I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Friends with Siggy, and strangely enough knows a lot of the same people as Erik does.

Way to belay.

Erik - Erik is a blond surfer / climber kid from California. Actually he climbs a lot more than he surfs, but whatever. He spends the summers at Yosemite, working 3 days a week and climbing the other four. During the rest of the year, he likes to travel to EPC, Indian Creek, and other various rock climbing destinations. He's been my primary climbing partner for the last week and a half or more - we've done Space Boys, Snott Girlz, Black Cat Bone, and Satori together. Really solid, and great sense of humor. He's a bit stronger than me, so he's been a good mentor of sorts. He arrived a couple of weeks ago, and will be here for a few months at least.

Erik's best crazy face

Team Yukon - Niall and Emcee are from the Yukon, and their Canadian accents are hilarious. But they are also really cool and laid back and such. They often spend their evenings in the kitchen drinking and playing cribbage. Emcee apparently races dogs in the winter? Not sure when they are leaving - but I think maybe in January.

I think that's about all for now. There are many other people I've met here as well, but these are the people that stick out in my mind the most.

Snott Girlz & The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Yesterday, Erik and I did yet another multipitch: Snott Girlz, a 7-pitch romp up the Mota Wall. We got started pretty late, leaving camp around 11am, but that's okay since it's a shorter multipitch than some of the other ones we've already done.

I opted to lead the first pitch, a 5.10d that roughly follows a crack line, but about 4 bolts up I got spooked. I'm not sure if it was because it was the first climb of the day and I wasn't warmed up, or the crack intimidated me, or what, but I decided I really didn't want to keep leading the pitch. I just wasn't feeling it - my "head space" wasn't right, so I asked Erik if he'd mind switching leads. He was totally cool with it though, so he stormed up the pitch and I hopped on toprope. I actually found that, even on toprope, I had to work really hard to get up the pitch and I was pretty thankful I didn't have to lead it. But somehow I made it up without falling.

First pitch of Snott Girlz

I was pretty hot and exhausted after the first pitch, so I deferred the next lead to Erik as well, another 5.10d. He linked this one and the next one, a 5.10a, without a problem of course. The second pitch also follows the crack line, and was a little bit easier despite having the same rating, and the 5.10a face climb was really not bad at all.

The fourth pitch was a 5.9 straight up the face, so I opted to lead it. I was considering linking it with the next pitch, except that after the belay ledge you have to do traverse directly right about ten feet, and I was worried about rope drag, so I brought Erik up instead.

The only pitch I led yesterday

Since I already had him on belay when he got there, he kept climbing and led the next 3 pitches, all 5.9. The first of these (#5) was really quite fun and interesting, with lots of cool jugs up a blocky section, and #6 was pretty similar and fun as well. I heard this really strange noise when climbing the sixth pitch though, which turned out to be a palm tree at the top of the climb whose leaves were rustling in the breeze.

Check out this crazy traverse.

The last pitch, if you can even call it a pitch, was pretty short, and summits the gendarme. You kinda climb right around the arete, and into somewhat of a dihedral, and the last 12-15 feet is a right-hand crack that you pretty much have to use to get up to the top. Being a terrible crack climber, I wasn't too excited about it, but I made it up anyway =)

The summit was pretty cool, but also very similar to the summit of Pancho Villa. Which makes sense since it's on the same wall.

Erik's exhausted from too much leading.

When we simul-rapped down to the ground, there were tons of climbers cragging the Mota Wall next to us, so we had to be extra careful not to pull any rocks down onto them. It was pretty funny though, at one point there were four climbers on the wall at the same time on routes right next to each other, at different heights. If my camera hadn't run out of battery, it would have made for a hilarious photo.

Anyway, we cragged another 5.10d, then went back to camp for beer and dinner (in that order).

We caught word of some kind of festival in Hidalgo, so we rounded up some people and drove into town for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was really pretty cool - there were tons of people at the church near the main plaza, and inside the church they were doing some kind of Catholic ceremony. Outside the church, they had a bunch of food vendors selling food that could be purchased with tickets, as a fundraiser for the church. There were hamburguesas, tacos de trompo, tamales, enchiladas, and hot dogs. While I was eating my 10-peso hot dog, a bunch of kids came out in Mexican Indian garb and performed a dance for everyone. I'm not sure what the dance was called but one kid was playing the devil, and the idea was that the other dancers were containing the devil to make sure he can't touch the people. It was really cool.

Then we gringos bought some ice cream and went home =)

Black Cat Bone!

Two days ago, Erik and I got up "early" and did Black Cat Bone, a very fun and varied 9-pitch route on the Jungle Wall.

Whoa, that's tall.

We started climbing at 10am, which is really only early for a guy like me. The first pitch was a short and easy 5.8 so I went ahead and led it. In fact it was so short, I wasn't sure the pitch was over.

The next pitches were 5.10b and 5.6, so Erik linked both of them. The first wasn't really too hard actually, except for a few balancy moves, and I don't really remember the 5.6 but it was surely big jugs and easy moves.

The fourth pitch was not really a pitch - it was a 3rd class "hike" with a fixed rope for balance / safety. I pulled myself up on it to get up to the next face, which was an easy 5.9 that I led.

Check out the holes in the roof from rock fall.

Next came the crux pitch, 5.10d, which Erik led. It's a long face-climb which gets really thin and cruxy right before the overhanging roof which you have to clamber over. The roof was really difficult to get to, and I was surprised I could even climb it on toprope, let alone leading, sadly. It's really balancy and technical and pumpy. Fortunately, once you get to the roof there are some sweet jugs you can rest on before committing to pulling through the overhang, which required some fancy footwork and committing to feeling for holds. But once you find them, it's not too hard to top out. Very fun pitch.

Omg the crux.

I wasn't really in much of a leading mood, so Erik led the 7th pitch, a short 5.10b. It was fairly interesting, involving some stemming and cool moves.

Short but fun.

The last two pitches were 5.10b and 5.9, so Erik linked them and I followed. The 5.10b was going up this crazy dihedral, so I had to do some stemming and chimneying, but it felt like I climbed it super awkwardly. The 5.9 was pretty trivial, mostly jugs all the way up, but I was amazed by how run-out it is. Easy sections are often run-out here, but sheesh.

Anyway, we finally made it to the summit, and I checked my watch, and it was 2pm. So we climbed 9 pitches in 4 hours, not bad! The view from this summit is really excellent, much better than Space Boyz in fact. There's almost a 180-degree view of the front side and the valley. There was a logbook in a box up there, which I signed, and one entry was by Alex Honnold (whom I consider my "climbing hero"), who said he soloed it in the dark on his last day in Mexico. What a crazy kid.

Look ma, I climbed something!

After enjoying the view, we started the mostly repetitive process of simul-rapping back down to earth. We reached the ground by 3:30pm, so I guess it took just over an hour to rap down. Overall, the route was really fun and I can't recommend it enough, especially if you can get through the 5.10d crux =)

Space Boyz

Hola amigos!

So last Thursday, I went to the Jungle Wall with a dude named Eric to climb a 11-pitch route called Space Boyz. Somehow I met the guy the night before and convinced him to climb with me, and he suggested we do it. Eric's an interesting guy; he's a blond Californian from Humble County who, post-graduating, apparently climbs nearly full-time, and he works in Yosemite in the summers in order to climb. It's pretty crazy to meet someone whose lifestyle is similar in a sense, but yet so much more extreme. Makes what I'm doing seem so much less crazy =)

Anyway, so this route is a classic line established in 1994 over the course of 52 weekends by two dudes new to bolting. Talk about dedication. It's 1000 feet tall in total. The first four pitches are rated 5.8, 5.9, 5.9, and 5.9, so we decided that we would "link" the first four pitches at least. Linking pitches means that someone leads two pitches in a row, because when you have a 70m rope, you can climb almost 70 meters high until you run out of rope.

We started climbing at around 10:45am, and I led the first two pitches in a row, making sure to carry a ton of quickdraws with me, which was really no problem, except that the first two bolts were way too high. Fortunately it was pretty easy so it was no problem. Then I belayed Eric up to my belay ledge, and he led the next two pitches (since he collected all my quickdraws on the way up), while I belayed. Then I climbed the next two on toprope. I checked my watch, and we had the first four pitches done in about an hour (noon).

Next is when things got spicy. I opted to lead the next pitch (#5), which was a 5.10. It was kinda strange and a bit traversy, and I very nearly fell at the crux, but somehow managed to shake out my pump and move through the sequence without falling, earning the onsight. Woot! The weird thing about this pitch was the belay ledge at the end - it's kind of like a shallow shelf, and to get to the next climb, which is a 5.10d in a dihedral, you have to walk right on the shelf around a corner, using a few cold-shut bolts for protection.

So we had Eric lead the crux (#6) of the route, a 5.10d dihedral, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to lead it myself. It was definitely a really tricky, interesting route, which involved a lot of stemming and some odd moves on overhanging rock. It was fun, but I did have to hang once because I climbed into a position I couldn't get out of. He also led the next one (#7), which was a 5.10, and was somewhat similar in that it followed a crack / bulge, so again there was a lot of stemming and a few hand jams.

The next four routes are somewhat of a blur. I think I led the next 5.9 (#8), and he linked the next two after that (5.10 and 5.9), and we were at the last belay ledge. I was pretty happy to finally be up there because I was getting tired of climbing =)

The last pitch is really fun, despite the fact that it's only like 30 feet tall. It's this easy off-width crack where you can do all kinds of chimneying to get up, and I led it, and it turned out to be even more fun than it looked. The summit was not quite as crazy as Pancho Villa, but I could kinda see down over the other side of the gendarme into a different valley further west. Awesome!

After some rope management, we hooked up our GriGris to the rope and started simul-rapping back down to earth. I think we did 10 rappels in all, since the last pitch was so short. I'm not sure what time it was when we reached the summit, but we made it back down by about 4:30pm. So that's 11 pitches in about six hours. Rockin!

My only regret about this route was that I forgot to bring my camera, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures /-: Next time Gadget, next time.