The Trip to Cochise began with me flying into Phoenix and Justin picking me
up late that Sunday night. The flight attendants did end up announcing the score after the super
bowl was over on the plane. I can't say that I am sorry that I missed it. We
spent a quick evening in a hotel near the airport using my hotel points that I
have accumulated from travel and than started driving south to the Stronghold.
We stopped and loaded up on groceries and water in Tucson. The Stronghold is
really in the middle of nowhere in Southeastern AZ. It is 1.5 hours from Tucson and 28 miles from
the nearest chain grocery store. Over the course of this trip we climbed more pitches and climbs than we saw
people. The area camping is at four thousand feet and the stronghold itself is
an impenetrable pass of rocks that is hard to hike into without scrambling and where Cochise an Indian chief used to hide from persecuting cowboys. 
Owl Rock 5.9 (my entrance exam)On the first afternoon there, we set up camp quick and hiked out to the closest rock that we could climb. It is called Owl Rock. I think because it stands alone and might have an owl profile but I couldn't figure the profile from the right direction. It was a great opener to the stronghold rock. It started with a chimney up a boulder leaning against the rock and then had a step over onto the meat of the climbing. A few slab moves lead to climbing on flakes/protrusions/chickenheads that came away from the rock. I found it hard and run out in sections but generally pretty good. Justin had done this one before so he had me lead it.
When we were walking back to camp, Justin's dog Luna caught the scent of an animal and bolted after it. Growing up with shepherd mix dogs and watching Luna run for the thing I thought this is my kind of dog. We called once or twice but all we heard was Luna yelping at the deer.
As we got to the main road leading to the camp, Luna came out of the woods and took one look at Justin and started sulking. She was smart enough to know she was in trouble but she still came back with sad puppy eyes. We ended up finding a cut on her inside leg and both of us came to the conclusion that in her chase she ended up doing battle with a barbed wire fence. There was a pretty good tear in her leg so we cleaned it as best we could and made dinner.
Wasteland 5.8 III
The next morning Justin had convinced me that Luna and her injuries would be all right for now and that we should go for the send of wasteland. He had been up there on two previous attempts and got off route both times. When he pointed to what we were going for I thought to myself. The guidebook says 5.8 I hope that they are right because this thing looks ominous. Justin told me of the two other times that had stopped him trying to complete this climb on the approach. They Included; "climbing as a party of three on a six pitch route" or "the summer heat and his friends shoe rubber melting". At the base of the cliff I decided that I needed to take the torch and start us up because I was not thinking bad thoughts of past attempts. Hopefully this would get us back on track. It ended up being a 70 meter pitch to start combining the first and second guidebook written pitches with 10 pieces of gear so we were off to a good start. The climbing was in general up a broken crack system and then after the crack system ended the field of chickenheads started. Justin lead a pitch up through a final steep chimney that ended in the field of heads. From there it was just a couple of slung heads and he was at the second belay.
When I went out on what was considered the true 4th pitch of the climb and our 3rd pitch, I decided that I understood why this was such a committing climb. The pitch traversed and was now overhanging and high enough up that we could not do anything but climb to the top. I climbed a small roof and ended at a belay. As Justin lead off on pitch 5 he started again traversing out a sea of the protrusions and at each protrusion the rope seemed to get a little more drag that I could feel. As he got out of sight and about one hundred feet out the rope started to get stuck so he built a belay. It was just after what I would consider the crux of the climb. The descent included 3 rappels with inter spaced climbing down this gully on the back side of the dome. We noticed that Luna who had been patiently waiting at the base of the climb had been licking her wound while we were climbing. It was not looking any better so we decided that the next day was going to be a rest day and we would find a vet. On the walk down Justin and I really started discussing goals and climbs that we should do. After bagging a grade III 5.8 route it was time to think of what else to do and both of us thought that it was time to step it up a notch after this climb.
After a half day calling vets and trying to find one we ended up 28 miles away at the nearest town and animal vet to Cochise that was reasonable. It was a good rest day just driving around and seeing the place. We were originally thinking that it was going to be stitches for her but the vet ended up cutting the green skin around the wound out and giving us drugs for Luna because there was no flap of skin to sew shut. We ended up climbing in the evening at a short 40 foot cliff right at the campground called the winery. It was a nice end to the day after being relatively sedentary.
Time in camp was nice here. The daytime temps were in the 60s and it was almost always sunny and the camping was dispersed so we could only really see one other campsite near ours which was pretty far away. The camping was free and there were many rig oriented people here with campers that would stay for a week and then leave when they were out of water. Solar battery chargers seemed to be the newest camper fad.
What’s My Line 5.6 A0 II and Inner Passage 5.7 I
One of the neatest looking moderate climbs that I had researched before
coming to Cochise was called What’s My Line.
The AZ guidebook had a description that read something to the line of
“this is the best back country moderate rock climb in all of AZ but has tricky
route finding and an alpine feel”. After
pouring over the topo for the climb I saw that it followed a sea of
chickenheads (these are the protrusions that you can see in the photo to the left). We decided that it would
be another classic to do and also since it was going to be a midweek Wednesday
it made sense to do it while no one else was around. Easy moderate climbs are always busy even in the off season. The formation was much higher within the
stronghold and also a long ways in. Even though the route was only four pitches
it had a lot of scrambling to get to the base of the climb and it was pretty
committing I thought. The climb started
with a long scramble up this gully which was pretty deep.
When the gully came out on the face and the real climbing
started. Justin head up first and
stacked the rope for me so it was my turn.
My portion began with a short little climb out to this bolt where I
lowered off of the bolt and then tensioned the rope to the side to get into the
good holds. Once on the head sea
it was just another day of climbing and the climbing was really good. It does take some time however to learn which
heads are the best to sling for protection.
It is helpful to look for the protrusions that have a lip around the
whole head. Even the belays were hanging off of the heads. 
When we topped out on the formation Justin made me look at the Rockfellow domes so that I would get an idea of what lines were on the dome.
We decided that the Rockfellows was going to be the objective for the next several climbing days. We decided that leaving a bag of gear up there was worth it so that we did not have to hike in 30 pounds of gear every day. The logistics of bagging several routes at an alpine area that tops out at six thousand feet need to be pretty detailed to work out. Belay changeovers need to be fast and route finding needs to be dialed otherwise retreat is the only option. Since six thousand feet is really high for the area we always had wind whipping at very blustery speeds when we were topping out on the formations. I always felt like the way the clouds were it was going to rain but this was the desert and I am used to the Northeast. We ended up getting in three routes here that are grade III over six days. On the last and final day we knew the dome enough that we felt comfortable going up and coming down with a single 70 meter rope instead of bringing a retreat line. I would say that leaving a couple of cams and an extra rope saves you ten pounds without even taking into effect the friction of the rope on the rock. I didn't get many pictures of the other lines but they were more committing than the others so each day we were doing better. We did the following routes in this manner.
Endgame 5.10a (5 pitches) III
Days of Future Passed 5.10b III(4 pitches with 200 feet of chimney)
Welcome to the Machine 5.10c III (5 pitches but we linked pitches 1/2 and 3/4 with a 70) . This one was tricky because it was 17 pieces of gear or more on the linked pitches at 230 feet or so.
With short days in February the last couple climb routines were something like this:
8am: Get up when the sun hits the tent and make coffee and breakfast. Start Stretching
930am: Start the hour brutal hike up to the packs where our stuff was stashed at the base
1030am: gear up for the climb and stretch and feed Luna. We always tried to stretch again here and get a safety talk of the objective hazards of each route before we started.
11am: scramble over to the climb and start up. It got progressively warmer as we went up each day but it was always really windy and blustery towards the top so it was a race against getting really cold.
3pm: By this time we would be on top coiling ropes and ready to descend. The descents were tricky and it was always hard to find the rap anchors. Most days we were topping out around this time. If it was any later we would have been worried about descending in the dark.
4pm: pack stuff back up and head down.
6pm: making dinner at camp during the sunset.
In general I would go back to this area. We saw less people in comparison to any other destination that I have ever been to and it gave us the time to just enjoy the climbing. We met one older guy that said that it is what Joshua tree used to be like only the climbs were longer and the bolted routes were safer and the trad routes were more aesthetic. I tended to agree with him. The last day of climbing we climbed Welcome to the Machine at the Rockfellow group. The next morning it looked like the climbing trip to Cochise had ended and the mountain gods were telling us that it was time to move on to the next area. The photo below is a zoom up on the Rockfellows from a field near camp.
The last couple days in AZ were spend limestone sport cragging near glob AZ. I will post on that area later.
