Trip Report: Stronghold

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 4^th 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 got down from whats my line and it was early.  We decided to do inner passage.  I had heard it was a chimney through the formation but I had no idea what I was getting into.  I thought it was going to be like 300 feet of a chimney.  Justin had done it before so he opted to take pictures.  The passage was really a neat feature and it was grueling to get through it.  It was a slot and it was a sideways move which I am not as used to as I am going up.  It started off  with some frog type slithering but I also has some butt scumming, heel toe camming, sidewinder type moves, and also a weird looking hump.  For me I have done a lot of really wide chimney’s but not one so tight.  For me often it was easier to be 20 feet up in the slot then it was to be closer to the ground.  For Justin it was easier to be close to the ground because he is skinny. This one made me remember how much I liked Paria canyon. 

Rockfellow 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.

Travelling to Cochise

So Nothing can be better than going on an expedition road trip right?  Last night I got the email that I got an upgrade to first class for the first leg to AZ.  I was thinking to myself.  OK Nothing can be better than going on a expedition climbing trip and getting a free drink within minutes of the first hours of your trip...  Then this morning I got the complementary call saying flights were delayed... I hope that all goes well.  Right now I am writing this post as my wife gets ready to drive me to the airport and let me go for almost 3 weeks and also trying to come up with some of my own personal goals for the trip.  I am thankful to have someone that cares for me but that can also let me go for a little while.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

It occurs to me also that I am going to be in the air and flying to go on my trip on the most American day of the year.  Super Bowl Sunday...  I know that as a Boston native I should be routing for the patriots and watching but some part of me wants to just play dumb. 

Now what teams are playing this year?? When is the Super Bowl??

The one thing that I have thought lately is about watching athletes before they race or play.  They all have a warmup routine that they do religously before they start their sport. I have been wondering about trying this type of thing before every climb.  I really have always just put on my shoes and gone for it.  That is the one reason why I would be interested in watching the bowl this year.  To see the pro athletes routines before they perform at their best.  Get some pointers.

So a lot of what I have been thinking about the last short times that I have had free coming up to this trip has been what goals I want to try to accomplish on the road trip and how I want to start off this year on my trip after about 6 months of training for things.  I know that one of my downfalls has always been my self talk.  I usually get up on a hard section and after trying it once or sometimes not even at all I tell myself I cannot do it and talk myself out of it.  This needs to go away so it is what I have told my partner Justin I want to get rid of and work on this trip.  Easier said than done is what I am thinking but I have to try otherwise I am doomed to the same grades.

Hopefully I will get a post in half way through the trip when we come out to civilization for a resupply.

Going to Cochise!

One of my very good friends from college will be at Cochise Stronghold for a while this winter and I am looking forward to making it there.  I have told him to wait for me to get there since there is always some extra adventure in going to a new area and exploring and getting into the local rock.  This is something where once one partner has been there it is easy to get into the rut of sharing rock climbs that one of the partners has already done and that takes away from the adventure a little.  And even if you play the silent partner without giving beta you run the risk of being called a sandbagger.  This stifles both partners growth because neither is on new terrain adding new climbing moves to their lexicon. 

So finally it is coming to fruition this week and I am flying out there for two weeks.  This trip to Cochise Stronghold in Southeastern Arizona should be really interesting.  The climbing is on granite but it is unlike other areas at times because the protection relies on natural rock flakes called chicken heads that you just throw a sling over.  Some of the rock looks just like the skin of a dragon hide or something. I think that at first this is going to be difficult because where you normally look for a crack in the rock to protect yourself it is going to be different.  I am hoping that this and the rock variety from other areas I have been to make this a good learning experience. 

Looking at the guidebooks it seems like all of the climbs will have a little bit of everything in terms of runnouts and protection and change in moves.

The Year End Results

The most important part of blogging for me is keeping track of my goals both large and small and providing myself with a means of achieving those things which I want.  I started thinking about what I have been doing this year and so I went back to my workout log for the year and my goals that I had and started looking to see if I had accomplished what I started out to do and so that I can track where to go from here.

My general goals were to maintain my weight and get out there and I think I have done those two things and also evolved this into more which is what I consider taking the next step.  

So Going back to my logs and counting what I did this year I have counted:

Climbing
- 71 days this year climbing either in a gym (29) or outdoors (42 days)
- 9 new outdoor areas visited that I had never been to before
- 134 pitches roped climbing ,12 lead pitches of Ice, 122 outdoor pitches rock (Lead 73)
- 57 total new bouldering routes with; one V5, ThreeV4, six V3, 8 V2 and the rest lower than that!
- Climbed one featured climb in each of the 10 climbing magazine issues that I received this year.
- I am top roping and getting 5.11c climbs on my first try and leading 10d.
- I am still scared of falling when it is safe to do so and I have trouble pushing myself to failure.

Running
- 10 miles at one go
- 30 miles cumulatively in one week
- got myself down to 7:15 minute miles over a four mile riverside run including sand/snow/or mud

I had thought that I would get more outdoor climbing and pitches in and that is the hardest thing for me to do as of late.  There is only a limited amount of time in the day and people that I climb with are not always the all day type. This one is the challenge for the new year because I have to step it up a notch to step the climbing up a notch or the general athleticism to compensate for what is needed.  I was challenged this year by a random partner that I met from the neclimbs.com partner forums named Captain Mo who told me that I was not trying hard climbs enough.  I still feel like this is true because after less than a month of work I was able to send Hepatitis which is supposed to be a stiff rated 70s problem from one of the local hard men.

2012 Goals
Flash 5.11a on lead
Toprope 5.12d in 5 tries
Redpoint 5.12a in 5 tries (the ultimate first blog goal)
Redpoint 5.11a, b, c, and d.
Get a  V6 boulder problem outdoors
Get a V7 Boulder problem (I have my sights on green goddess)
Climb 2 days a week
Run 3 days a week
Yoga 1 day a week
do a 10 mile trail run with at least 4000 feet of vertical gain
do a 14 mile trail run with 6000 feet of vertical gain
run my first 5k race
run a 6:30 mile
Climb at 10 new areas in 2012

Waiting for the mountains to freeze!

On Saturday Steph and I spend all day hiking since it has been warm and wet with very little in the way of freezing temps.  I was optimistic at first that the ice would freeze enough for us to go ice climbing but it was a lost dream this weekend.  We ended up going for a hike to Mount Whiteface which is one peak north of Smugglers Notch ski resort and is also normally a ski trail into a hut in the good season. 

This was the Lean to that was at 4 miles.

The view from the lean to at four miles!

My sneaker after the 8.2 miles of snow.  It is not ice climbing season yet but I think I might be done with trail running until it is colder.

Most of the hiking was on these old logging roads that had been converted to ski/hiking trails and the trails were sooo wet.  We ended up doing 8.3 miles and by the end of the day we were both really tired. It was a nice day for it and it was a cool spot to see.  There was one lodge that was 3 miles in that I think we will ski camp at this winter at some point.  It was a really cool spot and I can totally see heading out there for a night on skis.  The hut is first come first served and it has a wood stove in it as well so it is not just a lean to.

This past week at the climbing gym I went with Zack and I ended up getting one V5 on my first try and a couple V4 problems.  It is not much of a breakthrough but it is definitely a noticed increase in strength/ability/technique.  Not really sure what to attribute it to.  Hopefully in the next week it really freezes and we can can make it ice climbing before new years.

Turkey Day Hike

So after spending this Thanksgiving down in Methuen at my Uncle Al and Aunt Betty's we went for a 2 night backpack in the White's near the Pemi.  My Father and his friend Strad have had a tradition of hiking every year after Thanksgiving.  I have spent many years hiking Monadnock or some other small peak after the holiday.  This year my wife and I decided to step it up a notch and go out for the weekend.

We were going to do the Mt. Hancock trail but the parking lot was not plowed and there was about 4 inches of slush and we ( I mean me) got the car stuck trying to get into the lot.  I should have just swallowed my pride and forgot the fact that I used to go and get into bad roads with 4 wheel drive for a living.  Maybe it was because all the foresters would have laughed at me if I turned around instead of trying to gun it into the snowbank to get through.  I am not sure. 

I ended up having to kick the snow out under the tires and make steph drive while I pushed the front end back.  We ended up at the Lincoln Woods Parking lot and just on a whim we started hiking in with really no plan.  As we were hiking we decided on Mt Flume since steph had not done it and it was the shorter of three options.  We camped out about 2 miles in on the Osseo trail in some slightly dense beech stands which definitely had a good mast year.  I was seeing empty pods all over the place and no nuts....

Day two we hiked up Mt Flume and it was almost 45 degrees. We took a self portrait on top. I was surprised how mild the temps were. As we were hiking up it occurred to us that this would actually be the last peak on the great circle trail run that I am thinking of. I snapped a picture of steph nearing the summit.

 

On Sunday we hiked out in the morning and when we were driving back home I could see a red jacket/blob of someone climbing Whitney Gilman Ridge.  I love that climb but there is no way that I would put myself there in late November.  This year I took some guy that I had never met before with almost no climbing experience up it and I can remember freezing in the wind on a 60 degree day as he struggled trying to pull a fixed piece of gear out for ten minutes trying to take apart his belay.  I figured he would have guessed that a rusty stemmed cam was not mine but he was a little new to it all I think.  I cannot imagine being up there without a lot of experience under my belt in the winter. Even though it was 50 degrees it had to be cold for that guy in the red jacket. As we were driving home Steph suggested that we round out the weekend and get limber by going to a bikram yoga class so we did that on sunday evening. It was nice to do that after sleeping on partly slushy snow and roots where our tent was for two nights.  

Hepatitus Send

So this weekend I was with my parents and I got out for about 30 minutes of bouldering during the day at Hammond Pond.  Normally I try to get in hours or more but I guess that I have underestimated what can be done in 30 minutes or less when it comes to bouldering and running.  It was a really good session.

I ended up sending this project that I have had on my radar and wanted for a long time called Hepatitis.  It is an Old Henry Barber Line that he gave a rating of 5.12 back when people were climbing in hiking boots and there was not any sticky rubber.  It now has a rating of V5 under the the Vermin scale.  In Mass there is a rich history of small boulders and short 30 foot routes and their first ascents. Some of the lines although really short are a neat place to spend a couple minutes or hours on when you are in the Boston area.  I would not travel here just for them but feel that it is a good place to get a proud line in.  Since Hammond Pond is near my parents house where I grew up I have been looking at this line for almost 10 years.  It is a thin seam that has little crimps along the seam and a few jugs near the top.  As you go out the seam the feet get progressively worse and you really have to concentrate on footwork and core tension to stick on the wall. It was a good send.