Hueco Tanks

After spending the last few months climbing primarily on ropes, we were looking forward to the simplicity of bouldering, and were very excited for the warmer temperatures the forecasts promised at Hueco Tanks.  We had planned to get to El Paso in time to meet up and climb with Deyo and Kevin (our visiting friends from Seattle and Albuquerque) on their first day in town, but as we found on our endless drive across Texas our extra day in Asheville had made that ETA unrealistically tight and we rolled into El Paso fairly late at night. 

Our introduction to the complicated system of park entry, visitor passes, camping, and sustainability at Hueco Tanks started the next morning.  Hueco Tanks is made up of several granite-like mountains and is famous for round "huecos" (pockets or cavities in the rock that range from a couple inches across to the size of swimming pools) that both make awesome climbing holds and hold rainwater for long time periods in the otherwise arid desert.  There are a number of Native American rock paintings and other cultural artifacts at this park and there are rare critters that live in the water-filled huecos, so in an effort to preserve these natural and cultural artifacts the park limits the number of people allowed in every day.  We had heard a lot about the park restrictions and preservation efforts at Hueco before we arrived and were a little confused by the system, but we got up early, were the first people at the park gate, and easily picked up our day passes for our first day of bouldering in a long time.

Morning in the park

We caught up with Deyo and Kevin at their campsite in the park and then headed to North Mountain, the only bouldering area in Hueco that climbers can access without a guide.  We loved the crazy rock formations and the bomber rock, and though Deyo and Kevin were only able to be away from their jobs for a week we tried a lot of awesome lines during that time.  Our first few days were definitely a learning process.  We weren't used to using as many toe hooks, heel-toe cams, knee bars, and feet-first climbing techniques as the problems at Hueco require.  It took us a few sessions to work out the style, but once we did it was incredibly fun to unleash all of these three-dimensional techniques.

The group, hanging out

Hueco is notorious for its sexual and raunchy route names, and we found some R-rated projects fairly quickly.    Chelsea and Deyo were excited to get their Daily Dick Dose (V7), a classic Hueco roof with small edges, while Kevin worked on getting Pumped Full of Semen (V9).  We also spent some time trying high-quality, PG-rated problems throughout the week including Girls of Texas (V5), Free Willy, Baby Martini (V6) and Big Iron (V7) in the Martini Roof, Chblanke and Choir Boys (V-craziness), and Lobster Claw (V5).

Seth on a highball (V2)

Chelsea on Daily Dick Dose (V7)

  

Chelsea on Baby Martini (V6)

 

Kevin on Baby Martini

 

In addition to the park access restrictions for climbers, the Hueco Tanks park gate is also closed from 6pm to 8am this time of year, which means that we had a strict curfew for our nights at the park campground.  With the four of us (Chelsea, Seth, Kevin, and Deyo) sharing a campsite, though, we found a pretty good daily rhythm.  We would wake up early, pick up our day passes when the office opened to ensure our park access, and then head back to camp and make breakfast while we waited for the desert to warm up.  We'd climb until 4 or 5 in the afternoon before heading back to the car.  Dinner was either at Pasitos, the small taco-truck style Mexican restaurant near the park entrance, or cooked family-style at camp.  The sun went down right around 5:30, so we spent a lot of time hanging out and playing cards before heading to bed and repeating everything the next day.

Kevin had to head back to Albuquerque on our first rainy day in the desert.  Deyo had one more day before her flight back to Seattle, so we headed into El Paso and took advantage of the best rest-day activities the town has to offer: a couple hours using Starbucks internet and an afternoon at the movie theater.  This rest day served us incredibly well.  On Deyo's last day at Hueco, both she and Chelsea finished Daily Dick Dose, and Seth also finished the V4 variation of Paleozoic, his first Hueco project - triple sends!  We finished the day at Hershey Symphony, which is sold as one of the best highball V1s in the US, before driving Deyo to the airport and making plans to get together once we get back to Seattle for the middle of winter.

 

Seth on Paleozoic, V4 version

 

Deyo on Daily Dick Dose (V7)

 

 

Hueco in the evening

  

Even after Deyo left, we weren't alone for long.  Our friend Mike Foley, who we'd spent a lot of time hanging with in the Red, got in touch to let us know that he'd been rained out of Chattanooga and was heading to Hueco as well.  We spent the rest of our time in Texas climbing with Mike.  It was great to have company, and though we all climb at super different levels our climbing days worked very smoothly - plus we got some ridiculous cardio in while hiking from boulder to boulder.

 

Chelsea had one of her best days of bouldering performance ever on the first day we climbed with Mike.  We started at the famous Fern Roof where she had been working Mexican Chicken (V6) the day before - until it got so windy that the pads would blow across the North Mountain meadow as soon as we stepped off of them.  Chelsea and Mike made quick work of the route in the calm morning air.  We then headed around the corner to Barefoot on Sacred Ground, a famous V12 that Mike wanted to repeat.  Barefoot is right next to See Spot Run, another V6 highball.  Mike put in some solid work on Barefoot, Seth worked out a crazy knee bar start on See Spot Run (but decided to stop before he totally bruised his leg), and Chelsea worked through her second scary top out of the day to finish the route.  Next we started looking for Bloodline (V7), a newer Hueco line that is pretty well hidden from the rest of the mountain.  Luckily a friendly UK climber we'd kept bumping into showed us where to find the problem so we didn't have too much trouble.  Bloodline is a very aesthetic problem - a water carved feature in a narrow canyon with a tufa about 3/4 of the way up the route.  The climb is pretty technical; Mike said that it requires the right "order of operations," meaning that movements needed to happen at the right place and time.  Mike quickly figured out the beta and sent, and after some valiant efforts from both Seth and Chelsea, Chelsea was able to finish her third hard (for her) climb of the day.

 

Chels topping out Mexican Chicken (V6)

 

Mike on Barefoot on Sacred Ground (V12)

 

Chelsea on Bloodline (V7)

 

Seth did work the next day, which we spent on the other side of North Mountain.  We started at the Warm Up boulders and then made our way uphill to T-Bone Shuffle, a classic and committing V4.  Seth made quick work of the climb using drop-knee beta that his height makes impressively casual, and it is one of his favorite Hueco boulders.  We spent the middle of the day trying Mopboys and watching Mike work some hard roof problems in the same area.  At the end of the day Seth tried another V4 in the Warm Up area.  He found it to be a really fun line with some extreme toe hooking and a large cross move that played well to his strengths.

 

Seth on T-Bone Shuffle (V4)

 

Ping! Downward bound on the V4 in the Warm Up area

 

We all decided to take a rest day the following day.  We headed to our usual Starbucks (with Mike it felt like a return to Kentucky rest days), and then spent a surprisingly long time trolling one of the El Paso malls. After our options for entertainment in the mall were exhausted we said goodbye to Mike and headed back to our campsite to brave the cold and rest up for our last day in Hueco.

 

We needed to get to Albuquerque by that evening, so we spent our short day trying the climbs we were most psyched on.  Seth finished his toe hook V4 his first try of the day, and Chelsea finished Stegosaur (V8), a unique lowball with a sweet 180 transition from the feet-first start (she'd been wanting to try it since our second or third day in Hueco).  After we got our sends in, we packed up the car, picked up our last victory burritos from the Mexican market, and headed north to visit Seth's family and to get ready to fly home for the holidays.

 

Overall, Hueco is an amazing place. We loved the climbing, the reasonable approaches, and the hot showers provided by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.  We weren't big fans of the 6pm - 8am campground curfew imposed by the park hours, which in combination with the early sunset got pretty boring and cold.  That being said, we forgot all about this as soon as we picked up our park passes in the morning and headed out to climb amazing rock all day.  We didn't have reservations for this trip, but we didn't have any trouble climbing the days we wanted to - though we'd like to have reservations and the option to stay outside the park with assured entry in the future.

  

We'll miss you Hueco Tanks! 

 

 





Thanksgiving in Asheville

It was hard to leave the Red, especially for Chelsea with her new mini-project in the Madness cave.  The weather was getting colder, though, and snow was forecast for the week of Thanksgiving.  As such, when the time rolled around we were ready to drive the few hours to Asheville NC, spend some time in a nice, climate-controlled environment, and catch up with Chelsea’s family.
Most of our trip plans have been fairly fluid, with only a couple pre-planned location deadlines.  Spending Thanksgiving in Asheville with Chelsea’s aunts and sister was one of the plans we were really looking forward to.  Situated just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville is a hippie town and a foodies’ paradise, with way more high quality restaurants, breweries, coffee/chocolate shops, etc. per capita than we’d yet experienced.  Chelsea’s Aunt Janet moved there from Tampa FL last year, and Janet’s description of the town and dedicated Facebook updates of her food/drink/farmers market/etc. experiences have kept us drooling since we made our Thanksgiving plans.  Chelsea’s aunts Billie and Judy were visiting for the holiday and – as we found out when we sat down to catch up with everyone – recently signed a lease and are planning to move from Tampa to the same townhome complex as Janet in the new year.  Chelsea’s sister Kiki was also going to fly into town from NYC on Thanksgiving day to stay through the start of the weekend, so our week promised to be a good time with great people.

We rolled in late Monday night.  Billie, Judy, and Janet stayed up late to welcome us and catch up, and we got a short tour of Janet’s townhome.  Janet is an eBay-based used bookseller, focusing on historical and particularly on family history books.  She uses her living room as her warehouse, and as such the room is covered in wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with old, impressive volumes.  The result is incredibly cozy, like the most welcoming bookstore/coffeeshop imaginable.  We also met Janet’s beagle Wally, who as Billie warned us before we arrived is “a great dog… but can get a bit over-excited if people make a big deal over him.”  We were too tired to make a big deal that evening, but later in the week Seth especially had a good time playing with him.

Seth works on grad apps at Janet's. Note bookshelves, fire,

dark beer, and Miracle on 34th Street - it doesn't get cozier.



Our highly tasteful (no pun intended) food and drink tour started at breakfast the next morning.  We had delicious, locally roasted artisan coffee and Home Free Bagels.  The bagel company provides work opportunities for the unemployed and homeless, and instead of using their own kitchen and storefront they use the local community kitchen and sell at the farmer’s market and through distributors.  We then headed into town.  It was raining super hard, so after a brief tour from the car we went to lunch at The Wicked Weed, one of the many Asheville breweries (we had to get our brewery tour out of the way before Kiki got into town).  As it turns out, hops are the “wicked weed” as described by Henry VIII, who said that hops ruined beer.  Both Chelsea and Seth enjoy hoppy beer, so we thought the extensive selection was wicked (erm..).  Lunch was followed by a trip to the local co-op for Thanksgiving dinner supplies, then the bakery next door, REI, and finally the Whole-Foods-esque supermarket.  When we headed back to Janet’s to escape the rain, we were treated to selections from Janet’s impressive in-home beer collection and introduced to Foyle’s War, a quality Masterpiece Theater production.

On Wednesday we woke up to snow on the ground.  Wally had some trouble deciding where to take his morning pee since all of his bushes were covered, but everyone else was pretty excited.  After we finished our breakfast of more wonderful coffee and Janet’s homemade granola (again, delicious) and the snow had cleared up a bit, we went back downtown for more exploring.  We started with another great lunch at The Laughing Leaf, a vegetarian restaurant affiliated with the Jack of the Wood pub and Green Man brewery.  We then toured the downtown shops and Chelsea’s aunts told us about the history of Asheville.  Judy lived in Asheville during the 70’s, and she described how it has changed from a nondescript Appalachian town into the cultural hub that it is now.  We visited an open, warehouse-style art gallery/collective, the Asheville Arcade (a 1920’s-era building with impressive architecture that now hosts a number of shops and businesses) and several new and used bookstores.  After exploring the sights and shops, we headed across the river to West Asheville to pick up our Thanksgiving pies from the cupcake and pie-shop there, and then crossed the street to Urban Orchard Cider for more libations.  We ended the day with dinner at the Thirsty Monk, one of Janet’s favorite pubs.  The Thirsty Monk is a two-story bar with a large selection of local and high-quality beer on tap on the ground floor, and a basement bar that serves Belgian-style beer (as well as some other interesting selections, like an “ancient IPA” which we should have tried but didn’t).  The bar tacos, pizza, pasties etc. are also very good.

 

Morning snow!

 

 

 

Billie, Judy, Chelsea and Seth at the Thirsty Monk.

 

Billie and Chelsea take Wally for his evening walk.

Thanksgiving Day, we drove to the airport to pick Kiki up with Billie and Judy.  Chelsea spent most of the drive back and the rest of the afternoon chatting and catching up with everyone while Seth put more time into his grad school applications.  Janet’s friends arrived later in the evening, and after introductions we settled down to eat.  Dinner was, like every other meal we had in Asheville, absolutely delicious.  Janet also provided an essentially bottomless selection of great beers, including the best pumpkin beer Chelsea has ever had (basically pumpkin pie in a glass) and Kentucky bourbon cream.  We had originally planned to start driving to Hueco the next morning, but it didn’t take much convincing for us to decide to stay through Friday and continue exploring now that Kiki was also in town.

 

Kiki waiting for dinnertime.

 

Candid shot of dinner and table prep.

 

Wally gets tormented by cat lovers (don't worry, he probably enjoyed it).

Like everyone else in Asheville (or at least the number of people made it seem that way), we went back downtown on Friday.  We returned to the Arcade, the warehouse-gallery, and the bookstores to show Kiki, and also visited a number of other boutiques and shops.  It was a beautiful, crisp sunny day, so we were able to spend more time walking around outside viewing the buildings and fairly extensive graffiti gallery that Asheville hosts.  We again visited one of Janet’s top breweries, which was celebrating Black Friday by serving only dark beers and is famous for a “coffee and doughnut stout” that tastes like sweet coffee mixed with dark beer (sounds weird, tastes good).  We finished the day at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, which had a line out the door for most of the day.  When we finally arrived at the counter and received our chocolates, it was well worth the wait.  In addition to fabulous chocolate bars and truffles, French Broad also has to-die-for drinking chocolate, brownies, cakes, and locally-made (of course) ice cream. 

 

Asheville street art - RIP Lou!

 

Kiki, Billie, Seth and Chelsea outside the Asheville Arcade.

After all of this indulgence, it wasn’t hard to get to bed early in preparation for our long drive to El Paso.  When we woke up, we said thanks and goodbye to everyone, and got back on the road…

Many, many thanks to Billie, Judy, Janet, and Kiki for such a great time, and for all of the treats.  We had a wonderful visit.  It was great to see you all and catch up, and you gave us a fantastic introduction to the town.  Additionally, good luck to Billie and Judy as they pack up and get ready to move; we are super excited for you!

 

Asheville HIGHLIGHTS (in the foodie style):

Chelsea – Blue Ridge scenery, Wicked Weed hoppy red ale, Dogfish Head 61 (their 60-minute with added Syrah grape must), walking around town, Good Gourd Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Thirsty Monk tempeh tacos, Janet’s persimmon pudding, French Broad Chocolates (duh), walking Wally, sharing all of the above with great company J

Seth – A warm, cozy place to work on grad apps, seeing my cousin Bob and his wife Katie (Our gracious hosts in D.C), the Hopcecutioner IPA, Asheville's quality bookstores, Thirsty Monk's pizza, French Broad Chocolate, and last but not least that a dog from the toy group did NOT win the AKC National Dog Show.
 

Our Red River Ruckus

After our time in West Virginia, we headed to Kentucky's fabled Red River Gorge, considered to be one of the world's premier sport climbing destinations.  We were very excited to visit a location with so much climbing, media coverage, community hype, and camping infrastructure - especially after all the time we'd already spent hiding from bad weather in the car, or in coffee shops that close at 2pm (really guys?).  When we rolled into town, we chose to stay at Lago Linda's Hideaway rather than the famous Miguel's Pizza because it had a reputation for having a quieter environment and we were still neck-deep in our grad school applications. 

Lago Linda's proved to be the perfect place for us.  The camping infrastructure was better than we could have imagined.  There is an electrically lighted, covered communal cooking area with a sink for washing dishes, a "Shakeout Lounge" with electricity, heat, and somewhat-spotty WiFi, and hot showers included in the price of camping.  The campground is only a couple miles from the PMRP, a land area owned by the RRG Climbers Coalition and home to a large number of classic routes of all grades, where we spent our climbing time.  Lago Linda's also hosts a long-term community of climbers from all over the country that were incredibly friendly and welcoming.  We spent a ton of time with this crew every day in the mornings as we waited for it to get warm enough to climb and in the evenings as we all chatted and waited for it to get late enough to legitimately go to bed after an exhausting day of hard climbing.  We planned rest days together, and would have movie nights or other communal TV time in the lounge.  With this atmosphere, life at Linda's often felt like a summer camp for climbers.

First morning in Kentucky.

 

Lago Linda's cooking area and lounge in the morning light.

Before coming to the Red, we had never really spent time in Appalachia, and our first few days in rural Kentucky were a bit of a culture shock.  After experiencing the distain and kind of intimidating glare of the cashier at the local grocery store, we learned that some counties are still dry, and that you can't buy beer on Sundays in others before 1:00 in the afternoon - or not at all on Sundays in others.  We learned by observing the many loose dogs on the roads, especially on the street after blind corners, that people in rural Kentucky have a fairly loose notion of dog ownership (and also learned to keep an eye out while on the road).  We learned from the countless billboards exclaiming the dangers of hell and that we should call the number listed below to be certain to save our souls, that there is a lot more religion - and of a very different style - than in our bohemian Pacific Northwest homeland.  We also heard at least three separate bible study conversations each time we went to the coffeeshop on our rest days, a very different conversation topic than the standard coffeeshop talk in Seattle.  One of the Kentucky culture highlights of our trip was the Beer Trailer, planted on the side of the main highway just inside a wet county near Lago Linda's.  The beer was okay to good, but the best part of the trailer was talking with the very stereotypically Kentucky locals that owned it and (for Chelsea) petting the resident Beer Trailer Kittens.  There were two, and whatever Seth says they were super adorable and had no fleas or ear mites.


Whether you agree with his politics or not,

this guy is probably better at making stencils than you are.

 

We thought the climbing at the Red was incredible.  Normally because of our different grade ranges deciding which crag to climb at has to be a compromise, but at the Red it was usually an easy decision.  Almost every crag is packed with routes, and there were often at least a few routes that each of us could get psyched on.  We spent a lot of time at Drive By Crag.  Seth got some mileage in on a few 5.10-s, and sent Breakfast Burrito (10d) and the classic Whip Stocking (11a).  Chelsea did work on most of the 5.12s and made quick work of Easy Rider, (13a, in three tries!) that she thinks deserves a classic rating.  We also spent a good amount of time at the Motherlode, where Chelsea got super psyched and finished a number of classic routes including Ale-8-One (12a), Stain (12c), Heart Shaped Box (12c), Resurrection (12c), 8 Ball (12d), Snooker (13a, in two attempts!), and 40oz of Justice (13a, three tries!).  Seth was less prolific at this crag but finished the steep 11b to the left at the Buckeye Buttress and got painfully close to Trust in Jesus (11b) before the temperature started to drop to uncomfortably low levels.  We spent almost as much time at the Chocolate Factory.  Highlights there include Chelsea's flash of Gilgamesh (12b), onsight of Dainty Butterfly (12c), and ascent of Malice (12c) - one of the burliest routes she tried at the Red.  Seth also did a gear ascent of a sandy, gritty crack corner with a double roof near the finish (5.10) that Chelsea thinks was the proudest, hardest, and most terrifying ascent of the trip.  We spent the most time at the aforementioned three areas, but also checked out a number of sectors throughout the PMRP.  Seth's favorite route of the trip was Amarillo Sunset (11b) at the North 40, the only route on the wall which featured a perfect line of big holds up an overhanging wall.  Chelsea couldn't pick a favorite.  Additionally, in our three weeks in the RRG, we are proud/sad to say we never made it outside of the PMRP section of the gorge so we'll just have to make a trip back.

 

Chelsea mid crux on Samurai, 5.12b.

(Check out the incredible cross-bedding! Nerd alert!!)

Seth working through Amarillo Sunset, 5.11b.

 

Chelsea on Resurrection (12c). Photo credit Erik Thatcher.

We spent more time at the Red than at any other destination on our trip so far, and during this time our lives developed into a fairly predictable set of routines.  Our rest days were particularly consistent and enjoyable: on one of our first bad-weather days, one of our friends from Linda's convinced a group of us to drive the 45min to Richmond KY (the nearest real town) to go to lunch at the Indian buffet there, and then took us all to the (as far as we could tell) one major coffeeshop in town.  After that introduction, on rest days a group of Linda's climbers would wake up slowly, pile into the car, drive to the Indian buffet to eat until we were totally stuffed, head to the coffeeshop for some non-spotty internet, go see a movie at the theater, grab groceries at the SuperKroger, and then drive back in the dark.  Each trip was memorable - for example, on the day we watched Captain Phillips, we were all so jumpy and tense afterwards that we had a super paranoid time in the grocery store - but the pattern was always familiar and fun. 

 

Overall, our experience at the Red River Gorge was super enjoyable and memorable. We were able to get out almost every day we wanted to, the infrastructure was great, and the community could not have been better.  We also learned some important individual lessons about ourselves and our different attitudes towards both travelling and climbing while we stayed at the Red, which we'll have to dedicate a future post to discussing.  We are proud of our climbing performances, how we dealth with the changing weather, and of what we learned about ourselves and our attitudes towards this trip and this sport.  The Red River Gorge was an amazing place to be and to climb. We'll definitely plan a trip back to climb the steep sandstone and tap into the community there.  We both have routes we need to finish, and the infrastructure and support at the Red makes it easy to want to go back.