Dave&Callie: 10/23 to 11/08/2008 - To Cochise Stronghold in Southern Arizona

Today we loaded the entire family - cat, birds, Dave and me - into the truck, hooked up the fifth wheel and headed out to Cochise Stronghold. Cochise is in Southern Arizona in the Dragoon Mountains at an elevation of 5,000 ft. The area is covered with granite domes and it was served as the refuge of the Cochise (an Apache Indian Chief) and his people.

Here is a quick history of the area in relation to Cochise taken from this site: http://www.cochisestronghold.com/. Born in present-day Arizona, Cochise led the Chiricahua band of the Apache tribe during a period of violent social upheaval. In 1850, the United States took control over the territory that today comprises Arizona and New Mexico. Not hostile to the whites at first, he kept peace with the Anglo-Americans until 1861, when he became their implacable foe because of the blunder of a young U.S. Army officer, Lt. George Bascom. In that year, Cochise and several of his relatives had gone to an encampment of soldiers in order to deny the accusation that they had abducted a child from a ranch. The boy was later proved to have been kidnapped by another band of Apaches. During the parley, Cochise and his followers were ordered held as hostages by Bascom, but Cochise managed to escape almost immediately by cutting a hole in a tent. Bascom later ordered the other Apache hostages hanged, and the embittered Cochise joined forces with Mangas Coloradas, his father-in-law, in a guerrilla struggle against the American army and settlers. The capture and murder of Mangas Coloradas in 1863 left Cochise as the Apache war chief. The U.S. Army captured him in 1871 and prepared to transfer the Chiricahua to a reservation hundreds of miles away, but he escaped again and renewed the resistance campaign. The following year after negotiating a new treaty with the help of Thomas Jeffords, his only white friend the band was allowed to stay in their homeland.

To find Cochise Stronghold on a map, look for Tombstone, Arizona. It's about 19 miles away from there.

Dave has been to CS a couple of times but has wanted to go back and spend two solid weeks there. That was our plan.

We made the trip in about two days sleeping near Socorro, New Mexico (thanks Walmart!). We spend a bit more time in Socorro than we had wanted since our darn water pump croaked on the trailer. The pump was about seven days old. Excellent American product there. Oh well.

Of course, there was no dealer within hundreds of miles of where we were. We did find "Charley" at an RV part in Socorro. He had a work barn/shed that was filled with all sorts of stuff. Rummaging around, he found three dead water pumps. With some time, from these carcasses, he created a new, sort-of-working frankenstein water pump that he installed.

While the pump worked, it was clearly ill. Everyday we wondered if the thing would give up the ghost totally. Happily, it survived the trip.

We continued toward Cochise arriving the morning of 10/25. We opted to camp on the west side of Cochise since it would offer more expansive views and a beautiful sunset each evening. The sunsets never disappointed. This was our first time taking the trailer on some "unimproved" and "unmaintained" roads. Rodeo driving is what we called it. We made it, but there was a bit of a mess in the back. Nothing earth-shattering, but we spent a little time getting things back in order and reattaching a few items (e.g., window covering). When all was said and done, it looked like new again (though the croaking of the water pump was clearly not a new sound!).

The birds did well on the drive. Henri road on my shoulder during the days (his ARKING broke me down very quickly to let him out of his pet taxi though I don't think this is safe at all). After sunset, Gabbie gets scared in his taxi so I would bring him out and he would lay on my chest and sleep. It was very sweet! Other than this, everyone else did very well on the drive.

As we were getting settled, our friends SteelMonkey and Felicia arrived in their pop-up. We'd been looking forward to meeting them for some time. Once we all get settled, we took off to go climbing. They went to the Trad Rock area, and we hurried up to Sheepshead, a large granite dome rising about 800' from the base.

On the hike we learned something new and very disturbing - - preying mantises are really pretty gross!

We also learned that the vegetation in this area is HOSTILE. Dave had been here twice before, but both times it'd been cold. This time, it was hot so we were hiking in shorts. We both suffered far more flesh wounds from hikes than from anything on the walls. Every friggin' thing in the ground there attacks in piercing ways.

On Sheepshead, there is a newish climb there called Peacemaker (10a) that we wanted to knock out. It was about 6 pitches. And once we arrived there, we discovered it involved a lot - and I mean A LOT - of slab. In addition, it was a very sustained climb. It was 10a all the way!

Bleck. Slab. Bleck.

Oh well. Dave did a great job leading this route (uh, slab? no way I'm leading that!). The hardest moves were right off the ground too.

We topped out as the sun was setting. At the top, the steepness went away. which allowed for a nice view of the ground. If you look at the photo of me topping out, you can see the truck and camper on the ground. Look at the right side of the photo about 2" down (if you've clicked on the photo) and there are two little white dots. That's our home!