4_12 to 15_2014 Tuscon Climbing Part II - more photos

I met up with my friend Mike, also known as Mr. X due to his preference for anonymity in the virtual world, in the town of Benson where we loaded up on a few supplies at the market, then headed to the West Stronghold.  We found a nice campsite right near the end of the west road and set up camp.  Nice spot, really nice weather and lots of birds including Owls nearby.  Pretty cool.  It was super dry however, so the plants were obviously having a hard season.

In the morning we headed up a drainage hike to climb “Cragaholics Dream”, a classic 6 pitch old school crack route.  The hike takes a little over an hour and ascends a fair bit up a rough drainage, we didn’t even think someone else would be lined up for the climb, but unfortunately we were wrong… 

As we got closer we could see and hear a few people, then a few more, then a few more.  When we arrived at the base of this somewhat obscure backcountry climb, we discovered a party of 8 (that’s right, 8!) 20-30 somethings wagon-training up the route.  On top of that, they were quite loud and obnoxious and most of them were drinking PBR beer in cans.  Really??  Hike all the way back here to climb a remote crack climb with 8 of your best beer drinking friends???  Nope, this was not what we ordered!  We were pretty darn disappointed, but we wanted no part of such a scene.  What’s with the frikking posse style climbing with the youngsters these days?  Ridiculous in my opinion…

Mike staring in disbelief at the party of 8 PBR swilling youngsters tag-teaming the route.

Anyway, we hiked all the way out back to camp and re grouped.  We decided to head up to a formation called the Tombstone, which has a very cool crack route and a companion arête route.  It was maybe a 45 minute hike to get there, but at least we had it all to ourselves!

Mike led a moderate approach pitch, then I racked up for the Tombstone Crack. 

The crack is steep, a full 160’ long and has several wide sections.  It looked like a challenge for sure.  Although rated 5.10+, it seemed a bit harder as it was quite strenuous and at times the protection was a little twitchy.  I was almost at the top when my arms were pretty smoked and I thought I might peel off, so I took a short rest on the rope, then finished the pitch.

Quite a workout and again, I could tell I was pretty darn tired from all the activity in recent weeks, but it was all good. :)  Mike came up and declared the route a full on workout as well.

Looking east toward the west Stronghold from the top of the Tombstone.

It was super windy on top, so we debated whether going down and leading the arête to the right of the crack as the strong winds would likely make a difficult and technical arête quite a challenge.  Instead, I opted to have Mike lower me down the Stiletto arête and I climbed back up on a top rope.  I was really glad I did it this way since the wind was really whipping and a lead in these conditions would have been a bit much.

After the second route, we hiked back to camp, enjoyed a nice dinner and camp chat, listened to the owls, watched the moon rise and hit the hay.  In the morning we would hike up to Cragaholic’s Dream for a second time, hoping nobody else would be on the route…

Moon rise over the west Stronghold. Squaretop is the large formation on the left margin of the photo.

Our second hike up to Cragaholic’s dream proved fruitful and we had the whole formation to ourselves as we hoped and originally expected.  It was a bit cool at the bottom in the shade which was nice.  

The route is 6 pitches long and requires a full range of crack and face climbing skills with all natural protection.  We decided that I would take the odd pitches so Mike would lead the crux second pitch as I was feeling really tired this day after so many days of activity.  The route went well with no falls or hangs by either of us, but it is a very challenging route for the 5.10b grade (me thinks it’s a wee bit harder

Mike finishing the crux roof on the second pitch.

Here I am coming up the second pitch after the roof.

Here I am leading the 10b third pitch.

Mike leading the short but fun 4th pitch.

Starting out the fifth pitch which is tricky at the bottom. 

Higher on the fifth pitch is straightforward hand to off-width crack climbing. 

The wind had picked up throughout the day and by the time we topped out, it was really whipping!

The high winds made the rappels a bit tedious.Oh, and by the way, we cleaned up two empty PBR cans that we found on the descent and hike out from our youngster buddies from the day before - dorks!

We watched some other climbers across the valley on Dreamscape Buttress and began the rappels. 

We hiked back out to camp, enjoyed a beer and chatted a bit.  It was Sunday afternoon, so Mike had to pack up and head home to Phoenix that evening.  I said goodbye to Mike and enjoyed a quiet evening watching the moon rise over the magical formations of Cochise west…  Tomorrow I would head to Mt. Lemmon.

Squaretop at sunset.  The formation is 700' tall.

After a leisurely morning, I started the drive to Mt. Lemmon.  I picked up a few supplies, loaded up on water and headed up Mt. Lemmon to Molino Basin campground.  This campground is located in a neat drainage at about 4500’ and promised to be warm and likely very birdy. :)  I scoped out a bunch of sites and decided on a nice fairly private site that had a bunch of good trees around and lots of birds!

I set up camp, had a casual dinner and hit the hay early.  I was really tired and needed some recovery before tomorrow’s event; riding up Mt. Lemmon.

In the morning I had a nice breakfast, watched some birds around camp and prepared my bike for the Mt. Lemmon ride.  Mt. Lemmon is a pretty big day ride with a minimum of 50 miles round trip depending on your final summit or near summit destination and between 6000-7000’ of uphill riding.  I was still feeling quite tired this morning, so I knew this would be a hard ride, but I’ve really wanted to ride Lemmon for quite a while and this was the day to do so since Callie was flying in tomorrow for 5 days of birding.  So, I loaded up on water and snacks and took off from the campsite.

First up was ~2000’ of descent to get me to the true base of Mt. Lemmon.  Obviously, this was easy and fast riding.  It was about 8:45am when I turned around at the base and started the long ride up the mountain.  It was already pretty warm, so I knew this would be a sweat-fest. 

I was going to ride to the true summit, but as the accumulated uphill came into the 5k range, I decided to shorten the ride slightly and just ride to the ski town below the summit for some food and drink. :)

With this plan, my highpoint was just over 8200’ before dropping a few hundred to Summerhaven, where the Pizza and Cookie shack awaited my arrival. :)  I was pretty beat when I arrived with 6300’ of uphill under the belt.  I got a slice of pizza, a big pumpkin cookie and several iced teas.  What a great recharge! 

The ride is really fantastic, both up and down and should be on every cyclist’s list of must do rides.  The scenery and change of climate zones is really quite amazing!  I arrived back at camp in the early afternoon and took a sun shower and relaxed.  The birds were quite entertaining and I enjoyed the nice quiet afternoon.  I went to bed early and organized a few things for Callie’s arrival in Tucson the next day. :)