Christmas in Cochise!

This year, we decided to head south and escape the city. It had been a while since we Christmas'ed in Cochise Stronghold, near Tombstone in southern Arizona. This year I managed to find some battery powered Christmas lights for the camper and they looked AWESOME if I do say so myself! We headed south on Thursday and arrived at our camp spot in front of Sweet Rock, happy to see nobody else camped there. Within half an hour, three other cars with four people pulled up within 25 feet of us and set up camp. So much for leaving the crowded city. To make things worse, there was a bunch of screaming and yelling and other drama going on over there in the middle of the night and into the next day. Oh joy!




















Puppies in the camper... what's with the long faces? :-)














We were limited to just sport climbing this trip. Ginny is not ready yet for us to leave her on the ground and disappear for a couple hours on a long route. Sweet Rock had a number of moderate climbs about a 45 second hike from the camper, so we were set.

After not doing much climbing this year, we're trying to sort of ease into it again. We would finish the weekend with some creaky elbows and fingers. This is Felicia on a route called Thingamajig. It was rated 5.9+, but we decided that was a bit of a sandbag after "warming up" on it.







This was more of a warmup at 5.8+, a line called Kit Kat. All the routes have candy names at Sweet Rock. Go figure.




















This was a route that we did last January, Peanut Brittle (5.9+), a pretty good line with a tricky little crux traverse move.














This was a new route for us, and a favorite from the trip. The name of the line is Pay Day and it's rated 5.9+. We felt it's more like 5.9. It is SUPER bolted, with 16 bolts over it's 100 foot length. Too many, really, but a very nice climb with lots of nice stemming and cool moves.











I took this pic in the late afternoon from the top of Pay Day, looking down at the camper and surrounding landscape to the northwest of Sweet Rock. Cochise is a really pretty place.

And you can see the HUGE approach hike we had to do!!







Puppies all set for Christmas morning!!!


















Check it out! Santa found us out in the boonies!!
















Santa left the pups something good to chew on!















Felicia opening her 2011 Climbing Calendar (with Riley's help). We've done so little climbing this year, I had to augment the calendar photos with shots of the dogs. We're hoping to do better next year!











Happy puppies with their Christmas chewies.














After we got our Christmas action all cleaned up, we headed to the rock. We figured we'd head to this lone route (called Taste The Rainbow) on the back of Sweet Rock to warm up in the sun. As it turned out, the route is (we think) a fairly large sandbag. Rated 5.8, it's probably more like an easy 5.10. Felicia tweaked her elbow on this route.











Nice crag doggie. Just try to relax a little Ginny!!!




















Another of the easier routes on the main face (west) of Sweet Rock. Whatchamacallit (5.8), a nice little slab line.













We met another couple that was out from California, Scott and Jody, that were climbing on Sweet Rock while we were there. They were very nice and we traded off routes with them both days we climbed. This is Scott on Kit Kat (8+)













We liked the Pay Day route so much, we did it the next day as well. There was another solo climber there climbing on a self belay system while we were on Pay Day. His name was Ball. I climbed one route with him and belayed him on another at the end of the day.














This is Ball on Mounds (5.10-) in the center of the main face of Sweet Rock. This looked sort of bleak on holds in it's steep upper half, but turned out to have some pretty good edges and jugs that kept it to the grade. It could have done with a bit less questionable rock. Still, it was a pretty good route.










Late afternoon shot of the west face of Sweet Rock (where all but one of the routes are located).

Bikeaneering? Mountainbikeaneering?

Tom’s Thumb Biathlon - December 20th , 2010

I'm not sure the proper term to use... it has so many variation. Bikeaneering? Mountainbikeaneering? Hikeabikeaneering? We debated this some on the way up there.

October 2009... I started up the Windgate Trail with a buddy from work, locked and loaded to ride up and climb Tom’s Thumb. Seemed like a good way to combine my two favorite activities. The bad news is that my buddy, who was essentially trying to do this off the couch and in the kind of shape you’d expect for a suburbanite dad with three active kids, sorta petered out at the bottom of the last big grunt hill leading up to the ridgeline where the formation is located. He was in pretty bad shape and I was kinda worried about him cacking with a heart attack or something if we pushed on, so we turned it around and headed back down. I made one more rather sad effort to pull it off the week after New Years, but I just couldn’t make it happen on my own with a heavy pack full of climbing gear and water. I needed a partner. Zoom forward to April 2010. I headed back up with my buddies Tim and Tom. We weren’t packed to climb, just to ride up the Tom’s Thumb Trail, down the East End Trail, and then back up and over Windgate Pass. A good ride, but I still needed to knock off the biathlon.

December 2010 - Mike O. is in town and looking to ride. I’d just hit my Christmas vacation stretch, and I was looking for some good long workouts. We put in a warmup ride on T100 and followed that up honking up the Sunset Trail on the south side of the McDowell-Sonoran Preserve, a 21 mile 2500 feet of climbing day that put a bit of a dent in us. I mentioned the Tom’s Thumb biathlon project to Mike and he was immediately on board and thought it was a cool project. He picked me up at 9:30 and we headed for the trailhead to meet Zac. Zac was a last minute entry and turned out to be our YSL (young strong local). The term was sort of coined by Fish in a trip report back in July of 2007 for when you get some young kid with an overabundance of energy and psyche to help you out with the heavy lifting on a project. This would be the first application of the YSL for biking purposes (but with a climbing sidecar). Zac is twenty-couple years old, all legs and lungs and a pro bike racer to boot. He was so psyched to do some climbing, he’d run out and bought a harness and climbing shoes just for this ride. We couldn't fail!!

The ride started out of the visitor’s center on easy terrain, then left on the Gateway Trail, which starts climbing as you move away from the center.

The angle keeps going up for a while as does the density of rock covering the trail. This trail wouldn’t be nearly as bad if it was smooth, but the combination of angle and pushing through the rocks makes it a pretty hefty cardio challenge.

We motored up the lower slopes, dodging hikers and sucking for air. As we rode through one group, I said something like “what was I thinking”. Some lady hiker (in fairly questionable shape herself) said something about my two cohorts being much younger than I am. Dang... that's rough, considering Mike is a couple years older than I am. I think what she really meant is that they’re so much THINNER than I am. I deserve it, but I’m working on it.






A nice downhill run gave us a break before we had to hump up yet more climbing to the base of the “last hill”. This starts out on the hike-a-bike program, then moves on to steep switchbacks that are extremely tough to try to ride (translates to more hike-a-bike).

































We did a long sweeping downhill run through the rocks over to the climber’s access trail that branched off in the direction of Tom’s Thumb. They don’t allow bikes on these side trails, so we pushed our bikes up the first little hill and stashed them behind a rock. I swapped to my Five-Ten approach shoes and we headed up the hill to Tom’s Thumb.







Tom's Thumb with our route marked...









What a cool tower!! We skirted the south side and headed over to the southwest corner where the original 1948 route is located. When you’re humping up a few thousand feet of elevation gain on a bike, you go with the smallest amount of climbing gear you can live with. We had a couple of nuts and a couple of tri-cams, plus a sling and a couple of extra biners for our lead rack. The route itself is officially rated “4th class”, but it’s actually easy 5th class in a couple of spots. Mike had never done the route, so he got the onsight lead.

On the summit...








I went last, cleaning the two pieces Mike placed. Great views, beautiful day! We took a couple of summit shots, checked the register and got ready to head down. I’d forgotten to bring an extra rap device, so Mike and I dredged the biner-brake rap setup out of dim, foggy, memory and he rapped off. Zac went in the middle with a fireman brake from Mike in case he got out of control. He did pretty well on the rap, although he was amped to the ceiling and shaking when he went over the side. My harness was just a wrapped swami of 2” webbing, so rapping off was tons of fun. Not.

Back at the base, we took a break to have a snack and pack up. With the ascent in the bag, we were all pretty psyched about the day so far. We hoofed back down from the Thumb to our bikes, walked them down to the main trail and started pedaling again. We talked about heading over to the East End Trail to take that down, but in the end we opted to head back down the way we came up. Mike and Zac were psyched about riding the switchbacks.























We were soon back down at the base of the “last hill” and we motored from there, pretty much all the way back down to the end of the trail at the Visitor’s Center. There were a surprising number of hikers on the Windgate Trail when we descended, but we tried to be polite and not run into anyone. We finished up to the parking lot and crossed a great adventure off the list.



Ride was about 12 miles round trip (not including hiking to the climb and back), plus in the neighborhood of 4400 feet of elevation gain (also not including the hike up to and the climb.

Sunset Ride - McDowell Mountains

I hooked up with Mike O. yesterday for a loop ride in the McDowells. The original plan was to head along the west side of the range via various trails to get over to the trail leading up and over Sunset "Pass". I'd never done this part of the trail, so it would be cool to see what it was like. As it turns out, this isn't so much a pass as just a ride up switchbacks to the ridgeline, then along a bowl to the descent on the other side. The trail is WAY less rocky than the trails over by Windgate and Bell and eminently more rideable, but still a major grunt to get to the top. By my GPS data, the last climb is around 900 feet of elevation gain in about a mile and a half. We were feeling pretty gassed by the top, but the two mile descent to the Sunrise Trailhead was all smiles. Once we got down, we decided to opt onto the road as the day was fading fast. Next time, I'll start early.

Pinnacle Peak!