Ascents in New Mexico having Beta

14.5 hours car to car. With Mark. Mark led pitches 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, & 12; I led pitches 3, 4, 6, 9, & 11. We unroped for pitch 8. I clipped loose and rusted pitons, slung trees, almost pulled a microwave-sized block onto myself, wiggled up strange slabby off-widths—in other words, had a full-on Sandia day!

10.5 hours car to car. With Denise! Led all pitches except for the first half of pitch 4, which Denise led. Combined the first two pitches on accident. Simul-climbed from the top of pitch 4 on.

Took me a while to find the beta that keeps it 5.7

Fell many times trying to work out the beta. Also told some other people at the crag that this was a 5.12, which is apparently not true!

Pulling the finger jams/ringlocks felt much harder than 5.9, but maybe I missed some cheater holds? Had fun!

Fun! First time I think I've had to pull on a ringlock above gear (but the good feet kept it 5.8)

Mark led the first off-width pitch and I followed. We backed off the second pitch. Mark asked me if I wanted to give it a shot and I said "no way."

One long sport route! Felt cruiser

Trashed it (top-rope flash). I guess it's time to start trying to lead 11s.

FA: Cam Burns, Luke Laeser

FA of tower and route: Mike Baker, Cam Burns 1991

I did the FA in 1989.

Mark S. led this. Funky down low, then cruiser hand crack. Gets wide at the very top, but if you just shove your whole body in there, it's fine

First real trad lead in a while. Felt very comfortable

Attempted and fell three times. First two times fell while still fully in the roof, third time fell with my hands on the headwall and one foot jammed in the roof. I feel like I'm strong enough to TR this if I get the beta dialed. But probably not strong enough to lead it yet.

Jams were not painful for me (I taped), but surprisingly sequence-y for a splitter crack. There are good jams in spots and other spots where I couldn't get my full hand meat in the crack.

We set up a top rope - kind of couldn't believe anyone but an absolute maniac would lead this on gear, but a guy there said he had and that it wasn't too bad. Maybe he was an absolute maniac. Fun route on top rope!

Fun weird stemmy stuff at the top

Fun! Definitely could lead this, but might not be worth going out of my way to come back to

My first time in a chimney. Absolutely brutal!

First time top rope soloing. Used a lift and a micro trax. Did 10 laps, trying to contrive as many variations as possible.

Led pitches 1 & 3 clean, followed pitches 2 and 4. Hung on the rope briefly on pitch 2 when trying to get a half-stuck cam out. Mark wanted to do the 5.10a final pitch variation, but we wound up doing the 5.8 because a deep fog had filled the canyon and we didn't want to get stuck in bad weather. Pitches 1 and 3 were my first 5.8 trad leads. Pitch 1 felt fun and comfy, pitch 3 felt like it was right on the limit for me.

Didn't seem like this gets climbed too often (lichen and mud in a lot of the cracks, some loose rock), but it was a fun route! I led the first and third pitches, Mark led the second. The second pitch was my first experience with off-width climbing. I enjoyed it, but was also glad it was short and I wasn't on lead.

I led the first pitch, Mark led the second. The climbing on the first pitch was easy, but gear was a little hard to come by (at least to my still somewhat untrained eye). On the second pitch Mark climbed above the obvious 5.6 rightward traverse to create a much more difficult traverse on tiny footholds immediately under the roof. Some fun spice to end the climb!

Super clean and continuous crack and it's fun to follow a single line all the way up. We split it into two pitches, I led the first and Mark the second.

Followed Mark. Fun route! Would like to come back and lead it

Tried to lead the first pitch but it seemed too spicy for where I am currently as a trad leader. Got up to the top of the wide-ish crack below the layback and then decided to downclimb. Followed Mark on both pitches. Very fun climbing, especially the lieback! We had some routefinding difficulties on pitch two

Excellent route.

Very reachy. Crux is the first 20 feet.

5.10C Cosmic Thing

2nd go

Not unfun, but not a blast either. Crux was an awkward mantle right above the first bolt.

Aptly named. In and out of funny chimney (need to be skinny to get out of chimney) onto face

swapped leads with Isaac. We got sucked into some runout 5.8ish terrain on p2 somehow. anyways, good belay ledges and a fun time

Isaac led

Need two ropes to rap.

Fun

Spent too long hanging in the steep crack trying to figure out how to clip the last bolt. It should probably be skipped, it's too far out of the way.

Nice warmup

Cool move.

Kinda climbed between this and BB...