COCHISE WHISPERS

While still in high school, Baker opened a small outdoor/climbing shop called the Alpine Hut in downtown Tucson, 80 miles west of the Stronghold. As much a social club for the 30-odd local climbers as a business, the Alpine Hut housed a three-ring binder known as “The Book” that held hand-drawn topos to the Stronghold; it passed from climber to climber until it finally disappeared. The tight-knit young locals developed into a collective of standard-pushers — since dispersed — taking the ground-up bolting ethic to its limits. No one pushed harder than Steve Grossman, whose routes were voyages in minimalism (see “You Think You’re Hard?” at the end of this article). Today, delicate and dangerous testpieces like his The Great Gig in the Sky (5.11 R) and You Bet Your Life (5.10+ R) are seldom done; maybe it’s because the former’s long crux pitch sports just one bolt and a few slung chickheads, while the latter’s final two pitches provide a only handful of bolts and gear placements.

Locals still organize the semi-annual “Beanfest,” which began in the late 1970s as a spontaneous, wild, tequila-swilling party. During the festival, the community gathers in the Stronghold for climbing and slideshows, all capped by the unique practice of “beaning” in which the event’s rotating volunteer organizer, the Beanmaster, marks each participant’s forehead with beans and sanctifies the ceremony with a tequila shot. It’s also a great venue for Beta: while Arizona guidebooks chronicle most of the classics, hundreds of climbs have never seen ink. A few locals prefer it that way.

Nobody is really sure how many routes Dave Des Champs, a Stronghold developer from Tucson, has authored, and he isn’t sharing. When I phone him, his words are clipped. When I ask Des Champs how many days a year he climbs in the Stronghold, he says, “About 100,” adding, “I don’t repeat routes either.”