My first real trip to Hueco was winter break from college in 1995. This time I was free to fully engage the scene. Melissa, my then-girlfriend (and now wife), and I were eager to go south in our rattly old VW van. We timed our entrance during daylight hours for fear that Montana Avenue, the road leading out of El Paso towards Hueco, would be blocked. We’d been warned to be careful if we saw obstructions in the highway, as local banditos were literally conducting highway robbery.
We drove out of El Paso under a cloudless sky, past the tire piles, junkyards, drive-in porn theaters, strip clubs, and taquerias before hanging a left at a funky, white-domed real-estate office. As we drove closer we began to see brown domes erupting from the flat, cactus-and-cat-claw desert’s surface. We pulled the van into a dusty parking lot in front of a ramshackle Quonset shack and parked. “So this is Pete’s,” Mel said in a low, disappointed voice.
About thirty worn-out, sun-bleached tents surrounded the pile of corrugated metal. Pete’s, which should have been condemned years ago, was the original Hueco climber’s hang. (It closed around 2000, but luckily the Hueco Rock Ranch has since filled this need, with vastly improved comfort and hygiene.) If you were a member of the elite you could stay at Todd Skinner’s house. Such infamous scenes as Fred Nicole’s pinkie-finger one-arm pull-up were shot at Skinner’s pad for the Masters of Stone 3 film. Since we were just poor college students with no campground reservation, our options were simple: We squatted in the desert.
We parked our van in a circle of other car-camping poachers. Many strange-looking people mulled about camp. One was Alf, a fixture to the desert Southwest climbing scene. Lanky, thin, and unshaven, he strolled by that evening, looking to see if anyone needed shoes resoled. Like many Hueco residents, Alf wore filthy jeans and a battered flannel shirt, looking like he’d just finished a shift at Grease Monkey. He peered out of his thick, sooty glasses as he lifted one foot to exhibit the bedroom slippers he’d reconfigured with Stealth rubber. Alf was proud of his improvisation, and was quick to inform us that he’d just climbed the 45 Degree Wall in them.

Our squatter’s camp showcased classic examples of road-trip vehicles. Everything from trucks with homemade plywood shells topped with pitched pro-panel roofs, to Rainbow Bread delivery vans, to gutted station wagons fitted with floral curtains were on display. My friend Ed, too cheap to buy a van, stripped the passenger seat from his hatchback to create sleeping accommodations. He was particularly proud of the fact that in the middle of the night, he could simply roll over, open the door, and pee. In the morning these rolling homeless shelters cruised into the park blaring Metalica, and hordes of unshowered climbers unloaded and warmed up in the parking lot with a few rounds of hacky-sack as the authorities eyed us. Maybe we should have seen the writing on the wall.
Mel and I began wandering around the park, crawling though the maze-like formations, carefully avoiding the prickly ocotillo and yucca plants. After some exploring we stumbled upon the Mushroom Boulder, the most famous boulder in Hueco — if not the world — and home to such classics as The Mushroom Roof, What’s Left of Les, The El Murrays (Left, Center, and Right), and Local Flakes. Several dirty, heavily clothed individuals wallowed in the dirt, working on the underside of the dark formation. I pulled on my shoes, butting into the group of resident dirtbags, and began groping holds, chalking insatiably, and generally sketching about.