UTOPIAN VISTAS

Out at TP, Holthouse honed his boltcraft under Prandoni and Roybal. Holthouse’s method was simple: 1) Find a knob (he preferred stance drilling to hanging on hooks). 2) Hand-drill, alternating feet to de-pump his calves during the, usually, 45 minutes. 3) Fill the hole with Duco rubber cement, to guard against water. 4) Drive in the bolt. 5) Tighten the bolt and cover the nut and hanger with more Duco. 6) Resume climbing. On partnerless days, Holthouse would build an upward belay and rope-solo, tying off knots every 10 feet. On one 1980/’81’s Holthouse to Hell, Holthouse spent four or five days drilling.

The route follows a bulging face right of Serpent Crack, with four bolts through the mid-height crux. “I’d tie off a good anchor with an up pull…go step up onto that face and clip into the first bolt, and just agonizingly work my way up,” recalls Holthouse. “I don’t think I ever did but one bolt, or sometimes I didn’t even get a bolt in. I’d stand on the knobs for the longest time and work my way up it, and then put in another bolt.” So anguishing was the process that Holthouse swore off hard solo ascents. Today, the most attractive draw for hardpersons are the four brilliant, safe-enough 5.11+-to-5.12- crimp climbs on the Painted Wall. (FA of all four: Lee Sheftel, Doug Coleur, ground-up with a power drill. “I’m glad we did them mixed, instead of just rap bolted,” says Coleur. “Although not ‘hard’ by today's standards, they are really interesting.”) But other climbers — Kasey Weber, Ed Jaramillo, Todd Bibler, Chuck Rose, Prandoni, Mark Hesse, and Doug Bridgers — have left their mark at TP over the years, too.

After a 10-year hiatus, Holthouse is back on the rocks, sometimes with his 20-year-old son, Harrison, an avid boulderer/sport climber. The two recently ground-up drilled a six-pitch 5.10+, Hidden Staircase, above Taos, taking two years (with a delay caused by Harrison’s ankle-damaging 25-footer onto a ledge on the fifth pitch, a section since retro-bolted). Because two sections wandered, the father-and-son team returned to reroute them on rappel, a hybrid of the old- and new-school ethics.

“I don’t know what [this style] is called or how other people are doing it, but I didn’t have anyone else to consult and I didn’t have to,” says Holthouse. “I just felt like, I’m doing this with my son, and nobody else is out here.”

If, like Holthouse, “nobody else” is your thing, then the Rio Grande Gorge, coursing with the upper waters of the 1,800-mile long river, is the place.

Here, it’s not that the river carved the canyon, though the water has polished the lowest blocks obsidian smooth. It’s that 27 million years ago, the earth literally began to separate as the North American and Pacific plates scraped against each other, giving the waterway a home. Accompanying volcanic activity, still visible in the area’s burbling hot springs and an occasional mini-tremor, filled the canyon with basaltic magma, which cooled to form the untold cliff bands, talus blocks, and scree fields lining the gorge from its head, at the Colorado border, southward to its end, 12 miles north of Española.

The Gorge is a place of still beauty, a zigzagging lacuna varying from 500 feet deep to 800, visible only head-on or once you rush upon it. When pumping full flow, the Rio Grande churns out Class V rapids, and a raft or kayak is often the only access to the Upper Gorge save unimproved rim roads. (Besides the Gorge Bridge, only the John Dunn Bridge, in Arroyo Hondo, and the Taos Junction Bridge, near Pilar, cross this stretch.) Navigating the side walls can be hellish, the basalt oozing with heat; sage, piñon, juniper, sotol, cholla, and cacti clawing at your pant legs; talus rolling underfoot; and man-sized poison ivy lining the river banks. Side canyons run in, the Red River, the Rio Hondo, the Rio Pueblo joining the tumble. Throughout, the gorge is layer-caked with basalt cliffs, some formed sublimely of black, red, and chocolate iron stone; others of bubbly, pocketed lava rock; and still others of sugary grey death-choss or Jenga-stacked blocks. Some cliffs have a bit of it all, which for the first ascentionist can demand a heroic commitment to cleaning. Lining the walls you’ll find Indian petroglyphs, cowboy petroglyphs, and the rare modern graffiti.