3/19/07

So our last climbing day in Hueco this season is over, and what a last day it was. One chapter of this road trip has ended and another is about to begin. Tomorrow we start the drive to Horseshoe Canyon Ranch to climb there and the surrounding areas for a couple of weeks, and then on to Utah.

It has been a very satisfying trip to Hueco this year, which was my third year in a row. It was almost as satisfying as the dinner I just ate. It included Basmati rice, mixed veggies, spicy curried potatoes and carrots, a whole avocado, and of course some flour tortillas from the Vista Mercado to wrap it all together. 

At first I thought this trip was going to be a complete bust. I came back from Baltimore after the ABS Nationals with a heinous virus that quickly turned into many different sicknesses all combined into one, and on the morning I flew to El Paso (my flight left at 6 a.m.) I felt deathly ill. For the first week out of the three weeks of my stay in Hueco I was pretty much bed ridden, or shall I say campsite ridden. But eventually I got better, passed on the sickness to others and fell into the groove of Hueco bouldering. I tried to climb a few times that first week, but my body just didn’t work properly. I did however get scared nearly to death by John Wallace’s rubber rattlesnake. Imagine how badly you could scare someone chasing them with a real rattlesnake, its jaws gaping open. That’s how badly I was scared for about five seconds, before I realized what a chump I was. Everyone had a god laugh about it afterwards, so all is well that ends well, I guess. 

My friends from San Fran that I’m traveling with (Mark and Vin) brought two bikes down just for the two of them, but fortunately one has a rack sort-of thing covering the back tire that one person can sit on, while the other person pedals and steers. It looks goofy as hell but it sure beats starting the car up to drive a mile every day and it definitely beats walking, which is what we have been doing since one of the bikes got an unfixable flat. Another thing that I have managed to get away with the entire three weeks I have been here, mainly because of marks Texas Parks Pass and not going on any commercial tours is, not having to pay a single penny to climb in this place. Hells yeah. I have spent $72 dollars on camping, though.