Ethan Pringle - Pro Blog 6

Staying in Hueco for a prolonged amount of time really makes you sick of all the red tape, and all ridiculous rituals and rules you have to abide by. It gets really frustrating, wanting to go climb on a boulder you have been to five times before, in a place you know better than many of the guides that guide your tours, but you can't break the rules and step foot into this desert oasis full of perfect bouldering. But maybe it makes the experience of being in such a special place that much sweeter. Maybe it makes you think twice about stepping in a dried out Hueco or on some dirt that is completely without footprints. The restrictions are probably a good thing, in the long run. 

I made a long list of climbs I wanted to do in Hueco before I came down, which consisted almost entirely of climbs that were put up last year or the year before. There were a few I didn’t do or didn’t get a chance to get on, but I basically did the ones I was most psyched to do like Full Throttle and Indisposable Heroes, which I did today, among other things. I’m definitely glad I brought a copy of Dosage 4 with the dose of Hueco, because after getting on a few climbs for the first time, I could come back to the campsite at the end of the day, whip open the laptop, and compare my beta to that in the video. 

I guess my best day here was the day before yesterday when I did Full Throttle and Crown of Aragorn in the same day, and maybe our adventure to West Mountain today would be a close second, but it's pretty hard to compare days when they're all pretty special in their own way. For those of you who have never been here, it's total choss! Well, there are a lot of sun-baked slabs that are really chossy, and some of the top-outs are a bit sketchy, but for the most part, its one of the best bouldering areas in the world. Beautiful, streaked faces, bulletproof roofs, caves and corridors and gullies with thousands of boulder problems literally stacked on top of each other, with every type of movement, every difficulty and every level of danger. And the holds seem as if they are sculpted to grab. The hardest part some times can be getting into the park, but once you're in there, it makes the wait and all the pain in your ass worth it. And because it's such a pain sometimes people mostly stick to what's convenient, which is North Mountain, not to say that’s not a fantastic place to climb, but it leaves super classic climbs like the one I visited today, Best of the Best, which is just a short hike up West Mountain, untouched for months. You can get lost and feel totally detached in this small, 800-acre place, especially when you turn the walkie-talkie off. 

One thing I did miss this year was not getting to eat at El Rancho Escondido, my favorite El Paso Mexican restaurant (its about as good as the worst one in the mission, but they have the bomb margaritas, oops, not supposed to say that for another three months) because they were closed for remodeling or something lame like that. Jen, a friend from Salt Lake, even got my hopes up and said she saw that they put a sign saying that they were now "Open,” so we made a special trip into town for El Rancho, but when we got there we realized it was the same sign that had been there the previous 15 times we had driven past it. Damn. 

I don’t think I’ve fantasized about a climbing area more than Arkansas, so I’m pretty psyched to be headed there next. I’m trying to convince the guys to drive all the way there in one push, the whole 13 or however many hours it takes to get there so we can get to the climbing ASAP, but they're not quite as psyched as I am. One thing is for certain: we will definitely have to go through the Vista Mercado and Buddy’s Beer Barn on the way out of town tomorrow. Buddy’s is just for the experience of course.