Climbing isn't always about the crux, sometimes it is about the journey.

At Lovers Leap, a Northern California crag, that trad climbers paradise, The Line is a three pitch 5.9 masterpiece. Steep, thin, often a first lead a testpiece of confidence for the apprentice — it's all technique, no technology here will save your ass. Or the first lead could be a noviates nightmare. At the U.S. Mexico Border, we climbed across The Line one night knowing we could be arrested.

Ganas. We all desire something. For us alpinists it might be to tick the Baja, California El Gran Trono Blanco, The Great White Throne, where this tall tale began. Maybe, as my lithograph of Chinese art describes, the desire is the Inner Mountain. Not a physical trudge up, but a cosmic journey in. Out there.

For many Mexicans, or compesinos from Central America, they are more than willing to take the cosmic journey out there for all the pesos they have. We Norte Americanos, unless we've studied The Border geopolitical landscape, are not hep to the mucho problema that is La Línea and the folks who try to cross over. To get across the fences, past La Migra — Border Patrol, stay alive at the hands of your coyote — cheat — guide and then making it a hundred miles into Estados Unidos is a gamblers long shot for sure. Ganas.

If you haven’t read my first dispatch (The Mexican Guide), about our friend Chewie at this Baja rock mecca — El Trono Blanco, Chewbacca invited us Tres Amigos (me, Dan and Joe) to cross The Border with him and his guests, to experience what they must endure on their northbound journey.

We four compadres hatched this plan around a Joshua Tree like campfire after our climb. We sealed the deal with tequila shots of Chewie's homemade mescal. Joe would re-enter California in his beat up 4X4 truck (Chewie really liked this rig, "A Mexicans truck."). Dan and I would become simpático once again as el pastor led his sheep into Aztlan (Aztec term for their source of origin, the Southwest U.S.A.), their manifest destiny.

To be successful in our first week of November expedition up there — our crap shoot adventure (def. to arrive after a hazardous journey), we would have to calculate our logistics as if preparing to climb a grade six so absurd maybe only Charlie Porter would try it. We had no GPS unit or cell phone back then, nix computer assisted navigation, just desire and a good guide. Chewie proved his wilderness savvy over and over in our Los Días de Los Muertos weekend outing on this primo dome, back in the stone age when Fred Becky was a younger old man leading routes up this same granite monolith.

Walking to the base of our route called VW (Virgin Whore) put up by TM Herbert and some other antique, when Chewie snatched up that rattlesnake like he was the eagle on the Mexican national flag, we knew we could trust him. A mutual friend of Chewie's and mine — Dominique — from my days working at the Sport Rock Climbing Wall manufacturer, said of our Señor Natural, "If ever I had to face Armageddon or walk through the Abomination of Desolation, I'd want Chewie at my side." Walking through this Sonoran Mal Paíz desert, the Sin Frontera, we wouldn't need no stinking GPS. We had The Jaguar, and he knew The Way.

The Jaguar-Man was our St. Christopher, Patron Saint of travelers, of travelers in desperate situations. Chewie was our Amigo. I think we would defend this man with our lives as Chewie would do the same for us. Hell, we belayed each other for ten pitches, catching one another's wingers. When Joe asked our guide about La Raza, this articulate anthropoid ape said "We are una fatsa, una ratsa, one face one race, the human race."

When he put it that way, there is no room for racism.

Around the Trono Blanco campfire, we put together an order of operation for our trek north. Joe would be waiting for us at a motel in San Bernardino County (the largest county in North America), or out near Nye County Nevada (north of Las Vegas), or in Mohave County, Arizona (keep La Migra guessing — Chewie would tell Jose' where to go at our departing; they had a few contact phone numbers well disguised, just in case). Dan and I would join our El Tigre. Simple so far. We would follow our guide's lead – our custodian knew the three friends he was to usher north would accept us, no problemo. This Moses of a man or maybe Harriet Tubman would not take money for his services from any of us. We would take ample water (nearly a gallon per person per day, daytime temps in the 80’s, and then some more Chewy had stashed along the way. This way we could easily share with other groups out there and in aqueous need). For most crossers entering the U.S. their guides usually restrict the amount of H2O carried to a deadly low gallonage due to the weight problem and the fact that the little party of illegal aliens must move fast. We would travel at a fast tortoise pace. Dan and I would also be, according to INS, illegal aliens.

I do not like the phrase, illegal aliens, but it is a standard description. "Undocumented Immigrants works. I prefer crossers or paisanos heading north. Much less derogatory, for Pete’s sake crossers have an El Capitan's worth of climbing over dangerous terrain and through knarly chaparral, past angry pit vipers, debilitating scorpions, and ruthless bandits, plus terrible events like heat stroke that can scar a person for life. All this to get to El Norte.

Right or wrong is not my call. Getting to know these brothers and sisters of the earth as we went toward the North Star, sharing skimpy meals on the move, talking about their economic poverty back home and a corrupt government not doing nearly enough to uplift an always sunk in the quick sand economy, hiding in the dirt from all kinds of predators, well, our choice to go with this caravan was the right thing to do. And Chewie would lead us to the promised land.

Who was this man? I remember reading a quote by Molly Higgins, that 1970's rock diva, stone kin to Lynn Hill, Beverly Johnson, Barb Eastman, "I love the way I feel, elegant, strong, sure as a cat and fast." This was our El Gato. He was always ready to go. I'm not sure we were.