Note: The situation described below is still sensitive, and to err on the side of discretion I’ve changed some of the names of people involved in this story, and have left the place names ambiguous. The rest of the details are true.
Dis dat good shit, Grayson enjoying Too Good To Be American at Nosos.
Behind a small New Mexican town rises a sloping mountlet, somewhat resembling the inverted hull of a schooner. The hill is called the Peñasco, and it’s covered in the quartzite that, if you’ve read any of the other Conscious Climber Project posts, you already know is immaculate. Not only that, but the rocks begin to be climbable a mere 5 minutes’ walk from the road, and they extend north for almost a mile. All of the climbing sits on non-wilderness Forest Service land with no access restrictions. Why, one might ask, is this not the hotspot?
5 Years Ago: Feeling Unwelcome
The story goes that after a day of bouldering about 5 years ago, one of the climbers’ vehicles got 3 flat tires on the Forest Service road on the way out. Some person or persons had waited until the climbers parked, then buried some sharpened rebar into the soft dirt, like caltrops. Only vehicular harm was caused, but the surreptitious attack served its psychological purpose. The focus of development shifted to the rest of the quartzite areas, while the boulders of the Peñasco teased New Mexico climbers from under a cloudy veil of fear.
This is not the Peñasco.
Fall 2015: Feeling Invited
Fast forward to the first Apache Drums dinner that we attended. A kind woman, whom we’ll call Michelle, was scooping vegetable stew onto our plates, and she asked what brought us to the area. We described the climbing, and she wondered where we would do such a thing. We mentioned areas including Nosos and Posos. We also mentioned the Peñasco, but that we don’t go there much. The 5-year-old tire incident was not mentioned.
I think we all had to resist the urge to jump out of our seats and hug her when she mentioned that she helps run the town’s community center (we didn’t even know that there was one), and that there’s a well-worn trail from a closer parking spot that would bring us directly to the best parts, the mostly-unexplored bottom of the hill! (Previously, climbers would park behind the hill and hike up and over the top to the boulders.)
We made plans to meet her and Kelly, the other person helping run the community center, a few days hence.
I want to pause here to reiterate just how significant this dinner was. Before, we as climbers had never really spoken to anyone in any of the nearby villages. Suddenly, we felt like we had invitations for just about anything. There really is something to the concept of “breaking bread,” especially in such an isolated place. In an instant, we went from feeling unwelcome to feeling like guests of honor.
FOMO
Owen cruising the hero jugs at the top of William’s Fantastic Voyage
Obviously this new treasure trove got people very excited. We had been planning a day of working on trails at Nosos, but were so gobsmacked by this new access that we immediately shifted focus to the Peñasco.
Alas, Vikki and I had pre-existing plans to fly back to the Bay Area so that we could surprise my mom for her 65th birthday. We were on a plane while Owen and a few others were playing guitar with Kelly and shooting the breeze at the community center. The next night, we were at a fancy dinner in San Francisco, trying to resist overindulging in heavy dishes while getting bombarded with photos of rock straight from heaven. The unstoppable force that is Noah Kaufman was in town, and thanks in part to his insatiable appetite for new rock, beautiful lines were being put up by the quite literal dozens. I put on a brave face and suffered my way through a 3-star meal. Because that’s how much I love my mom.
While chomping food, we were chomping at the bit. I compulsively poked my calluses. We wanted to be there so badly. When we flew back early the next week, we knew we were going to the Peñasco the very next morning.
FOMO, by the way, stands for “Fear of Missing Out,” in case you were, um, missing out on that acronym…
Jumping on the Bandwagon
Not sure if this has a name or a grade. I didn’t do it, anyway.
We walked in on a perfectly flat, lovely trail that village residents had been using for years, and found the crew hard at work on new boulder problems. There was good rock. There was so much of it. They’d picked some of the plums, but the orchard was still ripe. Nosos Trail Day was stamped “STATUS: Someday”, and we began to salivate instead over all of the projects at hand.
The subsequent week was a blur, but I vaguely recall being torn between climbing and documenting, FA’s and repeats, writing/posting from home versus being out there, filming and photographing the frenzy. We eschewed all but the most urgent business and spent most daylight hours on the Peñasco.
Another one of those plums. Myself on Noah’s brilliant Orange Rastafarian, Noah supervising.
We all fell into a routine very quickly, and it became “normal” to find 2-4 cars parked at the pullout. Word started to get around. We began to see other transient climbers there. Who invited them? Would they be as conscious of the land and the people as we all should be? No matter, there’s plenty of rock to go around and sharing is caring. We’ll sort it all out once the dust settles. (I might clarify here that the busiest days were still in the 6-8 people range. We’re not talking Bishop over Thanksgiving type of crowds or anything, but 6 people is a lot compared to 0.)
The pace of development was outracing anyone’s ability to control it. It was, perhaps, a case of collective FOMO leading to a tragedy of the commons. Thankfully, something (someone) put the brakes on it.
Jim
This is a story that is partly about the Peñasco, partly about us being oblivious, and, last but not least, this is a story about Jim (again, a pseudonym).
We arrived one day to find that someone had stacked a bunch of branches across the trail, along with a “No Trespassing” sign. This person had also gone to the trouble of stacking scrub oak cuttings in the landing zones of the boulder problems. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in a situation just like the one 5 years ago. This one was less terrifying, But still quite eerie.
Got to pluck this plum, one of the prettier slabs on the planet. I can’t even remember if I named it.
But, we reasoned, this time we had the blessing of the town! And surely the trail was not trespassing, as it ran along the outside of a fence line dividing private property and Forest Service land. The locals had shown the trail to us!
Through our contacts in town, we found out that it was Jim, the owner of one of the properties adjacent to the Peñasco, who had done the stacking. Noah went to meet this fellow on his last day before heading back to Colorado. I spoke with Noah on the phone after their meeting, and he described a highly unstable, extremely vitriolic person in his early 60s, who was very upset with the sudden influx of boulderers intruding on the space that he used daily for hiking and meditating. It wasn’t clear whether he was a danger to us, but Noah related enough to indicate that Jim was not someone we wanted to mess with, particularly given the lack of law enforcement and witnesses in the area.
What would you do? There’s a hillside full of wonderful wonders that you’re legally allowed to enjoy, yet the guy who lives just over the fence doesn’t want you or your friends there. He has no legal right to do that, but he’s also a little scary. Would you acquiesce, or would you assert your right as a taxpaying American to enjoy our public land?
The following weeks involved a flurry of emails and messages among the climbers and the folks at the community center, as we tried to sort out just how we would answer that question. And that brings us to Part 2.
