Sarah fed the rope through her belay device as Seph climbed above us. He was scaling a fin of limestone that rose 120 feet overhead. Each time I glanced up I saw him pull through large, spanning moves towards the anchor. He was making it look easy.
I took more interest in conversing idly with Sarah than watching Seph breeze up the route. She kept her eyes on him while we chatted about writing, traveling, and the merits of Yo Gotti lyrics. A cool breeze rattled the fronds of stunted palms studding the canyon walls around us.
Above us, Seph shrieked. "Jesus!"
I looked up again. He was huddled against the wall. A tiny, black silhouette darted past his shoulder into bright blue sky.
“Are you OK?” I shouted.
"Fuck no!" he replied. "I felt that bat crawl past my goddamn hand inside the crack."
My alarm melted into laughter. Moments later, he reached the anchor. He rappelled back to the dusty earth, and we congratulated him on his harrowing lead.
Potrero Chico seen through the archway between the twin spires of Las Agujas.
~
Three months earlier, I opened Facebook to find an invitation from my friend Nik. He and a few other friends wanted to go to Potrero Chico for “Friendsgiving.” Potrero is a popular sport climbing destination in Nuevo León, Mexico. “I know what you’re thinking - Nik wants to go on a sport climbing trip?”
Though clearly kidding, Nik was right - I was surprised that he wanted to go on a sport climbing trip. I was also surprised at the people who had already said they were in. Some were accomplished alpine guides, like Nik. My friend Mark was going - he and Nik had put up a first ascent in the Himalayas, for Christ’ sake. Nearly everyone on the list was a trad climber. And they were all ready to travel to a distant locale that featured easy to moderate sport climbing.
In sport climbing, the climber's route follows a series of metal bolts that have been previously drilled into the rock. The bolts fasten metal loops, called hangers, to the rock wall. As the climber reaches each hanger, they leash their rope to it with a lightweight tether called a draw. Thus attached, the rope lets their belayer arrest the climber if they fall. Other than draws, sport climbers don't need to worry about hefting and correctly placing their own burdensome protective gear as they lead.
Trad climbers do have to worry about this, because there are no bolts on trad routes. The difference becomes apparent when a sport climber tries their first run-out lead on trad, fumbling at their harness for the correct size of cam or nut to place in an isolated crack in the wall, hands fatigued, high above their last piece of protection as the wind whips by.
The 2017 Potrero Chico “Friendsgiving” crew, minus a few. Some accomplished climbers, and myself, were in attendance that winter.
The invitation was exciting. It was a chance to climb at my depth with experienced buddies who usually ventured too far outside of it for me to join. I researched the logistics for a few hours, and booked a ticket to fly to Monterrey on December 1st.
~
The evening of December 1st found me standing outside the Monterrey Airport explaining my destination to a cab driver in painfully broken Spanish. The grizzled gentleman shook his head and pointed to a help kiosk. The seven years of Spanish classes I’d taken a decade past were proving adjacent to worthless.
My anxiety was mounting just as a young man walked up and greeted me. "Habla Español?" he asked me.
I replied with the standard "Solo un poquito."
"More English then?" he asked fluently.
"Yeah, much more English," I said with relief.
"I’m Joe. My partner Emma and I are going to Potrero Chico,” Joe said, motioning towards a young woman waiting next to a pile of duffle bags and bursting packs. “I saw the climbing helmet on your pack. Are you going there too?" he asked.
I couldn't believe my luck. “Yes! I’m having trouble explaining where to go to the driver, though,” I told him.
Joe spoke rapidly to the same cab driver who had just given up talking to me. “Ah, si,” the driver said, motioning for us to put our bags in his trunk.
We rode through Monterrey until the scouring fluorescent blue of city street lamps was replaced by soft moonlight in the high desert. An hour later, I stepped out of the cab onto the side of a dirt road in the tiny town of Hidalgo, just a few minutes from the hostel where my friends were waiting. I paid the driver a third of what it would have cost me without Joe and Emma’s help. I thanked them before the cab’s engine rumbled away into darkness.
The cab tires’ crinkling of gravel dissipated, giving the stage to a gentle chorus of chirping crickets. The moonlight bounced off of broad, pale limestone faces soaring two thousand feet over the valley floor. Sharp-leaved bramble crowded thin cracks in the faces like sewn black threads. I drew cool air into my lungs, shouldered my pack, and walked up the road towards flickering firelight, and the faint laughter of my friends.
~
The next morning, I rolled over to the side of my upper bunk and lifted the curtain of the hostel window. The peaks were half-shrouded in grey clouds. My friends were making breakfast and flipping through the pages of a climbing guidebook for the area.
With full stomachs and a general idea of where we were headed, we approached the base of the mountains. The other members of our Friendsgiving crew splintered off to various climbs on their list. Mark, Bri, Seph and I headed for Supernova, an 800 foot route that followed a pale water streak up a dihedral. It went at a moderate 11a difficulty rating, and sounded cooler and more intimidating than anything I’d climbed before.
Approaching the climbs on my first morning in Potrero Chico.
After a brief and steep hike, we dropped our packs at the base of the climb.
“Who wants to lead the first pitch?” Mark asked.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll take it,” I said with a facade of indifference. I put on my harness and shoes.
Seph belayed me. I moved slow and tried to focus on my breath. I clipped the first bolt without trouble, about ten feet off the ground. Then came the crux of the entire 800 foot route, another ten feet up. I was worried about hitting the deck if I fell here, and grateful for the three-inch ledge I was able to rest my feet on. I leaned left to get a look at the sequence of holds I would need to use next. A shallow crimp for my left fingertips, just out of reach. A sharp, polished nubbin of limestone protruded off the otherwise smooth face three feet up and slightly to the left for a foothold. I could probably press my right palm off of an otherwise useless jug handle of stone at my shoulder…
“You can do it, Turner!” Mark shouted from below. “The stren’th of Ess-Bay-Pay is in you,” he said, mimicking Scarface’s Tony Montana disturbingly well. I couldn’t contain my laugh. He was referring to the climbing practice I had gotten at SBP, the gym I’d been working at for the past year.
Mark’s bode of confidence gave me enough levity to get out of my head and commit to moving. I extended my left foot out and up to the polished nubbin. Exhaling, I drove the rubber of my shoe’s toe into the protrusion. Then I pressed my right palm off the large hold at my shoulder, and rocked my hips over, up, and down into a one-legged squat on top of the tiny toe hold. Now I could reach that shallow crimp with my left fingertips above me. I pulled the limestone edge, about one finger-pad deep, until I was able to stand up straight on my left leg. Most of my weight was on the nubbin, and it felt stable.
Everything fell into place from there - a sweeping extension with my right foot to press into another edge. A recessed undercling at my waist for my right hand to pull. Soon, I was fluidly coming to rest on a broad ledge at the end of the pitch. I wiped the sweat from my brow, and set up an anchor to belay Seph up.
When Seph joined me on the ledge, his eyes were wide. “Nice lead Turner!” he said.
Bri and Mark finishing the second pitch of Supernova.
The words of encouragement Mark and Seph gave me that morning swept tiny gusts of pride up my chest. Not even my inner-critic, whose constant words of settling self-deprecation were sometimes inwardly deafening, could interrupt the celebration of my self-advocate.
The inner-critic whispered. “It was only one 11a move - the route is a sustained cakewalk beyond that.”
The self-advocate, backed by Mark and Seph, drowned the report of the critic’s shot. “When you volunteered to lead the first pitch, it was because you knew you were capable of climbing a pitch of 11a, sustained or otherwise. So did your friends - who, by the way, know way more about climbing than you do. That gap is getting smaller, too.”
~
Hot beams of sunlight burned away the cloud vapor as we reached the top. 800 feet above the valley floor, we sat on ledges of dusty, limestone gravel between cacti and sharp agave leaves.
Seph cleaning up our anchor on the summit.
Seph pulled a plastic cylinder from between two rocks next to our perch. It was a summit registry, full of signatures and notes left by past climbers. There was a sticker on the lid of the cylinder. It was the logo of Austin Bouldering Project, the sister gym of the one I work at in Seattle. “There’s no escape from the Bouldering Project,” I told my friends.
The Mexican high desert in December, it turns out, can still be a hot desert. After ten minutes, even Bri and I - who were initially taking photos and reveling in the novelty of the experience more than our veteran friends - were ready to get off the exposed summit. Seph and I descended in unison by simul-rappelling. Mark and Bri followed close behind.
Back on the ground, we walked back to the hostel with margaritas from an enterprising taco/climbing equipment/weed truck that was parked at our morning’s approach. The clop of donkey hooves mixed with wailing Mariachi brass up the walls of the valley. Back at the hostel, I crawled up the creaking wooden ladder of my top bunk. I was worked, and slept before the rose light of sunset left the sky.
Our hostel’s kitchen at sunset.