Hueco, Winter 2025
January 25 - March 9, 2025
When we first planned our sabbatical, we had grand plans of coming home to the U.S. after living abroad and immediately moving into our truck and soft-walled camper to road trip domestically for many more months. Well, as I have touched on in other blog posts, our plans changed, and even during our time in Rocklands, we began internalizing the reality of many more months of nonstop climbing and the logistics of living in a camper. So, when we ran into one of Zane's old friends from the Red River Gorge at Rockland's law-in-order boulder talking about needing to fill his house in Hueco that upcoming winter, we jumped on the opportunity.
We initially intended to go to Hueco for two months, January through February. Staying true to the theme, we arrived in Hueco the last week of January and remained through the first week of March. The issues that delayed us were catching the flu (both of us) and a week-long crippling back injury for Zane. November and December were also crazy and stressful times at home, filled with moving out of my mom's condo into a new apartment; frequently visiting my Dad in memory care, my Dad transitioning to comfort care and passing away; job hunting for my first nurse practitioner job which was busy with interview prep, multi-phase interviews, and decision fatigue as I heavily weighed my opportunities; on-boarding for travel nursing (which took almost 5 or 6 weeks), and then trying to make some money before Hueco. I am thankful we had this last phase of the trip since the desert sun, climbing, and time outside centered me again after this challenging stretch.
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Our six weeks in Hueco proved to be one of our favorite legs of the trip. We managed many days in the "backcountry" (East, East Spur, and West Mountain), which houses at least 80% of the available climbing in Hueco State Park. This experience was eye-opening to the area's quality and quantity of rock. Even seeing some of the bouldering lines was highly motivating for future training, especially knowing it is much easier to come back to Texas than going abroad, and there were also some of the best climbs we have seen anywhere.
The nature of Hueco State Park's system creates a wildly different experience from anywhere else we have climbed. To access North Mountain, you need to book reservations 90 days in advance, and the rest of the mountains are only accessible by guided tours. Their system forced us to be flexible with when and where we were climbing, less project-oriented, open to climbing in groups most of the time, and negotiating time with larger groups.
In many ways, climbing is a very interconnected sport (while it is an ever-growing sport, it is still a relatively small community). Yet, we often focus more on our objectives and avoid massive groups. Climbing in Hueco forced us out of this mentality. It allowed us to experience a larger range of climbs we otherwise would walk past, extra foam under climbs, beta we would otherwise not craft on our own, and the connections made meeting new climbers and reconnecting with others we even met during our leg in South Africa (ZA).
The interconnectedness of climbing is what I have come to appreciate most about the sport during our trip. Under Rockland's Caroline climb, I met a couple living in Salt Lake City who also lived in Switzerland previously, and later met them in Hueco; we met a couple in ZA from Verbier, Switzerland, who shared local contacts; re-met and climbed with locals in the Valais area; ran into old climbing friends from different walk of life while in ZA and Hueco; and met new people in ZA who we then later ran into in Hueco. These overlaps and crossing paths, even worldwide, remind me how close-knit our sport still is and the importance of human connection.
Not all connections are the works of everlasting friendships, though. At times, we encountered cliquiness and felt the negative ramifications of group dynamics and climbing social status in Rocklands and Hueco. The increased social interactions in Hueco increased the odds of a conflict (or a clash of personalities). We experienced this clash with a housemate and a Hueco guide, unwilling to let us tag along for a day of climbing to one of Zane's highest-priority projects, the Dark Web. Of course, there are always two sides to a story, but this was one of the craziest social interactions we have dealt with with any climber or adult. The following day, we headed to North Mountain and ran into another climber at Big Nose Millie, whom we first met in ZA. It was great reconnecting; serendipitously, she is also a Hueco guide and was projecting the Dark Web. We had some of our best days with her, and she and Zane share the same projects for next season. It took some time to understand and navigate the ins and outs of climbing access in Heuco, but because of the guided system, we met many welcoming and amazing people who showed us around and were great to climb with.
We are very motivated to go back next year. Hueco is home to chocolate-colored sandstone, tricky and physical knee-bars, razors, pull-out crimps, never-ending hallways and corridors, and some of the largest climbing concentrations I have seen. Hueco delivered!
Making a sun cave at Big Nose Millie
Group climbing on a guided day! 
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As an aside, not only did we realize we could not live in our camper, but it also broke on this leg of the trip. The crank or winch system used to pop the camper broke after we tried opening it when the clips were on. Even before this, though, the camper would pop up on its own while we were driving occasionally (and we lost a crash pad). The wood and structural integrity rotted from years of exposure to the elements. On our trip home, the camper popped open, and we rigged this system to secure the back door. The issues were beyond repair, and we trashed the whole camper recently. |
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