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This page principally describes what happened to Keith, James and Leon on What's My Line? in the Cochise Stronghold. Their friends John, Gary, Andrei and Mike climbed at Sheepshead (also in the Stronghold) on the same day ... for their story you can check out either ...
Chicken lips? Friday 2nd We woke up at around 6am. It was a brilliant day, the view from Gary’s backyard was awesome and we could see a large chunk of the Santa Catalina mountains off in the distance. After a hurried breakfast we started packing stuff to leave. The plan was as follows … climb all day in the Cochise Stronghold and then set up camp there to continue climbing in the Stronghold the next day. But John, having spent the night in a soft bed (the rest of us were on the floor), begged and wept piteously until Gary agreed to let us crash at his place again tonight. So we left a bunch of stuff behind and roared off. John took Andrei and Leon to go pick up Mike Soo (who had also flown in from Seattle for this weekend), while Gary took me and James in his car. Gary talked to us about the nature of this part of Arizona and we gained an appreciative understanding of why he was so happy to have moved down here (until he recently retired, Gary had worked as a sort of sanitation engineer for Yale University in Connecticut … he had to deal with a lot of shit). After driving south and east for a long time we passed through the town of Benson and then, after bouncing along a dusty road, we reached the Western Stronghold. We stopped, got out of the car and had a look. Gary pointed out the area where he was going to be climbing with John … Sheepshead Dome. It was about a thousand feet of beautiful rock within the most immediately accessible area of the Western Stronghold. At it’s shoulders were dozens of smaller, but no less impressive, lumps of granite which together formed the western-most ridgeline of this part of the Dragoon mountains. The terrain was dry and populated mostly by grasses, occasional yucca-like things and many variants of cactus. What we didn’t see were saguaros, being at too high an elevation (5000 feet) for them. John turned up with the van and suggested that we follow him to another spot closer to Sheepshead. After the vehicles were parked we got out and started sorting stuff, three of us (me, Leon and James) were actually going to climb somewhere else today so we had to move gear between cars, and I got to meet Mike Soo. John explained that his group were going to climb Greedy Varmint (5.8) and that we could either meet them at a nearby sport-climbing area (the Isle of Ewe) or back at Gary’s place in Tucson. He wished us luck, tossed the van keys to Leon and said farewell. Our target for this day was a climb called What’s My Line? (5.6 A0) on Cochise Dome deep in the Western Stronghold. Time was of the essence, so we left post-haste. If you want to read about what happened to John's group, try John's version or Gary's version of the events.
We were not locals, none of us had ever been here before, so we had no idea of what was about to befall us. This day I will never, ever, forget.
We drove to the end of the dirt road, it was about 8 dusty miles from where we left John and his crew, there were a couple of other vehicles about but no people. We got out and started to organize our packs. Then came the first hiccup. All of my stuff was locked in this really dreadful gearsack that I had bought expressly for this trip. The gearsack was merely for holding all my climbing paraphenalia in one container, I would transfer what I needed to my daypack, and it was closed with an old-fashioned lock. The key to which I had left behind at Gary’s place in Tucson. When the last echoes of my scream of frustration faded away I borrowed a knife from Leon and performed a ceasarian-section. Somehow I managed to severly stab my thumb during the process. Soon we were all ready to go. The first part of the hike was supposed to be pretty easy, we would be following a very nice trail for about one and a half miles. It was easy too, switchbacks getting us up high and then we moved up the valley and further into the Western Stronghold towards our goal. We could already see the famous Rockfellow Dome, which was close to where we wanted to be, so we were sure that we wouldn’t get lost. It was a pretty hot day, so occasionally we had to stop and drink a little water. At a likely looking point we stepped off the trail and proceded to make our way towards Cochise Dome, which we could see. Very quickly we found that bushwacking in the Stronghold is no picnic.
Back in the mid 19th century a band of Chiricahua Apaches, led by their chief Cochise, waged war on the US army. Their base of operations, from which they held out for many years, was what came to be known as the Stronghold. To anyone who has hiked in the area it becomes immediately obvious how Cochise was here able to keep an army at bay for over a decade. It is an intimidatingly difficult place to navigate in. The plant life alone is a crawling mass of evil sharpness. In addition to this the terrain is very steep.
After about an hour of struggle we decide to follow a steep wash down to what is humorously termed a streambed at the valley floor. It’s actually a flash-floodbed. The wash turned out to be as dangerous a path as anything we had encountered before. At one point I tried to downclimb an eight foot boulder, I slipped and fell. Somehow I landed on some rocks and didn’t break anything. Leon attempted the same downclimb with the same result. It’s a miracle neither of us was hurt. James wisely opted for a different path, making his way back up a ways and then down the side of the wash until he could rejoin us. We eventually got to the streambed and resumed our journey towards Cochise Dome … which we could see in profile. Soon we found a couple of little cairns and other indications which showed the trail moving up towards the Dome. We spotted the big cleft that we were supposed to enter and then follow up as it took us to the beginning of the climb. This was one hell of an approach, it was a series of difficult little ascents between giant walls of granite … some of it felt like 5th class, particularly the very last chimney. This approach placed us on a ledge almost half way up the face of the Dome on the extreme left side. We were already pretty tired and much time had been lost, it was 1.30pm.
Right about then an airforce herculese roared up the valley and frightened the hell out of us as it banked around the Rockfellow Dome and flew away to the north east.
Being a little cautious we decided to sit ourselves behind a flake instead of out on the ledge proper. We were about 200 feet off the ground up there. James was pretty gripped until we had set our belay anchor in place (a #4 camalot behind the flake). Leon and I had already decided that I would take the first and third pitches, while he took the second one. John’s guidebook describes the beginning of the climb as follows …
What’s My Line? 5.6, A0 ***
The key word here is trauma. Unimaginable trauma. But I’m getting ahead of myself, allow me to explain. Leon put me on belay and I stepped out onto the ledge proper to have a look for the bolt. I saw two bolts and thought confusedly that these might be the belay anchors … but where was the other bolt then? About twenty feet to the right, across a featureless expanse, were the chickenheads. These features, which are protuberances of stone which at best have an easily grasped lip all the way around or at worst are merely pimples, covered the right side of the face … I had to get over there somehow. Climbing directly across the face is very difficult, a move rated at 5.10c and pretty much out of the question for me. So I got Leon to lower me about 30 feet, this enabled me to pendulum across from below. Doing that was pretty easy, but as I started climbing things began to get really scary.
The plan was to climb up above the bolts and set some sort of protection directly above them. The reason you do this is to keep your partners safe as they follow your line. If you protect somewhere to the right of the bolts you pretty much force anyone following to try and do that 5.10c traverse, if they slip (which for us was almost guaranteed) they will fall and then pendulum right … smacking into a field of out-jutting chickenheads probably to suffer serious injury. So you have to set the protection directly above the bolts, that way a following climber can either merely swing himself from the bolts to the chickenheads at right or attempt the traverse knowing that he will not pendulum wildly if he falls. The thing is that you can’t set anything in between the bolts and the high point, which is about sixty feet higher up.
This was, without doubt, the hardest climb that I have ever done. Technically it’s really easy (it’s rated at 5.6). The chicken heads below the level of the bolts were pretty lousy, not much lip to grab and I was pretty damn gripped about this. So I actually did try to set some pro (a sling) directly across from the bolts, having finally found a chickenhead with some sort of lip, knowing that I would have to remove it later. But it was a really lousy piece, I knew that if I fell that this would just slip off uselessly because there weren’t enough edges to put the sling behind. After that I decided to forget about protecting the route until I could reach those better looking ones higher up. It was slow going. I was feeling pretty sick thinking about how run-out I was by the time I reached where I was going to tie the first real sling on. A fall from here would drop me over a hundred and forty feet and smash me against the chickenhead field way down below. So when I got that sling tied on (actually I tied two separate slings on here, plus a third on a second good chickenhead about a foot higher up) and I was clipped in I was hugely relieved. I checked the setup thoroughly and asked Leon to lower me down to remove that crappy loop I had placed across from the bolts.
Leon asked me how I was doing and I told him that I was pretty damn scared. A few minutes later and I was climbing back up again. I passed the two chickenheads I had slung, traversed to the right and then aimed for a triplet of bolts that I had spotted a further sixty feet higher up. On the way I couldn’t find anything satisfactory for protection, so I placed nothing until I reached the bolts. I needed, asked for and got a long break.
After I had set a belay anchor up on those three bolts, and after I had clipped myself into them, a pair of FA-18 hornets suddenly blasted up through the valley and made me jump. I wondered what might have happened had they come through while I was climbing. My stomach did a lazy roll.
James followed as I belayed him up, he swung himself across from the bolts to the chickenheads and had no trouble whatsoever climbing up to my anchor. He hung there, clipped in and totally unconcerned, and proceeded to help me organize the ropes. Leon followed and came up pretty fast, he assured me that I had done a good lead. It was still a gorgeous day and even I could appreciate that, the three of us hung on the anchor and looked around. We were about three hundred feet up the face of Cochise Dome and everyone was still alive.
Far down below we could see a couple of guys at the base of the Dome. They were preparing to come up a line called Double Jeopardy (5.10R).
I put Leon on lead and he started up, it was 2.30pm. Leon’s climb was consisted of a couple of long runouts punctuated with a long pause in the middle. After about a 160 feet of climbing he reached the top of the final traverse. There he slung one or two chickenheads and placed small cams into a horizontal crack, thus he arranged his belay anchor. James went up next, moving pretty smartly he again had no trouble. He told me later that this climb was pretty ordinary for a second, acknowledging that it’s classic nature is apparent only to a leader. Once he reached Leon and was clipped into the anchor, Leon put me on belay and I climbed up as well.
The sun had drifted around out of sight and the wind picked up as well. It was getting cool, so before I climbed up I got a sweater out of my pack and put it on.
Leon had passed through two large areas of really lousy chickenheads, sloper holds only … a lot like what I saw on the first half of my pitch. He had earlier expressed his doubts about how well a chickenhead would catch a climber in the event of a fall. To tell you the truth I was regarding them as strictly psychological pro myself. Anyway I got up beside James and Leon and regarded the final traverse. We were really close to the top, less than forty feet, but we had to do this traverse left into a big gap and then go up right along the easy ridge on that side to complete the route.
Leon switched me onto a lead belay and I was moving off almost immediately. The crack line which marks the traverse had plenty of places for pro and there was a bolt protecting the traverse too. After the bolt I tried to set a big tricam in back of a large low pocket. From a difficult stance I fooled around endlessly attempting to lock it in. After a while I decided that it might be ok and continued moving left, the damn thing popped out less than ten seconds after I turned my back on it. I reached the big gap and had some fun with a small tree that was growing there, tried to sling it, messed around some more trying to move around it. Leon called out saying that he was getting cold and I should move my ass. I went up the short ridge, placed a camalot, down climbed back to the tree and removed the stupid sling. The camalot would better protect the traverse after the bolt anyway. I reached the top quickly and set up a belay from the three bolt anchor I found there. James rocketed up and sat himself in a lone sunbeam that was angling over the top. Leon was equally fast (although his foot slipped at the bolt and gave him a minor heart-attack). We sat up there and took a few pictures before deciding that we should head back down. The rap bolts where close by. At 4pm it was late.
We rapped down (in two stages) on the right side of the Dome and then, as darkness fell, started moving down the gully to look for the streambed. Looking up at the Dome we could see the lights of those other guys descending from Double Jeopardy. They must have spotted us and seen that we were a bit lost, because they yelled down a little bit of advice on how we might finish our descent to the stream bed. That was pretty cool, so we shouted up our thanks and bade them a good night.
We had only Leon’s headlamp (mine was left at Gary’s in Tucson), so he strapped it on and provided our illumination as we moved on. We spent at least two hours struggling around, over and between huge boulders immediately below Cochise Dome. We were forever getting attacked by the plant kingdom, we constantly dead-ended and had to backtrack. At one point I had led the other two through a really tight space between giant walls of rock, up a tricky chimney and onto a plateau of stone that we just couldn’t get down from. After retreating from that one we were all starting to feel a little desperate.
Miraculously, of course, we were rescued. This dude just appears out of nowhere, introduces himself as Joel and offers to help us find the trail out of there. For a while it seemed that he was just as lost as we, backtracking and circling continued, and things still looked grim. But after about an hour he got us onto the streambed we had followed up earlier that day. We thanked him and he left us to go find his partner, they were (at about 7pm) going to climb What’s My Line? … insane.
We followed the streambed, mostly with the headlamp off, until we reached what might have been the “waterfall” (Water? What water?), somewhere around there we were supposed to find a faint climber trail that would connect to the hiker trail up on the side of the ridge. The next hour and a half we bushbashed ourselves bloody. There was no trail that we could find. Stiff bushes, cacti and stones attacked us with a frequency that was alarming. Our arms and legs were getting slashed into bloody tattered pulps. Towards the end of this, pushing through horribly tight clumps of dessicated vegetation, we were each getting volubly upset. We agreed that John Peterson was a dead man if we ever got out of here alive.
Finally we staggered onto the hiking trail, there we sat or lay in stupification and for a moment quite unable to comprehend that we were going to be ok. Eventually we rose on unsteady legs and together stumbled off back down to the car. We got back to the van at 9pm.
Leon drove us out. James dozed in the back and I sat slumped in the front passanger seat. We were hungry so we thought we might hit the nearby town of Tombstone for something to eat. Yes, this is THE Tombstone of the “Shoot-Out at the OK Corral” legend. We staggered into Big Nose Kate’s saloon … this is true … and found that nothing had changed since Kate first slapped Doc Holiday stupid and announced that she was going to open up her own damned place, by golly. There were about three hundred gallons of hats and enough creaking whalebone to constrict passage through the panama canal. But there was no food. Everywhere else in town was closed, so we just left.
Was our ordeal over? Did we merely drive back to Tucson and sleep the blessed sleep of the recently reprieved? No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. Nothing is ever easy. We still had one more hurdle. You see, we were 20 miles north of the Mexican border, a few miles south of an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) checkpoint. This checkpoint is manned by men with guns, big guns, and lately they have probably gotten very nervous. We were three dirty and desperate looking foreign nationals, one of us Mexican, and only one of us had any I.D. (not the Mexican). So we put James (he had his Australian passport, Australian driver’s license and a pretty good attempt at an honest expression) behind the wheel, Leon in the back, and hoped like hell that they would see reason.
“American citizens?” barked through the window, gun on prominent display.
“Er … no.”
We got a spiel about it being illegal to travel without our passports and then told to go on our way and have a nice night. Awesome, we had just smuggled an unidentifiable Mexican through an INS checkpoint.
We got back to Tucson, stopped at a Burger King for desperation food and then finally rang Gary’s bell. It was midnight. Gary opened the door.
“I was going to give you guys another thirty minutes before calling in a rescue.”
Gary told us that their day was not without drama either, they too had botched the descent and spent hours being lost before they found the car. That mitigated some of our own pain. Like stones we slept.
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