Texas park tests mettle of bouldering enthusiasts

By Hugo Martin Los Angeles Times

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EL PASO, Texas -- In bouldering lingo, a climbing route is called a "problem." Some problems here in Hueco Tanks State Historic Site are tougher than others.

Mine was a gentle overhang pocked with shallow depressions, among the easiest routes in the park. No need for a 5-inch-thick pad to soften my landing, I thought. After all, I'm only a few feet off the ground.

I clung to the gritty granite, struggling against gravity until my grip on a thin ledge failed and I fell to a flat slanting rock below, landing on my keister on the desert floor.

My climbing partners for the day barely looked up at the sound of my thud. Falling from boulders is part of the fun in Hueco Tanks. In fact, it's a privilege. This 860-acre park -- a protrusion of sun-burned boulders in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert east of El Paso -- ranks among the top two or three bouldering sites in the world.

Since the sport's popularity began to surge about 10 years ago, bouldering enthusiasts have descended on Hueco (pronounced Way-co) Tanks like ants to a picnic. The boulders, some the size of school buses, others the size of skyscrapers, are pocked with millions of huecos (Spanish for hollows), created during a magma eruption 35 million years ago. The winter weather usually is mild -- with high temperatures around 60 degrees -- ideal conditions for winter climbing, considered the best time to scale desert rocks.

But there is more to Hueco Tanks than climbing. This lumpy outcropping of pockmarked rocks is adorned with more than 2,000 pictographs and petroglyphs from American Indians who have been visiting the area since 8,000 B.C. to draw water from the pools that form in the ubiquitous hollows.

The park represents one of the largest collections of Indian rock art in North America and annually draws hundreds of historians, educators and fans of American Indian culture.

In a satellite photo, Hueco Tanks looks like three wrinkly mounds of sun-baked clay surrounded by a flat stretch of shrub-strewn desert. The mounds are dubbed North Mountain, West Mountain and East Mountain, with a small spur protruding from East Mountain.

On the ground, the park appears as a stony oasis, festooned with cactuses and juniper and oak trees jutting from parched desert. The hub of activity is the park headquarters, a cramped stucco building at the main entrance. This is where I started the first day of my visit, with reservations to join a rock-climbing tour.

To help protect the rock art and better supervise climbers, the state adopted a management plan 10 years ago that imposed a daily limit of 230 people. Of those, 160 people can visit the East and West Mountains, but only if accompanied by a guide. Seventy other visitors can wander unsupervised around North Mountain. Before the restrictions were put in place, the park drew about 150,000 visitors a year. That number is down to about 28,000.

When we arrived at our first bouldering spot, a place called the "Warm Up Roof," I understood why they called the routes "problems." Serious climbers do not scramble up a rock face on a whim. They study the pocks and indentations with the thoughtfulness of a mathematician. They plan each maneuver beforehand and discuss options with fellow climbers.

And once they get on the rocks, they fall. Repeatedly.

The falling bodies were cushioned by 5-inch-thick pads called "crash pads." Rock climbing and bouldering are different activities.

Unlike rock climbers, who use harnesses and anchor ropes, bouldering enthusiasts climb 20 to 25 feet above the ground, at most, using only their hands and feet. It sounds easy, except that the toughest "problems" usually are on sheer vertical walls or overhangs that are nearly horizontal to the ground. (Bouldering problems are ranked in difficulty from 0 to 16 on a so-called V scale.)

Near the "Warm Up Roof," the climbers took turns on a V-4 problem that ends with a steep pitch about 20 feet above the ground. The climbers cheered one another on and howled with disappointment when someone failed. Everyone was having a blast.

That's when I ruined the mood by bringing up Mushroom Boulder, a wedge-shaped rock that offers some of the toughest climbs in the park. Park officials closed the boulder to all climbing in December 2007 because of excessive wear and tear that damaged vegetation and exposed "cultural deposits."

The group groused about the new limitations but took comfort in knowing they still had access to dozens of other climbing routes throughout the park.

"This park is beautiful," said Corey Dwan, a climbing guide from Crested Butte, Colo., who was leading six climbers from Colorado and Australia into East Mountain. "Look, the grass is growing and everything. We wouldn't do anything to ruin that."