To the best of my recollection, the year was 1996. Or it could have been ’97. Maybe 1995? I had graduated high school and developed a hideous infatuation – no, a grotesque keenness – with rock climbing.
I was not yet 21, and this Christmas adventure was my first to date. The goal? A two-week pilgrimage to the holy bouldering site of Hueco Tanks, Texas over Christmas break.
In a frenzy of dovetailing school stress and trip planning, my friend Andrew Pacey and I met at YVR, driven there by our confused parents. Our past few weeks had been a spontaneous burst of energy buying flight tickets, figuring out where the park was, poring over guidebooks, climbing in the gym to become stronger but not focussing too much on logistics because, well, we were young and this was before Google Maps, iPhones and YouTube. Goodbyes said and done, we both ran through security like we were in PE class, and the trip began.
The flight took us from Vancouver to El Paso, Texas, one of the biggest and most revered border towns in the U.S. We touched down at sunset to a dilapidated, quiet and desolate airport in the middle of the Texan desert.
Being 21, I wasn’t old enough to rent a car and Andrew was several years my junior. We had an audacious plan, barely coherent or thought through, that we would simply walk to where the taxis were parked and hail one to the climbing area. How far could it be? It turned out to be far, and no one had really heard of or ever been to this park. Finally, guidebook in hand, we convinced a poor taxi driver to take two Canadian youths out into the desert. It sounds like the beginning to a Cormac McCarthy novel.
We passed triple-X drive-in theatres and car salvage yards until we turned off the highway at a UFO mock-up building. As the taxi slipped away, we had a new feeling of vulnerability. And it was cold.
We found the park warden as he was closing shop and pleaded ignorance about not having a campsite booked. He gave us a site, a gallon of stove fuel, canned beans and tortillas – the start of the mountain of spontaneous generosity we experienced during our trip.
The sun rose early each morning in the Texan sky, and we hustled out into maze upon maze of scattered, clumped and strewn boulders. Over two weeks, we met Belgians, Japanese, Germans, Swiss, Americans including Texans and other kids from the deep southeast, and many others.
The little park campground became our little global village, walking distance from all the bouldering in the whole park. Groceries meant handing over precious cash to someone with a car who was heading out of the park or hitching a ride into El Paso’s outskirts.
We clinked glasses on Christmas Eve with a vanload of Kentucky gym rats who introduced us to Sublime and Tecate beer. We debated nutrition and drank dandelion tea with two from South Carolina and shared mutual presents around a midday fire with them as we all crafted Christmas dinner à la Whisperlite.
We watched legends climb and then tried to emulate them as we threw ourselves into the climbing and the little community, re-enacting scenes from Masters Of Stone climbing movies for inspiration.
The late great Todd Skinner would have been proud of our efforts. And then, all of a sudden, it was over. We sped through the cold dark Texan night on Dec. 31 to be deposited in the airport for our redeye home by that same mustard-yellow taxi. New Year’s Eve was spent riding empty, running escalators the wrong way, drinking Coke and eating chocolate from vending machines.
We made friends with every security guard we could find and talked of resolutions for the coming year.
We would train more, climb harder, come back and be better.
We felt connected to that diverse, interwoven community of climbers out there in the forests, the deserts, up on the cliffs and walls and beyond.
