TR: Southeast Arete, Baboquivari Peak, AZ
Steelmnkey
November 7th, 1998
Baboquivari (Ba-bo-kee-vur-ee) Peak is an amazing mountain located in southern
Arizona. There are lots of theories about the name of the peak. The ancient
Papago Indians called the peak Behoo-ku-vu-legi, which meant "drawn in the
middle." Another interpretation thinks the name means "water on the mountains"
from the Papago words "Babu", meaning "water", and "qui" meaning "mountains".
Yet another version of the many Papago names for the peak translates to "with
it's bill or beak in the air", supposedly because the peak looks like an
eagle's head from afar. Around 1700, it was also called "Arca de Noe" (Noah's
Ark) by Captain Juan Mateo Manje, who was a frequent traveler in the area at
that time. The Papago name perseveres to this day.
Although virtually unknown outside the state of Arizona, the 7730-foot summit
of the monolith has been visited by "climbers" for the last hundred years. On
July 13, 1898, Dr. Robert H. Forbes and his partner, Jesus Montoya, made the
first recorded ascent from the west side of the mountain by using a grappling
hook extended on pipe sections to overcome the tricky parts of the route. In
the 1930's the Civilian Conservation Corps "improved" the Forbes route to the
summit by adding iron bracketed ladder sections on the steep sections. At one
time, a heliograph station was added to the summit. Wreckage of the CCC ladders
and the heliograph can still be seen bolted to the rock and strewn along the
gullies of the Forbes route. Although the Forbes Route was and still is quite
popular with people as a way to reach the summit of the peak, another route
wasn't climbed up the sides of Babo until March 31st, 1957. On that day a team
that included Jerry Robertson, Don Morris, Rick Tidrick, Tom Hale, and Dave
Ganci, climbed the Southeast Arete route, now rated 5.6. Ganci and Tidrick
would go on to pioneer another classic Arizona summit the following year with
an ascent of Zoroaster Temple in the depths of the Grand Canyon.
I met up with my partner, Tim the Toolman, just off I-10 that leads to Tucson.
I thought the rush hour traffic was going to eliminate any possibility of
getting to the meeting spot on time, but after finally passing one
fender-cruncher that turned the Squaw Peak Freeway into a parking lot, the rest
of the trip presented only moderately thick traffic. Phoenix gets more like
L.A. every passing month. We loaded up the truck and headed south. The drive
went quickly. We don't get a chance to hang out together much anymore, so the
drive was a chance to yak about life for a while. We turned off and headed west
and south from Tucson with the last part of the drive being classic rocky
desert road. We arrived at the Baboquivari Ranch gate around 10:30 that night.
The moon was two days past full, so it bathed the area in a mystical blue glow.
We spent a while getting our packs readied for the morning and hit the sack
with a 5:00 am wakeup alarm.
The night was rough. I woke up just after 2am and couldn't get back to sleep.
My brain seemed to be off cruising on no particular thought, but running too
much to let me sleep. The 5am alarm finally went off, putting an end to my
tossing and turning. In the wee morning hours, we snarfed a quick cold
breakfast, filled up the water bottles and started up the trail by headlamp at
5:20 am, headed for the Southeast Arete.
The approach trail is interesting to follow via headlamp, although in the
daytime, it's not that hard to figure out where it goes. It's a fairly
well-trampled path that follows Thomas Canyon, below the east face of Babo. In
the dark, the overgrowth of grasses and other plantlife along the sides of the
path tended to conceal the signs of hiker passage that would have been fairly
easy to see in the daytime. Entering the canyon, the trees along the lower
slopes shut down the miniscule light the moon was providing. At that time of
the morning, I decided it was good to be doing this hike in the dark with my
own encapsulated little world encircled by the three-foot circle of headlight.
It helped me concentrate on simply putting one foot in front of the other
during the early going. Gradually, as our leg muscles loosened up a bit, we
talked on the way up the hill. That helped to pass the time.
As you make your way up the canyon, you tend to traverse from one side, down
into the bottom, then to the other side (if you haven't missed the inobvious
trail clues in the faint light of your headlamp). We managed to stay on track,
depending on team discussions at some of the more vague parts of the hike. As
we climbed higher up the canyon, the light started to grow from the sunrise
working it's magic along the eastern skyline. When you get about a mile and a
half up the trail, you leave the drainage for the last time, working a set of
switchbacks up the northern slopes of the canyon. These switchbacks would be a
welcome sight if it wasn't for the loose rock that infests the trail during
this section. Every step is an exercise in care, to make sure you don't trip or
slide and lose precious-won inches of progress. My knees were not too happy,
but we continued at a good pace. The guidebook suggests a 90 minutes approach
time to the saddle on the northern slope of Baboquivari. A few years back, I
think we could have done this time and still had a full head of steam for the
climb, but the last couple of years have been hard on us. We settled for (we
hope) a respectable time of an hour and 45 minutes to the campsite at the
saddle. We found a very nice, flat spot which looked like a great place to
basecamp from for a climb of the peak. Not for today, though. We changed out
sweat-soaked shirts, slipped into our harnesses, and packed the climbing pack
with gear and shoes. We left the saddle for the base of the route at 7:40, well
ahead of our mental schedule.
To get to the start of the Southeast Arete route, you have to cross below the
east face along Lion's Ledge, a shelf of varying width that extends most of the
way around the peak. From the saddle, we hiked a short way back down the trail
we'd just come up and branched off on a side path that is marked by a cairn.
From there, things get a little more cerebral as you have to make a few
route-finding decisions to find the easiest way to Lion's Ledge. Up here, down
there. Below most of the traverse, the cliffs below remind you not to make a
false step or you'll get a memorable ride that they don't offer at Disneyland.
Once we arrived on the Ledge itself, it was only a short ways to the spring in
the center of the wall. Five gallon buckets have been placed to catch the
water. They were overflowing and ran down the wall below. There are a few
really good bivy sites along the ledge in this area if you are so inclined.
Bring a water filter and some food and you're set! After the spring starts the
fun part of the approach. Some bush-worming (in and out through thick bushes)
along the ledge is the technique-du-jour here. One spot requires a
hands-and-knees traverse under an overhanging roof at the bottom of the wall
(to avoid the bushes). Then it's more wrestling with the plant life to skirt
the last section of wall before you arrive at the base of the Southeast Arete.
It was 8:30 when we arrived at the base of the route.
The route starts in a 30-foot right-facing corner next to a house-sized
boulder. Normally, when a guidebook says "house-sized", it just means a very
large boulder. In this case, it looked about the size of a four-bedroom two and
a half bath split-level. I got the lead on the first pitch. At the top of the
corner system, a strange move over a bulge went at 5.6 or so. After that, I
scrambled up to a ledge with a bunch of bushes and then up to another ledge
where a large prickly-pear cactus kept me company while I belayed. The route
has a pretty fair population of cactus on it. You really have to look out for
the myriad of varieties growing out of the corners and cracks, usually where
you stick your fingers. I'd noticed some loose rock on the initial ledge, now
thirty feet below, but didn't think it would be a problem. As I pulled the rope
up, a block cut loose. "ROCK! SORRY!" Loose rock can be found on a few sections
of the route, but for the most part, if you're on track, things don't get too
bad. Helmets would be a good idea for anyone tackling the route, though. I
pulled more carefully and Tim climbed quickly up to my belay.
We traded off the gear and the pack we were climbing with and Tim started up
the second pitch. He scrambled over a small rock knob to the right of the belay
to get into a steep corner/gully system. This had some really nice climbing on
it, mostly stemming and pulling on good holds. The corner exited at a small
tree growing out of the side of the golden wall. Tim continued up the face
above, traversed a bit of broken junk and belayed in a notch on the arete. From
this position, you can see for miles off both sides of the mountain. Quite an
impressive view in both directions. I followed the pitch and we traded gear
again.
The start of pitch three is attention-getting. A short, steep section of skinny
arete with the world dropping away from you on either side. At first glance, it
looks rather skimpy on three items: handholds, footholds, and pro placements,
but up close you see that there are actually good holds. Crossing over from
Tim's perch, I latched onto the arete and stepped up. A couple more moves and I
got a fairly ok stopped in a small crack, then finished off the steep section
to gain yet another ledge with bushes on it. Working left, I crossed a slope of
broken rock to the base of an obtuse corner. Another stemming exercise with a
tree in the middle. Getting through the tree reminded me of playing on the
jungle gym in third grade; latch on to it, pull your feet high, swing up and
through the bars. One more tricky move was required to reach the broken slopes
above the corner and I scrambled up to the base of a ten-foot buttress with a
nice handcrack in it. I anchored in and belayed Tim up. It was a beautiful day,
not a cloud in the sky, light breeze, great views. So far, so good.
Tim launched off on the fourth pitch by climbing the short buttress. A 5.6
layback move around a small roof above led to easier corners and ledges.
Scrambling up this, he reached what is described in the guidebook as "a
vegetated ramp." He placed a piece and then hand traversed twenty-five feet
left to the only bolted belay on the route. I followed the layback move with
care and a bit more stemming than Tim used. The backpack was conspiring to
throw me off the layback. After that, I cruised up to the belay. A beautiful
left-facing corner (the "open book" in the guide's route description) rose
above the belay. The book looked harder from below than it turned out to be.
Maybe about 5.4 or so. I wasn't putting in much pro (about three pieces/pitch
avg), and had run out my last piece a ways when Tim asked how the pro was. I
put another piece in. He was right…that's no place to have an accident. At the
top of the corner, I exited right and ended up at the bottom of a
boulder-strewn slope leading to the large notch separating our arete from the
main summit of the mountain. Remembering the lesson of the first pitch
bombshell, I stopped at a tree and belayed Tim. When Tim reached the belay, we
coiled the rope to keep from tripping over it and started up the Class 2 slopes
to the notch above. If you go dead center, the wall drops steeply off into the
notch, but if you work your way to the left side, you can scramble and easily
downclimb to the notch. One pitch to go!
In the notch, Tim lashed himself to a tree with a sling and I started up the
last pitch. This involved climbing to the top of a "stacked pillar" of rocks
leaning against the wall with a questionable cam in a flared crack at the base
of the small pillar. This seemed a little squirrelly, but there's a little
ledge sticking out behind the stack of rocks that offers something a little
more dependable to stand on. Reaching up and over to some holds in the gravelly
section above, I pulled myself up and the technical climbing was over. I
stopped short to belay Tim and we coiled the ropes for the hike to the summit.
Winston Churchill once said, "When you're going through hell, keep going."
We'd already done a boatload of elevation gain that day, and tired leg muscles
were not one bit happy about having to slog up the boulder covered slope to the
summit area. We kept going and it was hell. At the top, the mountain rolled off
in front of us. All of the sudden we could see for miles and miles in all
directions. A 360-degree panorama of the southern expanse of Arizona. Uh…wow.
We staggered the last few feet to the summit cairn and called it good. It was
11:35am. We were looking good for not having to descend in the dark. :^)
We spent a bit on the summit reading the various logs contained in a large
Tupperware™ container with a couple of rocks on it. Some of it was interesting
reading. One thing was for sure…lots of people climb Babo one way or another.
We traded out for hiking boots, snapped some summit shots, and headed down the
Forbes Route descent about 12:15pm. Slabs and ledges lead down and around to
the "Ladder Pitch", where a tree with a chain (just above the old brackets) can
be used to do a 120 foot rappel to the base if that wall. A group had just
arrived at the base of the wall about the time we got to the rappel. They were
kind and allowed us to toss our ropes down and rap before continuing their
climb to the summit. At this point, I believe we left the normal Forbes Route.
We didn't want to go down to the western base of the mountain, so we followed
ledges and gullies around and to the right (north) and found ourselves at the
top of another slabby wall with a rappel anchor visible below. Another 120-foot
rappel and then more scrambling around and to the north led to the top of a
large gully that pointed north and east down to the saddle where our packs
waited. Another short (50-foot) rappel and the rope was put away for good.
Scramble, scramble, gully, hill, trees, etc and we arrived back at the saddle
about 1:30pm. The fat lady was warming up in the wings!
We spent a half an hour snacking and packing at the saddle. At 2:00pm, we
started back down the trail on the last leg of the day. We hit the bottom at
3:00pm, tuckered out from our full day of body beating. On the drive back to
Tucson, I could barely keep from falling asleep. We planned on chowing down at
Z's Pizza (good stuff!), but the UofA football game was in full swing a couple
of blocks down, and you couldn't barely squeeze into Z's, so we bailed for the
Pusch Ridge Brewery and from there back to Phoenix and our respective wives.
Another great adventure.
Postscript
We started climbing about 8:50am and summited at 11:30am. This wasn't full-tilt
climbing as we spent some time on the way up snapping pictures from various
positions (following, belaying, leading). We did six pitches with some
essentially unroped scrambling in some of them. The Southeast Arete is more of
a mountaineering experience than any kind of pure rock climb, but the views
can't be beat and I can't think of a more delightful, pleasant place to spend
the day. If I was to climb this route again, with a slower partner, I would
probably push for a leisurely day-one backpack to the camping spot on the
saddle, then do the climb the next day from that basecamp. The climb itself,
although limited in it's hardman rock challenges, was enjoyable climbing in a
spectacular place. That's enough for me.
Greg Opland
Phoenix, Arizona
rick d
> On
>July 13, 1898, Dr. Robert H. Forbes and his partner
Wrong, July 12th!--read the diary at the AZ historical society outside
the main gate of the U of A..............
Mr History (ricky)
Steelmnkey
>I (me) wrote:
>
>> On
>>July 13, 1898, Dr. Robert H. Forbes and his partner
>rick d <fj45...@nospam.flash.net> wrote:
>Wrong, July 12th!--read the diary at the AZ historical society outside
>the main gate of the U of A..............
>
>Mr History (ricky)
Oh deary, I hope I don't burn in hell! I bow to your advanced
wisdom and knowledge.
G.
Greg Opland
Phoenix, Arizona