Hueco Tanks

January 24, 2023

After Christmas we headed west.

Our first stop would have been Big Bend National Park.

We had always planned to go to Big Bend while on our road trip, but due to our new van life mentality of mostly going to climbing places, and not driving around as much, the distinct lack of rock climbing, and the far detour led us to save Big Bend for later in life. It is one of Megan's favorite places she's ever been, so will either try and convince the Burns to do a family trip there, or we we'll head there later when we have a child and may be forced to do less climbing activities.

Instead we continued to drive through the great vast sea of Texas sand before we arrived at Hueco Tanks. Hueco Tanks is near the Mexico/Texas/New Mexico boarder, right outside El Paso if you are familiar with that area. Hueco Tanks is known for it's world class bouldering.

We had no expectations to stay here, from researching it online we knew that it had some of the best bouldering in the country, however the red tape that you have to go through to be there seemed like an impossible maze.

Hueco Tanks happened to be on the way out west, and we happened to have an amazing time there and stayed for 19 days.

We could have probably tried harder to find free places to stay, but outside the park there was a semi remote place we could park for $10/night, a busy spot for $5/night, or inside the park there was a camping spot for $12 per night... which included an incredible shower! We spent our time bouncing back and forth between these places.

Camping inside the park.

We loved the view from our semi remote parking spot.

So we ended up doing a decent amount of bouldering!

Dean's trip V5

Beautiful Megan warming up on beautiful rock. Lughead V0-.

So many aesthetic lines!

Proverse V3. One of the top lines for sure! Megan worked it for a few sessions and then made it one of her proudest sends!

Megan on her first session of Skimmer V3

Megan on her second session, topping it out!

This one gave me some issues, but it was a cool one! Denizen V4.

We spent some time exploring too!

Found a wild horse to ride.

The Huecos collect rainwater and provide a source of life for the local fauna, and once upon a time, humans as well.

Bouldering is pretty rough on the body, so rest days are needed!

Megan sometimes like's to get artistic and capture the local flora.

The area had some old Native American pictographs as well.

We learned that pictographs are painted onto the rock, and petroglyphs are carved into the rock.

Another rest day activity... we both learned how to solve the Rubix cube!

Some rest days are spent recovering from "allergies".

We rang in the new year by reviewing last year and talking about our goals for next year. With the added bonus of great Texas hill country wine courtesy of Doug and Lori!

Shout out the Megan's amazing embroidery

Megan's POV when she's chilling in the bed

Megan's POV when she's jealous of my style.

And here is your test for today... How many mountain goats can you spot in this photo? I think I managed to capture at least 8.

It was pretty amazing to see these guys confidently climb around on the rocks.

One of the secrets to stretching every dollar as far as we can is making sure no crumb is left unturned!

And then we did some more bouldering!

We found that warming up in the soft hangboard instead of the sharp rock saved the skin a little bit.

We also bought a knee pad, now I can aid up some boulders!

Ultra classic mega line Ghetto Simulator V2

Megan no hands chilling.

The Laughing Sutra V1.

What a climb! Super fun stemming into that hueco.... which leads all the way to the other side, that's the blue sky you can see through it!

Megan working on her overhung boulders!

Megan was able to take some great photos of Hebro Left V5.

Happy before trying it

Trying to figure it out

Slopey compression climbs often go from impossible to possible with some work and some good beta.

But if you don't figure it out..... you end up looking like this.

I was stoked to figure it out and top it out, the slopey stuff starts in the cave at the bottom.

Lithologic V4.

One of my projects was Mop Boy V6 (5.12+)

I think MP gives it a 12+ because it's basically it's the length of a route.

We would often go there for our last session of the day, it gave us an incredible view to end the day.

I really thought I would send it. I had all the moves figured out and on my best go, my foot slipped at the end... and the next day it rained and I was not able to try it again. Oh well.

Unfortunately for most of Hueco Tanks you need to hire a guide to take you around, we weren't planning in doing so but through some people we knew we were able to join a cheap tour and had a blast climbing and exploring the new areas of Hueco Tanks, we lacked on the taking photos part though.

Moonshine Roof (center) V4. The surfboard feature to climb out of the roof of this one is unforgettable!