Drawing Lines
There are few river crossings as noticeable as the Rio Grande. Many rivers of similar flow rate would pass under your wheels unnoticed, heralded by nothing but a small green name plate by the side of the road. It hasn’t carved the mighty canyons of the Colorado, or the sweeping gorges of the Missouri or Columbia. It hasn’t the cubic displacement of the Mississippi or the sheer horizon spanning width of the St. Lawrence. And what water it once had has been long since pillaged for irrigation all along its length, leaving it a phantom of its former self when it finally reaches the Gulf. Some years unable to even reach the Gulf, trapped by a sandbar of it’s own making. A river to nowhere.
But, despite that, there are few river crossings as consequential as the Rio Grande. Because it’s not just a meandering line of muddy gray water through a parched landscape. It’s also a thick red line on the political map of the world.
On one side of that line is Texas. Oil pumps and windmills churning endlessly above open plains. Long horn cows and extra large steaks. Shiny F150s laying over palatial rest stops.
And on the other side of the line is Nuevo Laredo.
As soon as we drive off the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge, we’re in Nuevo Laredo. There’s no transition between the rolling plains of South Texas, and the bustling Mexican city. Cinderblock buildings rise three or fours stories high, closing in on either side of narrow streets. Dogs roam about, unconcerned by the traffic. An army truck rumbles down the main drag. In its bed, four men stand dressed in fatigues, fingers on the triggers of their automatic riffles.
I navigate around several cars left parked in the street, their hazards blinking. On the far side of a plaza, I find a parking space just large enough for the van to fit. When I get out, several beggars come up to me. I don’t have cash, am in fact looking for an ATM. But I can’t tell them that. They don’t speak English, and I don’t know the word in Spanish.
I find a bank a block away and take out enough pesos for the toll road. I give a small bill to one of the beggars who had helped us fit into the parking space (It was only just large enough for the van), and we take off, following signs for Monterrey via Cuota.
As the day wears on the road gets progressively worse. First, right out of Nuevo Laredo, we’re on a four lane toll highway. It cuts south through jagged limestone mountains. Already the flora is unrecognizable, giant agave and contorted palm trees. We share the road mostly with trucks coming south from the border. Any cars we do see pass us by quickly, driving well above the speed limit.
We get off the toll road outside of Monterrey and cut North and West. The road goes down to two lanes here, but with wide shoulders. I notice that many cars are driving on the shoulder. I comment on it to Julia, but otherwise steer the van straight down the center of the right hand lane. A minute later I learn why no one else was driving there. A truck coming the other way moves to pass a slower car. It simply pulls out so that it’s straddling the yellow line and charges forward, oncoming traffic be damned. Faced with the mass of onrushing steel, I swerve over on to the shoulder, and remain there until we reach Hidalgo.
In Hidalgo the roads are also two lanes, but two narrow lanes. For cars to pass each other going opposite directions takes coordination and luck. Topes are every few blocks: speed bumps with no paint or signage to alert you of their presence. We bounce over the topes and clatter across a railroad track that’s run through the center of town. On all sides are low cinderblock structures, paint peeling from cracking plaster.
Finally, on the far side of Hidalgo, we reach the final road of our approach. It’s unpaved and hasn’t been graded in years by the look of things. Rocks stand proud in the middle of the track and I slow to a crawl to navigate around them, giving plenty of time for a small pack of dogs to lope out of our way. We come to a cinder block wall, over ten feet high and left bare. The road skirts it to the right, then cuts back to the left and through a gate.
On the other side of the wall is a different world.
Rancho el Sendero is centered on a verdant lawn, dotted with colorful tents; points of orange, red and blue against the green backdrop. On one side of the lawn, in a long row of construction, stands the hostel. It is recently plastered and painted a vibrant yellow. Opposite the hostel, there is a community kitchen, and beside it, the front office with a restaurant and bar upstairs. A slack line is stretched tight between a pair of palm trees.
We enter the office and inquire about staying in the parking lot in our van. That’s fine, there are several others living in their vans in the parking lot already. The man who can take our payment isn’t in right then, but he’ll be back later.
We check out the community kitchen, and talk to some of the other guests. They’re mostly American and Canadian. They’re all rock climbers, brought here by the world class routes of Potrero Chico. We’re told that there will be a potluck that night, so we drive into town to get supplies at the store. But by the time we return, we learn that the potluck has been canceled. A climber has fallen from high up on a multi-pitch, over a thousand feet off the ground. I ask how far he fell, and I’m told all the way. No one knows what happened yet, but the mood has turned somber. We cook our own meals and eat them alone.
We learned later that the climber who fell was Brad Gobright. He was a minor celebrity in the rock climbing community. Only a few weeks ago, Julia and I had watched him in Reel Rock 14, a popular compilation of videos where he was featured for holding the all time speed record up “The Nose”, a famous route in Yosemite. Right before his accident, he and his partner had finished their climb and were descending. He misjudged and rappelled off the end of his rope. His partner, attached to the other end, fell to a ledge several dozen feet below. He sustained only minor injuries. Brad, however, kept falling to his death.
Rappelling is a strangely dangerous part of climbing. There’s nothing hard about it. You just put the line through the anchor, clip your rappel device to it, and slide down to the next anchor. And that’s perhaps why it’s so dangerous. When you’re up above a bolt, where a single misstep would send you plummeting ten or fifteen feet past jagged limestone, you pay attention. You make sure all your knots are tied correctly and your belayer is ready to catch you.
On rappel, people become complacent. It’s only natural. You don’t tie a safety knot in the end of your line; you’ve never lost control of a rappel before. You don’t bother equalizing the rope; it’s only a short pitch. You and your parter each take a strand and rappel simultaneously; now a fall by one turns into a fall for two, but that’s OK, neither of you are going to fall. You start to cut corners here and there. And it’s always fine. Until, eventually, it isn’t.
The next morning, we walk to Potrero Chico. It’s not hard to find. The edifice of stone dominates the landscape, dozens of jagged limestone spires rising up two thousand feet above the desert. We walk down a dirt road until it fades into an arroyo, then follow that until it meets up with the main road entering the park. On either side of the road are more ranchos, trapezoids of green grass and bright hostel buildings surrounded by high cinderblock walls.
Near the crag itself is the pool complex. Several swimming pools that draw crowds in the summer when it’s too hot for anything else. But right now, the complex is closed. All the water is drained out, and the whole place has a vaguely post-apocalyptic vibe, all barbed wire fences and restaurants with metal grates across their door. The ticket booth in front is in worse shape. It has no doors and has been filled with broken bottles and crumpled cans.
We turn away from the pools and up the first canyon on the left. Los Lobos Wall: The Wolf. We put up a couple low grade single pitch routes to get warmed up, then wander over to Moto Wall to do a long slabby route there. On our way to Moto we pass another ticket booth, this one in even worse shape. The roof and one of the walls has begun to cave in. I wonder when the last time that access to the park was charged for. We bypass it, walking under a cattle fence in an arroyo to its left.
The next day, I bring Julia on her first multi-pitch climb. It’s a short one. If I owned a longer rope it’d be a single pitch, but we’re doing it for practice as much as anything. The climbing isn’t hard, although there’s one section where I find myself lie-backing over a sharp looking slab well above my last bolt and find myself gripping a little extra hard. The view from the top is excellent. We sit on a narrow fin of rock that plunges precipitously in either direction, giving us a view of the canyons on either side.
Afterwards, we rappel back the way we came. When I throw the ends of our rope down, one becomes tangled in a tree halfway to the next anchor and we have to pull it up, and then throw it again. This time it makes it most of the way before fouling in a cactus. Good enough. We spend quite a while at the top making sure that our belays are set up safely, with hero loops and all the carabiners locked. I think about if we had to do this whole procedure down more than two pitches. Some routes at Potrero Chico are a double digit number of pitches to the top. I can sympathize with someone choosing not to cross all their Ts when descending that.
On our last day we hop over a short section of fence into the pool complex to climb some routes that start right from poolside. Everything is empty, accumulating dead leaves: The pools, the barbecue pits, the fountain at the base of the shrine to the Virgin Mary. The only thing with water still flowing is the toilets, situated where they are at the very base of the hierarchy of needs.
After our climb, we hike up Virgin Canyon (named for the shrine), and see some climbers heading up much higher grade rock than we’d touched during our stay. We notice that one of them had skipped a bolt on his way up his route. We speculate about that. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get in position to clip for some reason. Maybe the bolt was busted and not worth clipping. Later we found out the reason was simpler, “I decided to skip it,” he told us, “I just wanted to feel something.”
That night the owner of the Ranchero threw a birthday party for his son. There was a mechanical bull and music blasting late into the night. The invisible line that had been drawn around Ranchero dissolved as dozens of the son’s friends poured into the Ranchero, filling the parking lot with an assortment of battered Ford and GM sedans to match the dirtbags’ battered Subarus and camper vans.
The climbers mostly congregate around the slack line, while the Mexicans loiter on the dance floor, mixing only at the center where everyone takes turns on the bull. Julia and I see that for the moment the hot tub is nearly empty and go to hang out there. From its vantage above the lawn, we watch a couple grind together amorously, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that they’re the only ones dancing.
We talk for a while with the others in the hot tub, then finally head back to the van around midnight. The music is still going, but cars are already beginning to trickle out, back into town. We’ll be heading out, too, in the morning. Heading out to see what further adventures await us south of the Rio Grande.
