Climbing in Spain 1996

 

Local women near Artesa de Segre dressed for a medieval festival.

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I recently bought a slide scanner (Plustek 8200i for anyone interested) and I’m digitizing old slides before they succumb to dust and time. I’ll post some of these from time to time as I work through the boxes that have been stacked in storage for decades.

 

In the fall of 1996, Ellen and I, not yet married, headed to Spain for two months to sport climb. In those days, trips were planned around hard-copy guidebooks and guesswork rather than the still nascent internet. Netscape, the main browser option, had gone public only the year before, and a Time Magazine article on “the best websites of ‘96” lauded the "innovative" Amazon.com where you could “search for books by title, subject, or author” (!!) according to an old Slate.com article. Thankfully, there were no “instagrammable” places on the world travel circuit. AOL was the go-to service for email, not that it mattered since we didn’t have cell phones, let alone smart phones while traveling, and we still sent hand-written post cards to friends and family. I shot slides on the trip with a new Nikon SLR that I was still learning to use, hoping my 35 mm slide film would survive the airport x-ray machines. I noted in my journal that on the plane I thumbed excitedly through Let’s Go Spain while sipping Bailey’s from a plastic cup, hoping to get some sleep. I probably even had a little leg room.

 

Unlike the internet, sport climbing was well-established in Spain in the 1990s, and we eagerly launched into our tour of Spanish climbing areas, working our way from the Pyrenees (Montgrony) in the north to El Chorro in the south before taking a ferry to Mallorca for an anticipated grand finale, only to be soaked there by pouring rain through which we walked wistfully above amazing limestone cliffs where deep water soloing (climbing without ropes above the sea) had already gained a following. Along the way, we visited Siurana, Montserrat, Villanova de Meia, Cuenca, and other crags, taking days off to rest only when our younger bodies insisted or when it rained, which was not infrequently. The rain, at least that autumn, did not fall mainly on the plain. 

 

It was on rest days that I engaged in photographing Spain--with mixed success. Other days I was too focused on climbing to even try to take good pictures. While “resting,” we wandered through villages, stopping to sip coffee in Spanish cafes, or we explored famous sites like the Alhambra in Granada, wishing that we had the means to stay at the pricey hotel there rather than in our tent outside of town. I snapped pictures of cathedrals, landscapes, and local people, stimulated by unfamiliarity. With film, you didn't really know how your pictures would turn out until you had them processed months later.

Street scene in Granada where we wandered around before visiting the Alhambra.

I kept a journal for part of the trip. A few excerpts give a taste of what travel was like for us then. We were much more spontaneous than we are now with no set itinerary, and while much of our time was spent climbing, most of my journal writing describes the days when we weren’t.

 

7 October 1996. Siurana.

 

We took showers last night in the climber’s “refugio,” a stone building literally built around a limestone boulder such that there is a significant bouldering traverse in the dining room. In our camp, a huge tent-load of Spaniards is camped semi-permanently, and they stay up late laughing with pure delight. It makes me smile just to listen to them, even though I can’t understand their jokes. 

Church on a clifftop at Siurana.

12 October. Artesa de Segre, Villanova de Meia, Lleida.

 

The grocery store, which was sort of like a combination of a Walmart and a Safeway, had an entire row of pig parts hanging from a rail. Apparently, they chop off the pig’s leg and a substantial part of the ham, dip the whole thing in wax to preserve it (though it didn’t smell that preserved), and then send it off to the supermercado. I saw one woman, presumably local, take a whiff of one of the pig legs and then wrinkle up her nose.

 

Locals taking a coca-cola break during a medieval fair near Artesa de Segre.

13 October. Villanova de Meia.

 

It is always somewhat strange to be trapped by rain on a trip when you are camping. We sat in the car for a while eating Lu cookies and surfing Spanish radio stations. Eventually when the rain let up, I went for a walk but got caught in a shower and hid out in a goat cave—full of goat shit. Ellen hung out in the tent and chopped veggies for dinner.

 

Ellen and our tent at Siurana.

17 October. Montserrat.

 

We washed our dinner dishes tonight and stretched while gazing out at the lights of Barcelona and the view towards the Med, enjoying the quiet that returns after the daily throng of tourists (mostly German) have left. The monastery is a peaceful and beautiful place. We climbed a couple of routes this afternoon on a rock called the “Vomitada,” named presumably for the stink coming from a pipe spewing raw sewage from the monastic complex above into the drainage below. Pretty foul. I guess even the most peaceful places have their effluent.

Montserrat spire with clouds in the valley below.

Ellen at Montserrat.

 

20 October. Montgrony.

 

We somehow became entangled in a big local climbers’ rendezvous here today and were included in the “historica” group photo on a hillside above the monastery, with much rushing around by the photographer and much saying of the Catalan equivalent (but not the direct translation) of “cheese.”

Local climbers gathered at Montgrony for a "historic" reunion.

Miguel, the "mayor of Montgrony," on one of the excellent tufa routes there (7a+).

27 October. Cuenca.

 

We climbed yesterday in the Sector Alfar [maybe -- can't quite read my handwriting] and got typically spanked. Although there is much steep rock here, we jumped on some recommended 7a (5.11d) routes that turned out to be hard, slabby, and quite sporty. One is regularly faced with crux moves on dicey thin edges with last bolt several feet below your quaking shoes and the next one a hard move or two out of reach. Miraculously, I avoided taking any huge falls…

A climber on one of the slabby routes at Cuenca. 

5 November. El Chorro.

 

The south of Spain is an almost continuous blanket of neatly spaced olive trees, but as we came down out of the mountains toward the coast, we began to see orchards of citrus trees—oranges, limes, and lemons. At one place a grower was pruning his fruit trees and tossing the branches down the hill to a herd of eager goats who set upon the branches with gusto, eating the green leaves which must seem luxurious in an otherwise dry landscape. 

The Camino del Rey (Walk of the Kings) near El Chorro as it appeared in 1996. This failing concrete and railroad rail traverse has since been repaired but still shows up in those annoying "10 Most Dangerous Hikes" articles. I traversed it wearing a climbing harness and clipping cables along the way, via ferrata style. 

After that entry, my journal inexplicably stops, and I can’t remember why. Ellen was suffering from a stomach malaise that we thought might be giardia, but we were still climbing hard most days, and we soon headed to Mallorca where we thankfully stayed in a cheap rented apartment while it rained fiercely for much of the time before we flew home. 

Ellen on a multi-pitch sport route on Mallorca during a break from the rain.

Trips for us today are less spontaneous and more expensive than they were in 1996, partly because we have the means not to camp in the rain, partly because we have the internet, and partly because it’s harder now to show up somewhere and expect to find a place to sleep. But something is lost when itineraries lock you into a schedule, preventing you from following your whims or the random recommendations of strangers, and the internet makes it a little too easy to know what you’ll find when you get there. Still, travel is exciting and invigorating. I usually take my best pictures when I’m in unfamiliar places. Mark Twain famously said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime” (from The Innocents Abroad: Roughing It, published in 1869). This is perhaps even truer today than it was in 1869, or 1996.

Ellen writing a postcard at El Chorro with the Road Atlas for Spain and the climbing guidebook on the table in front of her. 

Bisti Badlands, New Mexico

 

Ellen on a walk in the Bisti Badlands.

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The term "badlands" sounds harsh, but barren eroding landscapes have been called that for centuries. Here in New Mexico, craggy lava flows, though not erosional, are called malpaises (bad country or bad places). French trappers called badlands les mauvaises terre a traverser, meaning “bad lands to traverse,” perhaps the origin of the English term. The trappers were probably influenced by the Lakota (according to Wikipedia), who called these places mako sica (bad or eroded land). Regardless of language, it’s not hard to understand why landscapes nearly devoid of vegetation and animal life might have been considered “bad” if you needed to find dinner or get across them on a hot day.

But it’s all relative. If I were a French trapper, or Lakota, or a Spanish conquistador, or even a modern farmer (or an antelope), I might find the term appropriate, but as a wanderer camping in empty places with my camera, badlands doesn’t ring true. I’ve had some pretty good times in some pretty bad lands. 

Badlands National Park, by virtue of being a park, is probably the most recognized badlands site in the U.S., but it’s one among many equally spectacular places. If you saw the movie, Nomadland, you’ll remember that Fern, played by Francis McDormand, spent time working at a campground near the South Dakota Park and found herself calmed by its beauty, though she eventually moved on, as nomads do. Ellen and I visited colorful badlands in Oregon in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument on our first road trip after retiring in 2021 before moving on ourselves to float the John Day River in our packrafts.

Ellen in the Painted Hills at the John Day Fossil Beds, Oregon.

Wyoming’s Red Desert, where I spent lots of time before moving south, has national park quality badlands, though wilderness protection might be more appropriate for these remote places. The Honeycomb Buttes in the northern Red Desert and the Adobe Town and Skull Rims farther south are spectacular and little-visited, at least compared to the South Dakota badlands. I once camped on the Adobe Town rim with Ellen and Bei and discovered a family of coyotes with pups denned in an eroded hole just below our camp. They seemed undisturbed by us, maybe remote enough not to have been harassed by humans. On a hot day during another Adobe Town trip, I found a soapstone medicine pipe in the cool shade of a rock tower. 

A wash below the Skull rim in Wyoming.

New Mexico, where I live now, has more than its share of badlands. I’m just beginning to learn about them and have only recently begun to explore. Some of the most well-known, are the Bisti (pronounced Bist-eye, not Bist-eee) Badlands south of Farmington. The Bisti are part of the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area surrounded by Navajo, BLM, and private lands. In recent years they’ve gotten increasing attention, probably because their weird erosional formations attract photographers, but when we were there in April (2025), despite a surprising number of campers in the main parking area, we mostly had the place to ourselves as we wandered among hoodoos, “cracked eggs,” and petrified wood. 

A downside of the term “badlands” is that some think that they are literally bad, with little value except perhaps for oil and gas drilling or other destructive activities. This, of course, is not the case. Badlands are beautiful and unique, deserving of preservation.

Early morning in the Bisti Badlands.

Bisti Badlands.

Bisti Badlands erosion.

There are a few hardy shrubs in the badlands.

Formations known as the stone wings in the Bisti Badlands.

The nearby Angel Peak area is also vast and eroded.

Public Lands Threatened

Sunset in the Potrillo Mountains, part of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in New Mexico.

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In late February, Ellen and I hiked into Aravaipa Canyon in the heart of Arizona’s Aravaipa Wilderness (BLM). A clear stream, unusual in the desert, flowed beneath cottonwood trees, leafed out to gather early-season Arizona sunshine. We disturbed a coati in one of them—it crept slowly to the ground and disappeared surprisingly quickly and a little comically into riparian vegetation. After a fun day of walking and exploring, we set up our tent under volcanic cliffs beside the stream and enjoyed miso soup, freeze-dried dinners, shortbread cookies, and a warm quiet evening under bright stars.

Volcanic cliffs above a side canyon in the Aravaipa Wilderness photographed during a February backpacking trip.

In mid-February, we car-camped with friends on the rim of the Kilbourne Hole, a volcanic maar crater in a remote part of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. We’d spent the day finding petroglyphs and evidence of Pleistocene mammals near a volcanic cone. Our campsite commanded a view across the crater to the Riley Peaks, three high points in the Potrillo Mountains, one of several desert ranges in the Monument. The site had clearly been enjoyed by ORV users, and we spoke with two friendly guys from El Paso in a side-by-side when they stopped to enjoy the view. They were originally from Quebec, and it was surprising to hear French so close to the Mexican border.

Ellen with our friends Steve and Beth Buskirk on the rim of the Kilbourne Hole in the Organ Peaks-Desert Mountains National Monument. February 2025.

Earlier in February, we camped with our Laramie friend, Ed Sherline, in the Uva Mountains near the end of his bikepacking trip around the Desert Peaks. He'd covered sixty miles a day for five days circumnavigating much of the Monument and was feeling (and looking) a little grizzled when we met him on his last night. It was cold at night, but sunrise behind the Organs merited an early wake-up to enjoy layers of mountains and haze in the morning light. 

The Organ Mountains at sunrise taken from a camp in the Uva Mountains.

Those are just three of many experiences I had on public lands in February. My life and the lives of many of my friends have been enriched by these lands for well over a half century. Going back further, my father's family loved the West, and tales of their trips from Dearborn, Michigan to the Tetons in the 1940s drew me to them starting in the late-1970s, changing the course of my life. How many American family histories have been influenced by our federal lands? How many of our lives have been changed?

My father, Ed, and his mother, Nelle, on a trip west from Michigan in the 1940s to visit Grand Teton National Park, at that time less than twenty years old. The photo was probably taken by my grandfather, Ken.

In the U.S. today, few issues are nonpartisan, but protection of public lands unites people from across the political spectrum. The freedom to vacation in National Parks, explore National Monuments, hunt and fish in National Forests, birdwatch in Wildlife Refuges, or wander through remote BLM lands is fundamental to our way of life, yet we win public land battles, never the war. Who are the legislators braying loudly for the sale or transfer of federal (our) lands even while their constituents (we) object?

Ultimately, they are driven by special interests that benefit from reduced regulations so that they can more easily exploit our lands for their profit, meaning that it’s worth their while to contribute campaign funds and pay lobbyists. Oil and gas, mining, timber, and large corporate agricultural interests profit while the rest of us stand to lose our heritage, our primary means of recreation, and our avenue for enjoying the open spaces about which Westerners, including many of those trying to take them away, wax poetic with stories of free-roaming cowboys and Big Sky Country. 

In 2024, Utah filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court that would have required the federal government to sell or “dispose of” more than 18 million acres of our public lands in Utah despite Utah’s agreement upon being granted statehood to “forever disclaim all right and title” to federal public lands. Twelve states supported this attempt even in the face of broad opposition by the public, but many did not. Martin Heinrich, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, where I live now, stood against this, declaring, "We must stand united against this un-American land grab to ensure that our public lands remain accessible and protected for future generations. Our public lands are not for sale. Full stop." Thankfully, early this year, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, a battle won while the war continues.

Ellen and our friend, Bay, admiring pictographs in the Bears' Ears National Monument established by Obama, shrunk by Trump, re-grown by Biden, and now vulnerable again. Of course, before Europeans, all lands in N. America were public. Cultural resources like these pictographs deserve to remain protected.

The Wyoming legislature was one of the supporters of Utah’s suit. I lived in Wyoming for nearly 45 years and spent countless weeks in its spectacular public lands along with many of my fellow Wyomingites of all political stripes. Recently, Wyoming legislators tried to pass a resolution transferring much of the federal land in Wyoming to the State. Fortunately, this resolution was defeated even in one of the reddest states in the U.S. underlining bipartisan support for protection of public land. Other efforts in Wyoming this year attempted to limit the right of private landowners to transfer land or land rights to the federal government. Many supporters of these measures in the Wyoming House are members of the Freedom Caucus. WTF?

Sunrise in the Honeycomb Buttes--BLM land in Wyoming's Red Desert. 2013.

Public lands continue to be threatened. NPS, BLM, USFS, and U.S. FWS employees are being fired, National Monument boundaries are in jeopardy, and special interests advocate for sale or transfer of our land. Many across our political spectrum are fighting these threats, but many others are complicit, and the war is never won. We can help by writing letters, attending rallies, donating funds, volunteering, and voting. Don’t let the few take away or degrade lands that belong to us all.

Gated and posted private ranchland adjacent to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Private landowners have the right to keep people off of their land, but we don't want our public lands to become private and locked away from us.

Visiting Paquime in Chihuahua, Mexico

The ruin of Paquime near Nuevo Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, Mexico.

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In December 2001, not long before we became parents, Ellen and I drove from Laramie, Wyoming to El Potrero Chico, just north of Monterrey, Mexico to rock climb, and then we continued across northern Mexico to the city of Chihuahua before reentering the U.S. south of Marfa, Texas. At that time, travel in the Mexican borderlands felt safe, and we enjoyed exploring small towns and the big city of Chihuahua. I still remember a misty and chilly sunrise in Parral (a town along the way) with views to the southwest into intriguing mountains that are now a no-go due to cartel activity. 

Today, the U.S. State Department advises Americans to “reconsider” travel to Chihuahua due to crime and kidnapping, including the danger of violent gang activity, but there are relatively safe corridors and destinations, so last March (2024) a group of us organized a trip with Luis Benavadiz, a guide from The Pink Store in Puerto Palomas, a Mexican border town south of Silver City, to Nuevo Casas Grandes, near the famous ruins of Paquime. We’d wanted to see Paquime for years because of its importance in Southwestern archaeology, and although we probably could have driven ourselves, Luis made the trip less stressful and showed us places along the way that we would have missed on our own. And we breezed past Federale checkpoints that might have been less friendly to a bunch of gringos. 

Paquime was an important political center that peaked after Chaco Canyon and other northern settlements were abandoned in the 12^th century A.D. At the height of its importance, it may have been home to as many as 10,000 people, but by 1450 it was mostly abandoned. Paquime had a substantial number of enclosures for raising Scarlet macaws which were ritualistically important throughout Ancestral Puebloan societies far to the north. The Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding, Utah, for example, has a beautiful macaw feather sash in its collections that was found in the Abajo Mountains of SE Utah. Paquime may have had political influence over a large area, though there is debate about its extent. 
 
Luiz stuck to a choreographed 2-day plan on our trip, effortlessly herding us around. On the first day, we visited Mata Ortiz, south of Nuevo Casas Grandes to see (and hopefully buy) the pottery that they are famous for thanks to a nearby clay deposit. I was more interested in the town than the pots, so I slipped out of potters’ houses to photograph buildings, but enough of our group bought pottery to make the visit worthwhile for the potters and, I imagine, Luiz. We also visited the once opulent but now run-down Hacienda de San Diego, a sprawling ranch off the beaten track once owned by Luis Terrazas, the richest man in Chihuahua. In its heyday, it housed many workers, but most of the buildings are now in disrepair. 
 
The second day was mostly spent at the sprawling Paquime ruin, our main objective, but we also visited a neatly trimmed Mormon settlement with tidy houses and fenced lawns. Mormons escaping the ban on polygamy in the 1890s established colonies in Chihuahua, and Luiz said that many of the residents are now successful businesspeople who commute regularly between Salt Lake City and Nuevo Casas Grandes. By late on the second day, we returned to Puerto Palomas, walked across the border, and retrieved our cars from the dusty parking lot beside a Dollar General to return to Silver City.

There are many other temptations in Chihuahua, including the massive Copper Canyon, home of the Tarahumara people, known for their running prowess, and intriguing smaller but less visited ruins, not to mention the endless obscure mountain ranges hiding who-knows-what. Although unimportant compared to the impact of cartels on the lives of many Mexicans, it's heartbreaking to live so close to Mexico and not feel safe enough to explore there. But prudence suggests waiting and hoping that borderland tourism gets safer while we’re still spry enough to wander.

Peach trees (Mormon?) in an orchard along the highway. There are substantial Mormon settlements in Chihuahua originally established by fundamentalists escaping the U.S. ban on polygamy in the 1890s. Mitt Romney has family ties here.

An old store in Mata Ortiz, south of Nuevo Casas Grandes. This town is famous for its exquisite pottery, but I was more interested in walking the streets to look at buildings.

Another building in Mata Ortiz.

A screen door in Mata Ortiz.

Bottle caps above a doorway in Mata Ortiz. Why?

Another Mata Ortiz house.

Abandoned workers' quarters at the Hacienda de San Diego.

A vaquero's rope hangs outside an enclosed corral.

One of the workers' quarters.

An old tree beside workers' quarters at the Hacienda.

Graffiti in an Hacienda doorway.

Paquime after excavation and restoration. The site covers a large area near the Casas Grandes river. Many Ancestral Puebloans may have migrated here after the collapse of the Chaco polity.

Luiz Benavadiz, our guide for the trip, at Paquime. He was funny, friendly, and knowledgeable. Luiz runs trips out of The Pink Store in Puerto Palomas.

Scarlet macaw breeding pens (but see comment below on macaws) at Paquime. Evidence suggests that these macaws did not lead happy lives. Macaw feathers are found over a vast area of Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest suggesting ritual importance.