Boboquivari is one of the more memorable peaks on the Sierra Club Desert Peak Section list.  It's spectacular to look at, fun yet not trivial to climb, and is also a painfully long drive from Orange County.

I've been up the Forbes route from the west twice before and I've been saying ever since that my next time up I wanted to do one of the technical routes.  This was an attempt at the Southeast Arete Route approaching from the east via Thomas Canyon.

The Southeast Arete can be done from either side I just wanted to see a different trailhead and as it worked out that this was only a short drive from Elephant Dome.

Beta on this side was somewhat mixed with some people claiming the use trail was good (it's not) and some citing challenging route finding.  It's quite possible the comments saying it's not bad are a bit outdated as we found the route to full of thorny vegetation that was almost impossible to avoid.  The more succinct comment I read about this side was a simple "Probably best approached from the reservation (west)" and I strongly agree.

December 31st, 2017

Baboquivari Southeast Arete

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Wednesday I flew back in from spending Christmas with family in Texas and after two grueling days of life in civilization I was ready to get out again.  Fortunately that following weekend was a three day work holiday thanks to New Years and after some slightly harried planning I settled on a return to the Tucson area.

A few years back Jen Blackie, Jeff Atijera, and I did a New Years trip out there that had included caving, technical climbing, and even a facial assault by a skunk.  It was awesome except for that last part and the shots Jeff had to get to his face.  Beyond that the only other bummer was that we weren't able to summit Elephant Head due to route finding issues and an extended attempt to make something marginal work so I'd always wanted to go back.

Also since it's -ish in the area I wanted to add in one of the technical routes on Baboquivari since I'd heard it was an amazing climb.  Unfortunately due to the painfully long drives involved it's difficult to combine those two effectively with limited vacation days.

In the end we settled on driving out Friday night, not getting a lot of sleep, climbing Elephant's Dome on Saturday since it should have been an easier day, doing Baboquivari from the east the following day, and then if everything went well setting up for Elephant Head Sunday followed by a long drive home.  And hopefully not getting attacked by any skunks or drug runners.

It was an aggressive plan and things started going wrong also immediately when Kristen Lindbergh had to drop out due to some issued likely related to her unfortunate habit of consuming the flesh of innocent fish leaving just Jen and I leaving Friday night.

December 30th, 2017

Elephant's Trunk (5.7) on Elephant Dome  

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I came out of a four day Yosemite trip Tuesday night and had three long days of working from home before I could disappear off to the wilderness again. Three days after a long period of being in Boise every week so there was the usual pile of things that needed my attention in addition to trying to remind several friends that I exist as something other than an overactive Flickr account.

Still, it wasn't all unpleasant.


Then it was time for the next adventure: a 4 day trip to climb Grand Teton out of Jackson Hole Wyoming. I had been invited out of the blue by Kathy Rich several months before and as it fell on an open weekend I said yes on a whim. Originally I was one of 6 climbers but after a few injuries we were down to Kathy Rich, Daryn Dodge, and myself with me as the lead climber.

July 9th  to 12th, 2011

Grand Teton (13,770')

[Pics] [Map]