Edit: My first climbing movie: http://vimeo.com/3743533

A day's drive south from Albuquerque carries us through the rugged and expansive beauty of central New Mexico. Miles melt away fast and easily in the vast plains rimmed by ragged ridges. We're like a drop of water dancing across God's crucible. We reach Truth or Consequences, and I'm mesmerized by an American flag whipping in the wind. Its deeper portent eludes me.

The striking profile of the Organ Mountains dominates our view as we head onward into the deep south of New Mexico. How can such a dramatic razor be sculpted from an empty plain? We bend to the east through Las Cruces, past the southern hills coverd with low wide houses in sandy hues. It reminds me of hill stations in the Himalayas. But I don't reminisce long because we've reached Baylor Canyon Road and we're bouncing along a dirt road surveying the western side of the range. It is sunset, and the soft pink and orange of a desert sunset nudge us closer to making a firm evening plan. We decide on Aguirre Springs, the opposite side of the mountain range. We reach a campground as the last light is fading behind the silhouette of the Organ Mountains. Sleep comes swiftly, shielded by enchanting peaks in the high desert plain.

Our objective is Sugarloaf, a dome of smooth white granite that stands in stark contrast to the surrounding brown and gritty range. It is our white whale.

The day breaks without us, and we spend a leisurely morning inside our tent. The wind knocks anything off the breakfast table that we haven't pinned down. We're on the trail by crack of noon. Or thereabouts, because we didn't bring a watch. An hour and a half approach from a group picnic area should have us to the base, for a romp up 1800 feet of 5.6 slab.

The trail is easy to follow for the first 50 feet. We cut left into a steep arroyo, gravity forcing us to run and dodge cactuses at the bottom. After a bit of bushwacking and cactus dodging, we regain the trail and enjoy a leisurely stroll through the desert hills. The sweeping plains to White Sands are on our left, the razor ridge is on our right, and our white whale is straight ahead. After a few hours, we are a little higher than the base of the climb and deeper up the canyon, but there is no sign of a backcountry camp where we were supposed to turn left. We backtrack, and decide to shoot up a 4th-class granite spillway that drains Sugarloaf's northwestern flank. At some point we're back to bushwacking, dirt-clawing, and sketchy-lichen-slab-traversing. We penetrate a final phalanx of twig-forests and skirt back down to the proper base of the climb, and take a much needed break! There's too much wind to comfortably eat lunch at the base of the climb, so we head to the lee of a nearby tree for shelter while we regroup. So far, it's a classic adventure outing, and I'm loving it.

We start up the slab without fanfare, and the climbing is easy. That's a good thing, because there's not much protection. My 60 meter ropes can't reach the double bolts on the 3rd pitch, so we simul-climb the last 30 or 40 feet. The wind is becoming more noticeable.

Irene heads over the curving granite horizon on the fourth pitch, and I sit low at the belay for a while before levering up to see what she is doing. Just leaning back against the slings on the belay, it's hard to keep my balance in the gusting winds. Soon I head up to join her, and the wind might fairly be described as howling. Instead of just running up what should be an easy slab, I find myself side-clinging micro-nubbins to keep from getting blown sideways. I'm leaning into the wind, but when the gusts die, I have to quickly shift weight to avoid falling forward. It's not so bad on toprope... probably not as fun with 50 feet of slab behind you on lead. Nice one, Irene!

I reach the belay, and Irene is not having fun. We're clipped into the belay together with our heads right next to each other, and we have to time our conversations between the nearly constant and increasingly strong gusts. We're definitely past the "casual" part of the trip, and decide it's time to bail. It's comical how much the wind is knocking us around on our little leashes at the belay station, and we start laughing.

We spy a tree about 50 meters below us and way off to the right. Irene raps straight down and does a tension traverse over to the tree, which is quite a feat with the wind trying to help her into a wild pendulum. I soon follow, and we begin pulling the ropes. As soon as we let go of one of the strands, the entire strand is flung by the wind out of sight across the slab to the left. As we keep pulling our end of the rope, it becomes stuck. Undaunted, we pull harder, and eventually build a 3-1 pulley system and haul with all our might. Things are looking a little serious now, because we have no usable rope, we're still up a fairly high way, and the wind is getting stronger. There is only one decision.

We loosen the rope a bit, I set a couple of kleimheists tied to my harness, and Irene gives me a belay on the tail of the rap rope we have. Irene wants to go, but I'll have no part of it. I start teetering up the 5.7 slab with the weight of the wind like a constantly changing ton of bricks on my back. I have to lean on the kleimheists a lot, and I try not to think about the rope suddenly becoming unstuck. The rope becomes taut on the little lead line we set up, and I pause for a moment. Again there is only one decision. It's unnatural untying the figure eight and letting it fly out of reach.

After an eternity I reach the midway point, a little cluster of holes that I figured could hold some protection in case the rope above me cuts loose. I fiddle for a minute, the wind banging me against the slab, and I give up after my feeble placements fail the pull-test. I teeter upward sliding my kleimheists, not sure what is holding the rope above me. At least the end at the rap station below is tied in. I pass the knot tying the two ropes together, and another 15 meters brings me to the upper rap station.... The ropes are wrapped around each other several times, and that friction was enough to thwart our 3:1 pulley and to hold me when the wind pushed me over. With some effort, and no help from the wind, I untangle and get the ropes running freely through the bail carabiner.

Just as I'm about to equalize the length of the ropes, I hear Irene's voice. It's a relatively quiet moment between gusts, but still there's no chance of undertanding what she said. She's pointing at the other end of the rope...

So picture it: Irene is at a rap station with some tail of rope. Up from there to the end of the first 60m rope, past the knot and 15 meters of the second rope, I'm at the higher rap station. The remainder of the rope is flapping off to the left. Now the section between Irene and I, the same section I just ascended, has blown as far to the left as it can, because I loosened it while sorting out the tangles above. It's still connected to me at the top and to Irene below. But in the middle of the rope, about 20 meters to the left of Irene, it has become wedged in a crack! I can't pull it up to equalize the lengths. The loose end of the rope I have is not long enough to reach down to the stuck part or to the rap station below.

Of course during this time the wind has become more insistent, and my tolerance for rope shenanigans is lessening. I do the only thing I can at that moment and figure-eight the free end of the rope directly to the rap station. I then rap down the single strand to the point where it is caught, trying hard not to become a human kite. After freeing the stuck section of rope, Irene pulls in the slack to reduce our opportunities for further adventure. Now I have a mini-dilemma: should I ascend the rope, reset the rap station, do a double rope rap down to Irene, then try to pull the rope again? That sounds like a recipe to repeat the last hour. And it would be less fun this time around.

Dusk is deepening, and the moon rises over the white whale above us. I don't want to perish tied to the white whale. I want to be Ishmael, to be alive when the story is over. I can buy a new rope.

I traverse right, leaning into the gale and toward Irene, wary at every moment of flying backward in a huge arc near the end of a 60 meter rope powered by wind and gravity. A few minutes later I'm at the rap station with Irene and we breathe a sigh of relief.

With only minor shenanigans we manage our way down to another tree and avert any disasters with our single 8mm rope strand. A final exciting rappel over a sharp lip brings us to a catwalk where we exit right, and we're on the ground in relative safety! The wind is less down here, sheltered by the trees and below the gap in the ridgeline that funnels all of nature's fury at the upper reaches of Sugarloaf.

Since we bushwacked to the base of the climb, we're not sure how to pick up the trail on the way down. Instead, we follow a series of gulleys and take the course that water would. This works to a point, but after a while we seem to be too close to the desert floor and disconcertingly far from the ridgeline that served as our reference point. But we persevere, and pick up a good trail that appears to bring our follies to an end. Well, let's call it a respite.

We let our guard down as we skirt the base of the final hill that overlooks our camp and the parking lot where we left the car. What began as a great trail turns to a good animal trail, and then it's just empty spaces in a random sea of creosote and cactuses. We can't really say we're lost, because we can see the North Star. And we can see the desert floor is down east from us and the interstate is somewhere off to the north. It's just the fine details, of say where we're located within a couple of square miles. It doesn't seem like much, but you can do a lot of wandering in rolling hills and washes and gulleys in a desert at night. A lot.

Now it's after midnight. We're tired, out of water, it's cold, and our direction is guided by instinct. We've been battered by wind, stuck at the end of our ropes, attacked by cactuses, and I'm perfectly in my element. Well, at least in hindsight I get that wistful gleam in my eye :)

We must be getting close to the parking lot, can't be more than half a mile from it. I scramble up a rocky prominence, and at the top I find my emotional nadir. In every direction as far as the eye can see: a sea of creosote, cactus, and various dark shrubbery. No man-made structures for miles around, no lights except reflections in the eyes of a creature of the night. I stand for a moment and stare harder, hoping to pierce the veil that separates us from the end of our adventure. I don't relish it, but I can deal with it. The sense of not knowing. It's just a little discomfort in the big scheme of things, a cold night out. I wish I could spare Irene from that. She crests the little outlook, and nature affords no hope of a timely conclusion to our saga.

Irene is a stoic, but that is her breaking point. We have a little talk about these "adventures" I like, mainly a talk about not having them. I'm remorseful. There is this thing called free will and she has a choice in the matter, but still I have a tendency to plan trips with uncertain outcomes and uncomfortable conditions that she'd rather avoid. So our deal is this: sport climbing and adventures restricted to the relatively known areas in Yosemite from now on. I don't really blame her, since nearly every trip we've been on has ended with wandering lost in the night, facing a strong possibility of shivering it out til dawn: Cathedral Peak (well we didn't get lost that time); Matthes Crest; Conness (only a little lost); and now Sugarloaf in the Organ Mountains. We're not that slow; it's just that we've tended to start late when climbing together, stop to take too many pictures, and so on.

Well now we're both exausted, and Irene is ready to stop. I scout around for the best place to sleep, and offer her my jacket. That little gesture is enough to keep her going. I'm aiming westward to intersect camp, but Irene comes up with the better idea of heading north to intersect the road between the camp and the parking lot where we left the car. We follow several little ridges up and down, scramble through trees, and a gleam underfoot catches my eye: a shard of glass. A little farther I notice a broken beer bottle. I've never been so happy to see a broken beer bottle. For where there are broken bottles, there are redneck yahoos or misguided youths. And these denizens seldom stray far from a trailhead. Sure enough, within fifty feet we're on a double-wide trail and in moments we hit the road on a different trailhead than we started. Four tenths of a mile later we reach the car, and it is done.

I've got some pictures, and even some videos, but they just don't do justice to the thing. And how do I know Irene is the woman for me? After reviewing the videos last evening, her only comment was: "we should buy cheaper ropes this time."