Intro
For Christmas holidays 2020, Nate and I had climbed at Cochise Stronghold for 10 days (this trip report—along with others—is linked at the head of this page). We had such a good time that even before we began the drive home we had booked the Airbnb for Christmas 2021 and were making a tick list of routes to do when we returned. We planned on a full 2 weeks.
For the first five days of our trip, the weather was nearly perfect, with daytime temperatures being in the 50's and hardly even a breeze. Climbing in the sun felt great, so we sought out sunny routes and routes in the Rockfellow Group (the most spectacular but also highest and most exposed area on the East side). But then the clouds, wind, and cooler temperatures moved in. NOAA looked pretty dismal, forecasting rain and snow. Weather.com was a bit more positive, showing more partly sunny and cloudy days. Fortunately, weather.com turned out to be the more accurate forecast, so the days remained climbable, and actually quite pleasant at times. We donned our jackets and shifted to lower objectives and did more cragging-style days, continuing to enjoy the great Cochise granite.
Despite having to forego some climbing objectives and cut some days short due to cold or windy weather, it was still another awesome trip to the East Stronghold. We managed to climb 13 days in a row (one day had only 1 pitch of climbing but all others were fairly rewarding days). Our stats: 13 days of climbing, 16 multipitch routes plus 17 single pitch routes, and 72 pitches of climbing ranging from 5.8-5.11+. We climbed 16 of the formations: Bastion Towers, Chey Desa Tsay, Chalkboard Dome, Cholla's Dome, Cochise Dome, End Pinnacle, Lebowski Wall, Lower Lost Tower, Likely Pinnacle, Maybe Pinnacle, Out of Towners' Dome (three times), Polychrome Dome (twice), Stronghold Dome (twice), Surrealist Dome, Tsefnaeb Dome, Wasteland Dome (twice). We targeted mostly routes given a higher star count in the guidebook (two to three stars), so most of the climbing we did was spectacular. And despite the quality of the climbing, we never encountered another party on any of the routes we did. Nate did all of the leading on this trip. Just about every pitch here has some section of runout out of my comfort zone (which likely explains the paucity of other climbers in such a spectacular area). With Nate on the sharp end, we climbed the routes quickly. He cruised up the notorious Cochise runouts and difficult 5.10-11 sections with impressive ease. I enjoyed the ride and climbing with my favorite partner.
During our time at the Stronghold, we stayed in the same Airbnb we had stayed in the previous year: a trailer a mere 15 minutes drive from the trailhead. We enjoyed mornings in the heated warmth of the trailer drinking coffee, studying, doing computer work, and watching native birds and javelina in the yard and sunrise over the Stronghold. We enjoyed evenings grilling and cooking good food, working on trip reports (me), reading (Nate), and watching Netflix. I even did a couple of 500-piece puzzles. Like the previous year, we were treated to fresh eggs and homemade Christmas cookies from the awesome hosts Theresa and Ron. And just like the previous year, I was studying for a preliminary exam (this time in applied analysis), so I enjoyed my 4:30am wake-up-make-coffee-and-study schedule.
We had both Tanya Bok's guidebook and Geir Hundal's guidebook for the area. In fact, we had discovered the existence of Geir's guidebook during the drive to the Stronghold, available in both pdf and hardcopy; I ordered the pdf on the spot, but when Geir responded to my pdf order personally, I thought, what the heck, may as well ask him if it was feasible to send a hardcopy to our Airbnb, and he said sure, had it shipping via USPS Priority mail within the hour, and two days later we had it in our hands. We found that having both guidebooks to the area was better than having just one of them. I really appreciate both of these guidebooks for their wealth of route information and area detail. I am aware enough of the underlying controversy that surrounds Cochise route development to know that praising both guidebooks in one sentence would be a local rarity, but alas I am not a local.
For two years in a row now Nate and I had a wonderfully enjoyable trip to Cochise. We didn't want these enjoyable trips to end. So we booked the Airbnb for the following year (Christmas 2022) even before our trip was over.
The following page gives our itinerary and a nice photo overlay and photos for each of the climbs we did. I had given Nate my extra camera setup, so I included a mix of both his and my photos to give an even more complete tour of our adventures. Combined, we took a trip total of 1309 photos (345 of these were Nate's). Nate took lots of great photos I'd say.
Enjoy!
