Intro
For Christmas holidays 2020 and 2021, Nate and I had climbed at Cochise Stronghold for two weeks (these trip reports are linked at the head of this page). Both times, we had a blast. And both times, even before the trip was over, we booked the Airbnb we were staying at for the following Christmas and were making a list of routes to do when we returned. For Christmas 2022, we planned on a full 2 weeks. I used a couple of vacation days and was able to get most of the time off, with the caveat of some work in the evenings during our trip.
In late December, weather in the Stronghold can go either way—it can be 70° and sunny or 10° and snowing, or anywhere in-between. The previous two years we had been fortunate to have good enough weather to climb most of the days we had been there, with maybe one or two glorious t-shirt days. Going into our 2022 trip, the forecast looked great: stable with highs in the low 50s and mostly sunny. We were psyched.
It was another spectacular trip to the Stronghold. This was the first trip where we decided to check out the west side, which entailed a 1-hour drive from our Airbnb to the trailhead for Sheepshead, well worth it for the quality and quantity of rock on the Sheepshead. Our stats: 14 days of climbing, 17 bigger multipitch routes plus 23 1- or 2-pitch routes, and exactly 100 pitches (!!) of climbing ranging from 5.7-5.11+. We climbed 12 of the formations: The Sheepshead, The Muttonhead, End Pinnacle, Cochise Dome, Stronghold Dome, Waterfall Dome, Worm Dome, Murray Dome, Waste Land Dome, Bastion Towers, Zappa Dome, Lebowski Wall. 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 two years: a trailer a mere 15 minutes drive from the trailhead. We enjoyed mornings in the heated warmth of the trailer drinking coffee, checking the news, doing computer work, and watching the sunrise over the Stronghold. We enjoyed evenings grilling good food, working on trip reports (me), reading (Nate), and watching Yellowstone. We were treated to homemade Christmas cookies and warm socks from the awesome hosts Theresa and Ron.
We had both Tanya Bok's guidebook and Geir Hundal's guidebook for the area. 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. Over the course of three trips to Cochise and gaining a fair bit of familiarity with the area, I have developed some of my own opinions on the matter, but I'll keep those to myself.
For three years in a row now Nate and I had a wonderfully enjoyable trip to Cochise. We didn't want these enjoyable trips to end. Up to this point we had climbed primarily on the east side, making the 1 hour drive to the west side only a few times. We felt like we had climbed most of the routes we wanted to climb on the east side, and the west side felt like a giant playground of new routes. So despite our sadness in not returning to our beloved Airbnb on the east side, we booked a nice-looking Airbnb on the west side for the following year (Christmas 2023) and began looking forward to the new adventures to be had.
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 1269 photos (420 of these were Nate's). Nate took lots of great photos.
Enjoy!