Memorial day weekend 2001 I convinced two good friends to climb Baboquivari with me (7,700 ft).
We planned to leave Sunday night, camp within half a mile of the climb (the gorgeous, classic "southeast arête".. 7 pitches with a couple 5.6 cruxes along the way) and then return home after a long day off climbing and rappelling on Monday. In the few days before our little escapade I had talked with numerous individuals about the peak, especially the descent. Our problem would be finding the top of the Forbes route after ascending a totally different part of the massive wall. But after going online and talking with numerous people... I had done the most research possible. Our first task was to hike to the saddle, which was a several thousand foot climb in elevation over about 2-3 miles. Vince had told me to get to the stream crossings before dark and we had done our damndest to do so, but that failed to happen. We managed after quite a while of searching to find the trail on the other side of the stream with headlamps, and keep moving. The rest of the trail that night wasn’t a problem. It was well marked and pretty crazy/gorgeous. If you haven't been to Baboquivari it is definitely worth it for the views, if nothing else. Plus the off-roading on the way in is outstanding.
The next morning all was well, no mice or raccoons took off with our gear so we hung our packs in the trees around camp in the saddle and took all our climbing gear, first aid kit, a large lunch, and about 3 quarts of water per person. I also was smart enough to bring my cell phone and leatherman with me. We were moving at 5:30 that morning and left camp around 7:00 after a hot breakfast (smart idea). The climb started on the far side of the wall from where we were. But to get to it, we had to ascend Lion's Ledge and then traverse nearly a mile up and across this shelf, scrambling many times, crawling under rock overhangs and avoiding the heinous exposure on the other side of us. All in all, its one hell of a jungle up there.
At 9:00 am we reached the arête and crossed around to the southern side of the wall and ascended a 90 ft chute with some trees and mostly 3rd class climbing. At the top we found the first pitch of the climb, using two other online sources of material... not the guidebook (Kerry’s backcountry rock climbing guide) and started climbing. What a day!!!... Everyone said it would be scorching, but I don’t think 75 degrees at that altitude or any altitude is too bad. Around lunch time we felt like we had gotten lost. I had just combined the 3rd and 4th pitches into one and passed some interesting 5.6 climbing. After that pitch we wound up directly below a smooth, steep, slightly overhanging headwall at a tree with a rap station. We downed some lunch at some crazy altitude with amazing exposure. You could see to the southwest all the way around to the north (240 degrees) and in every direction there was nothing but air for thousands of feet. The coolest thing was the swifts that would fly by over 100 mph within only a few yards of our heads as they turned the corner of the rock face. You would be lucky to see them for a brief fraction of a second, most of the time you could only hear their knife edge slicing through the air.
We reached the summit, after some pretty exposed down-climbing into a notch and several hundred feet of scrambling following that. What an amazing climb. I brought two other people up to the top so it took a little longer than planned, but we were standing on a flat area no larger than a helicopter landing pad, and could see in all directions while sitting on the ground. One of the coolest things were the prayer flags we found on top, along with the log book and the remains of a 1950s attempt to construct a fire lookout tower on top.
It was 5:30pm.
The sun sets at 7:30 and we hadn’t started our descent. We left the summit at 6:00pm. We were planning to be back in camp by now. The worst part was still ahead of us... looking down the other side of the rock and thinking... Where the hell do we go down? (not that staring down 3000-5000 feet beyond the edge isn’t intimidating enough) Now I forgot to mention that on the way up the trail I dropped one of my online descriptions for the Forbes route, the route we didn’t climb but were supposed to descend. So it wasn’t a big deal at the time. But after searching around for this descent and finding only a trail that took us to the west side (wrong side of the cliff) it was 7:00 and it was getting dark. We decided to head back to the northeast and see what we could see there... Nothing… After Nat scrambled around for a while...7:15...Nothing. In the next few minutes I had called the climbing gym, hardly anyone was there and no one knew Baboquivari. I called Vince and Eric and left a message. I tried summit hut, but it was memorial day. So I called home and gave them the numbers I had just tried and told them what we had, where we were, where the cars were parked and that we would stay the night on Babo and descend the route we came up, because I knew where all the rappel anchors were.
As soon as Nat came back up to where Rhiannon and I were, we started building a shelter in the surrounding scrub and cat claw. We made a shelter and crawled in it and huddled for the next eight hours. Over the next very long 9 hours we found some really interesting positions to conserve body heat, but you don’t really have much of a choice when it gets down to 41... That’s not exaggerating and we are wearing nothing but shorts and short sleeve shirts. We figured it would be really smart to have something between us and the cold ground to conserve heat, since the ground drains it fast… My climbing ropes did the job. 5:30am was a long ways off.. That was a long night. I think we all had to be at work the next day. That wasn’t happening! As soon as the sun was up, we were out of the shelter trying to catch every bit of its warmth for the next few minutes. We were a little hypothermic... not much (I think). Our joints were definitely stiff and achy. But no one was hurt, and we managed to drink about half of a quart that morning leaving us little water. I also had managed to pack a huge lunch for the day before, and didn’t eat it all, so I had an extra PBJ sandwich and some chips/ cookies/wheat thins.
We went back up to the summit, laughed at the idea of signing the logbook again, and then took off back down the way we came up.
It was tough persuading the other two to go back down the southeast arête. Hell it was tough persuading myself to do it. But I had thought it through all night. The advantage to the Forbes descent is two rappels vs. six and easy walking back to the saddle. With this descent we also had to scramble back downs lions ledge as well. …Back down to the first anchors...into the notch...then over to the infamous layback pitch....Which I had to guess where to throw the rope over and sort of followed this shitty gully full of choss all the way down to where we thought we had gotten off route. I combined the next two pitches (for a total 180 ft) into one rappel and did the same with the following two pitches (205ft, barely reaching) and then we rappelled that last chute to lion’s ledge. At the bottom I thought I should probably try my cell-phone again. "You have 7 new messages" the electronic lady blurted...I sort of laughed and listened to the first few. The fourth however, caught my attention in a big way. "Hi, Justin this is Deputy Hartman with the Pima county search and rescue crew, please call us at this.....blah blah blah" Holy Shit!!! my parents notified the sheriffs office.
I couldn’t make the call, because the pattern was full, so I tried again once we got back to the saddle. At the saddle we had more food, 2.5 more gallons of water and the enjoyment to see a search and rescue helicopter fly overhead, at no expense. So after calling my dad, to let him know I was okay, I then talked with Deputy Hartman, aboard the helicopter....
What a day, we got out of there and got back 24 hours later than planned. I had over 60 cuts and scratches on my right arm alone and had been in the same clothes for the past 3 days which were so trashed by the end.
Talking with Vince on the phone that evening, I found out how involved he had been with talking to the sheriffs office on his own will... at the same time I found out that another friend heard about our whereabouts on the radio...yup we made the local news, which totally got our story all wrong anyway. The next two days were pretty crazy finding out who talked to who and who knew what...My boss had talked with deputy Hartman twice on Monday...I just couldn’t help but shake my head.
So if you ever go to Baboquivari and need some information, feel free to email me (Blacklab2020@hotmail.com) and I should be able to give you some helpful "beta" on it. Just don’t ask me about descending the Forbes route. Other than that I found out that the trail to the west side of the peak was the right trail to have taken and that the piece of information I had dropped on the hike had explained more clearly than anything else to go down the gully where we turned around.
 | Baboquivari as seen from the drive in to Thomas Canyon. |
 | Southeast arete of Babo can be seen on the left skyline. |
 | Babo as seen from the saddle. |
 | Fixing breakfast in the saddle. |
 | Author on top of 5.4 Layback pitch. |
 | Author on Summit. |
 | Justin, Nat and Rhiannon on Summit. |
 | Cliffs to the west from the Saddle. |
 | Looking towards tucson from the summit. |
 | Cliffs and foothills to the west from the summit. |
 | Kitt Peak from the summit. |