My peakbagger friend Andy Martin has a thing about climbing big peaks in Mexico, especially ones with 2,000 feet or more of prominence. He’ll do just about anything to con –  I mean convince –  us to accompany him on these. On Saturday, January 27, 2007 I met up with Andy and Guy Cloutier on the west side of Tucson – Andy’s efforts had succeeded. All three of us piled into Andy’s vehicle and we left at 5:00 AM, driving south for 70 miles to the border, then entering Mexico at the truck crossing in Nogales, Sonora. We paid the $4.00 toll to drive on the freeway and continued south. About 15 miles into Mexico, we stopped at the village of Las Parrillas.

Andy and Guy had scouted out this area during the past year for road access, so we stopped at a place they had visited before – it was a gate leading into a private community. The guard told us that to get on to the road we wanted to drive, we would have to ask permission at a nearby ranch. It was still dark, and the temperature was below freezing. We drove to the ranch but found the road leading to the ranch house to be locked. We tried driving further north along the Río Bambuto to a second ranch but it too appeared to have a locked gate. So back we went to the first ranch. Andy stayed with the vehicle outside the locked gate, and Guy and I walked to a building where we had seen some people. We were told to wait while the ranch hands asked their foreman if we could drive on the ranch roads to get closer to our mountain, but after 20 or 30 minutes they informed us that only the ranch owner who lived in Nogales could give us permission. At that point, we gave up and left.

We drove back up to the second ranch, parked at the gate, and walked up the hill to a house. There, we met a family who looked after the place. They told us that “you can’t get there from here”, and explained that all the access roads had locked gates. They said we could park there in their yard and our vehicle would be safe. We three discussed it and decided to take them up on their kind offer. Their home sat at 3,400′ elevation. By the way, all conversations with everyone we met with on this day took place in Spanish, but maybe that goes without saying.

Starting from the valley bottom was a big change of plans. We had hoped to drive a dirt road up to about 5,200 feet elevation and then go on foot up to the high point of the Sierra Guacomea. But it was now 8:45 AM – we had lost about two hours of valuable climbing time just trying to get on to the road into the mountains. We would now have to climb that 1,800 vertical feet just to get to the end of the road. So we loaded up our packs, took a GPS reading in case we had to find our vehicle after dark, and set out.

Climbing over a fence to leave the farm yard, we set off uphill through the catclaw, which is always a pain in the ass. In a while, we reached a road, which soon led us to another road, the one we had hoped to drive in the first place. It was pretty good going, but as we advanced, it became steeper. After about an hour and a half, we reached the road end by an old mine – hell, I already felt tired. From there, we then headed up a steep hillside through patches of snow to gain the main ridge we wanted to follow. It was a nice sunny day, and although the ridge we followed west was pretty brushy in spots, we made fair time through alternating grassy areas and oak thickets.

We were soon separated from one other, climbing each at our own pace, lost in our own thoughts. Guy was moving the fastest and was soon lost to sight from me, while Andy was somewhere farther back. A time or two, Guy waited for me to catch up (he was taking pity on me) and we would walk together briefly, but he was moving much more strongly than I and would soon outpace me and disappear in the bush ahead. The ridge was a series of ever-higher bumps, and when I was on the third one, I looked to the west and saw a much higher one looming ahead. This one had its own name, Cerro el Tapiro. I was getting pretty tired, but decided I could get to that one. I hadn’t been looking at the map, because I didn’t have one, so I figured that that bump must be the range high point, our objective. Just when I was feeling pretty good about things, I looked farther over to the right and saw in the distance an obviously higher and much farther bump. Sweet Mother of Jesus! That was obviously where we had to go. I almost dropped to my knees and wept.

Discouraged, I descended to the next saddle and climbed up to Cerro el Tapiro. Guy was waiting for me there, looking pretty bored. By then, I was thinking some very dark thoughts about Andy and his cockamamy ideas about climbing these Mexican peaks. Anyway, Guy and I continued down the north slope of Tapiro through the snow, then started up a long gentle ridge. But once we reached the steep southeast slope of Cerro el Cibuta, the range high point, Guy left me in his dust. By the time I dragged my sorry ass on to the summit, Guy had already returned from checking out another bump to the southwest which he had verified was lower.

We ate lunch, and a bit later, Andy arrived. My GPS gave an elevation of about 6,850 feet which seemed right. There was supposed to be a benchmark on the summit called CIBU, but we didn’t bother looking for it. Instead, we filled out a register. The summit was covered in trees and brush, so the views were poor and uninspiring. There were a couple of fallen radio antennas and some old car batteries – nothing had been maintained there for a long time.

Andy decided he wanted to descend by a different route than the one we had taken up. He wanted to lose the elevation as quickly as possible and not have to re-climb all those bumps along the ridge. The only problem was that it would put him in a different drainage lower down and he would have to climb over an intervening ridge to get back to where we were parked. He figured it was worth it though, and Guy decided to go with him. It was 1:30 PM by now. I decided that it was better to deal with the devil I knew than the one I didn’t know, so I announced that I would return by the way we had come. We said our goodbyes and away we went – this wasn’t a big deal – experienced peakbaggers do this kind of thing all the time, splitting up and taking different routes through the mountains. You’d better have good route-finding (and survival) skills to pull a stunt like that, though.

Returning along the ridge went pretty well, actually, even better than I thought it would. I was back to the mine at the end of the road in 1 hour 20 minutes. My feet were getting really sore as I walked down the road, though. I stopped along the way to retrieve some gear Andy had stashed to lighten his pack, and kept going to the ranch. I thought I’d find the guys waiting for me at the truck, but they weren’t there, much to my surprise. I found the family who ran the place and we started to chat. Nice folks. The father insisted I have a cold beer with him, and I didn’t turn him down. Thirty minutes later, Guy arrived. Fifteen minutes after that, Andy stumbled in, looking tired. We thanked the family for their kindness, and drove away.

We had a 30-minute wait at the Mariposa crossing to get back into the USA, then drove without incident to Tucson. It was well after dark by the time we got home. In retrospect, the Sierra Guacomea really opened a can of whoop-ass on me. That was the most vertical feet I’d had to do on any climb since August of 2003. Next time, I’m going to do better research, and bring my own damn map, Andy. Sadly, I took no pictures, as I didn’t want the extra weight of the camera in my pack. I’m writing this story in August of 2015, and I can see on Google Earth that there is now a road to the summit. You can check it out for yourself. The approximate co-ordinates of the peak we climbed are 31 02.5′ N 110 59 W. Here’s a link to Google topography of the summit area. Road or not, I won’t be going back.

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