Picacho del Diablo; Northeast Approach
by SCMA Member Lou Wilson

Sierra San Pedro Martir National Park, Baja California Norte, Mexico. April 29-May 4, 1998

As we turned south off the paved highway into the Laguna Diablo Desert, the Picacho ridge rose up sharply on the horizon. We thought we still had plenty of light. Dr. Barriero had been to the top six times and I was confident that he knew the way. Our truck tires plowed down the sandy road, the sun was beginning to go down and the desert was alive with purple and yellow flowers. It caught me by surprise that a place so desolate could be so alive with color. After fifteen minutes of driving, the desert floor turned as blank and dead as a sheet of old brown wrapping paper. In another twenty minutes the truck I was following turned off to the west onto a dusty track that led toward the mountains. We followed that track until it turned into complete sagebrush. Returning to the main dirt road, again we drove south for a time before turning off again onto another more promising track. We plunged through this dusty track time passed until it was dark. I followed the lead truck and soon we were driving through the rough sagebrush as high as the windshield on my two wheel drive pick up truck. Just as I buried my narrow rear wheels in the sand, the four wheel drive truck in front of me blew a tire. Luckily for us, four wheel drive vehicles with flat tires function perfectly in the soft desert sand. We didn’t have a chain to haul my truck out so we used a 20-foot climbing sling out of my pack. The four-wheel drive truck hauled me out of the sand three times before I could continue by myself. Under the brilliant starry desert sky, we came to a place where we set up our camp for the night. As our dinner cooked we changed the tire in the cool desert evening, two new things came to my attention: Dr. Barriero enlightened me that none of the people riding in our group had climbed this route from the northeast side before (in other words, we were close to not knowing where we were) and the other rear tire on the four wheel drive was slowly leaking air. We ate our dinner while listening to a coyote singing a capella then went to sleep for the night.

At five thirty the next morning, we (Dr. Barriero, Gaston Almada of Mexico D/F., Helio Sanchez, Marco Antonio Sanchez, and myself) pumped up the flat tire then headed further south into the blank desert. In the distance we could see a ranch that was the cutoff that we had been looking for the previous night. The cutoff location is 31.05.85N and 115.15.97W. We continued west across the ranch and took the right branch of the track to the end of the sandy road. The trail head location is: 31.04.52N and 115.12.92W. We parked, ate something and began our trek into Canyon Diablito. My guidebook showed a distance of seven miles and 4,000 feet of gain to Campo Noche (the staging area for the final assault on Picacho del Diablo). Dr. Barriero produced a document that showed this trek to be 14 miles and 3^rd class climbing. His document proved to be half right; it is at least 14 miles but there is also a cable aided traverse within the first hour and several other places in the 5^th class climbing range. The aiding occurs at the second waterfall. We came onto this waterfall passage. It was smooth and vertical on the right side and steep and slick on the left. Years ago, to help climbers ascend this waterfall, a bolt ladder had been installed. Now it was completely rusted away. Today there is a steel cable that hangs from the top of the rock on the left side. It has a wrist loop and a foot loop, so that with some determination, you can do a pendulum of about 50 feet over the water. It’s not as bad as it looks but when this is done in the dark without a headlamp, it’s guaranteed to get your adrenaline flowing. Overall the approach climb to the base camp proved to be the most beautiful one that I have experienced but there was a price to be paid. There is very little solid ground on the 14-mile approach. The canyon is a photographers dream. You can count on ascending about 50 waterfalls. Many of these are only 5 or 6 feet tall, but some are multiple cascades and seem over 100 feet tall. Most of the time you can count on bush whacking, bruising, basing, twisting, ankle turning, bleeding, scrambling, blistering, stumbling, sliding, tumbling and near heat stroking over loose rocks from 3 inches to 3 feet across. If you add a touch of the flu to that it makes for an epic event!

After twenty hours of character building in two days, we stumbled into base camp. A young climber from Mexicali, in a pith helmet and looking much like an actor, held out his hand to me and said, "Hi, my name is Fernando". As his wife Liz was introducing herself to me, I dropped my overstuffed backpack and collapsed into a heap. I didn’t ask but I think that Fernando and Liz had arrived the day before and had taken the time to relax and clean themselves up. The climbers from Mexacali are used to the high heat and handled it much better than myself. I am a light skinned person of Irish extraction, who lives in a cool coastal part of Mexico. The temperature at 11:00 AM was 112 degrees. It was so hot that the small black lizards were not walking on the rocks. Instead, they jumped like frogs. The larger gray lizards didn’t come out of their hovels until the sun went down. The really good news was that we did not need to carry any water because the arroyo was full of ice cold clean water coming down from the snow melt.

There were at least three people that I know of who did not make it to Campo Noche and abandoned the effort. One of them had recently climbed Aconcagua, and another had climbed all of the Mexican volcanoes. These climbers had one problem in common: their packs were too heavy and they were from cool climates.

Most of the twenty plus people in base camp were in great condition. There were a number of foreigners at base camp: an American Rick Sauter, who has lived in Mexicali for nine years, and three Englishman who were strong climbers. It was very much to the credit of the English climbers that they found Campo Noche without any assistance. The balance of the mountaineers were from Tijauna or Mexacali. This annual climb was organized by Montanismo Baja California from Tijuana, and Los Picacheros de Mexicali. I asked one of the Picacheros which other mountains they had climbed? He responded, "Only this one". Members of Montanismo have climbed more than 22 Baja peaks plus many others on several continents, yet most of them including me were completely exhausted when we reached the 6,000 foot base camp. The Picacheros on the other hand were totally at ease during the high heat and stressful approach. These guys must have an extra chromosone that makes them so tough.

Let me add that there are no accurate guide books for this climb. If you cannot find someone with experience to go with you, then you must know that it is very easy to walk or climb right by some very important cutoffs. One group of experienced Picacheros on this trip hiked right past Campo Noche at 9:00 PM after having come up the approach all day. Realizing their error they had to turn around and back tack several miles. Campo Noche is not quite on the Arroyo but it is very close to it. The location of Campo Noche is 30.59.27N and 115.23.74W. People have disappeared on various approaches to Campo Noche, this approach should be taken seriously.

Saturday morning at 5:30 the climb for the peak began. The crystal blue sky had two tiny clouds on the extreme northwest horizon. From Campo Noche the climb has about 4,000 feet of gain on 45 to 60 degree slopes that have enough traverses to make this a two mile trip to the peak. The route begins from the middle of Campo Noche and is fairly well marked but unless you are a climber with previous experience here, you will probably find your self on the wrong peak. Climbers cannot see the north peak until they are within five minutes of the top and there are 3 peaks close by. Our leader was experienced. We headed for the north peak but found ourselves on the ridge between the north and south peaks. This is a common occurance. The traverse between the north and south peaks with experience requires a rope and about an hour, without experience it takes a rope and about three hours. We had no rope end elected not to try it.

I liked the Mexican style of climbing. They will move two or three hundred feet vertical feet up the mountain and then take a five minute break. Near the top of the ascent is the only place that I had an advantage over the Picacheros. The higher we went, the colder it got and the better I felt. The opposite seemed to be so for them. There was evidence of Bighorn sheep all the way to the top. I’m sorry we didn’t se any live sheep but I did see two skulls at lower elevations. I understand from my brother that the largest Bighorns in the world live near these peaks and they are no longer hunted. The view from the top is, of course, spectacular. The side we climbed is too steep to hold much snow, but over the knife edge toward the desert there was plenty of snow accumulation. This was a huge contrast at only 10,152 feet. I reached the summit ridge in 4 ½ hours with eight others including Eduardo Martinez, Rick Sauter, L. Baez, Fausto Garcia, Javier Arenillas, Marco Antonio Lopez, and Marco Lorenzo. We spent 30 minutes on the ridge and started down with the Sun in our faces. Once again the locals showed their resistance to the heat and of course I was the last one to stumble into base camp and I thank Marco Antonio and Rick for looking after me On the down climb I ripped the back completely out of my old lime green climbing pants. My fellow climbers thought this was amusing to look at but under the circumstances it was better than going down in my underware. After collapsing once again at Campo Noche, I had the pleasure of cooling my body down in the cool waters of the arroyo. I ate some noodles and slept for 12 hours. The next morning I incinerated those old rags in the campfire.

At 6:30 the next morning, after incinerating my worn out climbing pants in the campfire, Marco Antonio, Jorge Diaz and myself headed down the arroyo toward the vehicles. It was my intention to take two days to come down. Jorge wanted to be at the car by 8:00PM that night because they would be serving Carne Asada with beans and he needed to meet his ride back to Mexacali. As long as we were in the shadows we made fantastic time but as soon as the sun hit us, our pace slowed to a crawl. At 12:30 we arrived at the half way camp (Campo Medio). It consist of two caves on the east side of the stream, very close to each other. I crawled into the lower cave and laid down. Within 20 minutes my core temperature dropped to the point that I was shivering. Jorge was also shivering and he was only sitting at the entrance to the cave. I washed the dirt off of my feet in a nearby pool of water and we were headed for the vehicles once again, with another seven miles to go. A few hours later when I was trailing my partners by about 100 yards, I heard a puma snarl behind me in the rocks. I looked around but I couldn’t see it. All the rocks had the same coloring as a standard west coast mountain lion. Later on I told Jorge and Marco Antonio about this but they hadn’t heard the snarl. They insisted that someone had passed gas. If I had actually seen the puma, I’m sure that I would have passed more than that.

We reached the cable aided traverse just at dark. Another five minutes and you could have called it really dark. There were a lot of stars but the half moon had not shown yet. After we safely passed over the waterfall and stood on the sand below, we opened our packs to get our head lamps. Mine was clearly missing. (I was too exhausted to find it. My partners looked in my pack and they didn’t see it either. The elusive headlamp appeared at the bottom of backpack the next morning) The three of us come out the last mile and a half using two small flashlights and of course one of them failed at the midway point. Nearing our destination we passed one very annoyed rattlesnake. Probably she was the same one we passed headed into the arroyo four days before. Jorge kept whistling and at last there was a response from the car camp. A set of headlights came on and someone came out to guide us in. We walked into the camp at 930PM Sunday night and ate some of the most satisfying Mexican food I have tasted.

One considerate Picachero had arrived in our camp earlier that day from Mexicali with fresh meat, tortillas, beans, cold beer, fresh fruit, coffee and a bar b que. What a support system, Ole! The hole in Helio’s leaky tire had been repaired with a screw inserted into the puncture cemented with the milky sap from a Pencil Cholla. This was 100% effective when used with the electric tire pump plugged into Helio’s cigarette lighter.

After a wonderful sleep, I got my sore body up and looked around. The desert was magnificent. At 5:30 in the morning the flowers of the Pencil Chollas looked like yellow diamonds and the Ocotillo flowers glistened like rubies in the early light. The Cordone flowers were like garlands of squash blossoms and the fruit on the little Mammillarias appeared to be tiny red fire crackers. It had been a wonderful trip but it was great to be going home a day early. Thanks again to the people who invited and supported me on this fine trip.

Writer’s notes: Since my first trip I have been to the summit three more times. I noticed that the Campo Medio is ½ way to Campo Noche in time but 2/3 of the distance. Also. if it has been storming in the area during the previous week I recommend that you do not go. I climbed this peak with Steve Cole, Ron Hudson, Greg Vernon, and two others, some time later on verglas. Trust me, this is an experience you can live without. I took a 20 foot vertical fall into a snow bank. Over Easter of 2001, two Montanismo climbers with high altitude experience tried to climb Picacho when it had one inch of ice on its vertical surfaces. It was too warm for the ice to stay in place when struck with an ice tool. It exploded off the surfaces in sheets. After all their effort they were forced to abandon their effort at 9,500 feet. Montanismo Baja California does this trip twice a year and it is possible for you to become an invited guest if you ask. Dr. Antonio Barriero who was one of the founders of Montanismo and who invited me to be a member of this all Mexican climbing club passed away two years ago.