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Brazos Cliffs

New Mexico : Rio Arriba County (El Rito, Brazos, San Juans)
Latitude: 36.7450 Longitude: -106.4196 Elevation: 10000

Description
Note from scotthsu: George Perkins re-assigned this page to me from MP user Sheets on 10/10/08. The text below was written by me, and I will slowly add to it. Thanks for your patience.

The Brazos Cliffs tower some 3000' above the surrounding lands to the northeast of Tierra Amarilla. The tallest parts of the Cliffs offer up to 2000' of technical climbing/scrambling. The rock is hard pre-Cambrian quartzite. The first technical climb was made on the Brazos Cliffs in 1952 by George Bell, Sr., Virginia Lotz, Don Monk, and K. Bruecknerand when they climbed Easy Ridge. Later that year, George Bell and Don Monk climbed the Great Couloir. Over the next 20-30 years, members of the Los Alamos Mountaineers (LAM) established some 45 routes and major route variations on these cliffs. The LAM website has an engaging write-up on the climbing history of the Brazos Cliffs. George Bell, Sr. wrote an article on the Brazos Cliffs, published in the March 1972 (#639) issue of Trail & Timberline, on which much of this description is based.

The Brazos Cliffs are on private property, and thus access is restricted (click on "more info" link above).

The cliffs have three main parts, from west to east: (1) the main Brazos Cliffs, (2) the Brazos Box Canyon, and (3) the Encinado Wedge. The main Cliffs are about 2000' tall, and the Cliffs get shorter and steeper as you move east, with the Wedge being about 1000' tall. A selection of the routes (from the T&T article) are listed below.

Main Brazos Cliffs routes listed from west to east (w/FA party and year):

White Gully (5.5), D. Liska, A. Liska, G. Bell, and M. Williams, 1967

Cat Burglar (5.7), D. Liska and L. Campbell, 1971

Great Couloir (5.6), G. Bell and D. Monk, 1952

Great Couloir Direct (5.6), G. Bell and D. Coward, 1956, with subsequent variations by D. Liska et al.

Easy Ridge (5.6), G. Bell, D. Monk, V. Lotz and K. Brueckner, 1952

East of Easy (5.6), G. Bell, W. Hendry, C. Keller, and R. Harder, 1970

Going to Jerusalem (5.6), F. de Saussure, 1958

Brazos Box Canyon:

Cleft (5.6), G. Bell and F. de Saussure, 1958

Box Tower (5.5), G. Bell and M. Hane, 1959

Gothic Arches Buttress (5.7), D. Liska, G. Bell, L. Dauelsberg, and M. Williams, 1969

Wedge:

West Ridge of the Wedge (5.8), W. Hendry and C. Keller, 1970

Wicked Ridge of the Wedge (5.6), W. Hendry and M. Hart, 1969 with east variation by D. Michael and L. Dauelsberg, 1971

Roofy Ridge of the Wedge (5.7), W. Hendry, L. Dauelsberg, M. Hart, C. Keller, and M. Williams , 1969

Rickety Ridge of the Wedge (5.4), LAM party, 1968

Routes are 10-17 pitches long, all with non-trivial approaches and descents, and thus are all Grade III & IV.

to be continued...

Getting There
Main Brazos Cliffs: From US84 just north of Tierra Amarilla and south of Chama, NM, take NM512 east and drive about 7 miles to pullout parking on N side of the road (near a row of condos), just before the the split to Corkins Lodge. Hike east along the road, bear left at Corkins Lodge sign, walk north a few hundred yards, then bear right near an A-frame house and continue hiking another mile or so to the turnaround at the end of the dirt road. The dirt road gets very rough and rutted toward the end (unpassable even with high clearance 4WD), and it is all private property so no public parking. Total walking time to the turnaround is about 1/2 to 3/4 hour. Hike east another 100 yards past the turnaround, then turn north uphill toward the base of the cliffs, lots of bushwhacking and talus/scree scrambling, fairly steep terrain near base of cliffs, which are ~500 feet above end of road (just a guess).

Brazos Cliffs : Brazos Cliffs

Cat Burglar

5.7

New Mexico : Rio Arriba County (El Rito, Brazos, San Juans) : Brazos Cliffs

FA:	Don Liska and Larry Campbell, 1971
Type:	Trad
Consensus:	5.7
Length:	14 pitches, 2000 feet, Grade IV
Season:	spring, summer, fall

Description
This is a ~2000' climb just to the left of the "Great Couloir," a prominent cleft running the whole height of the cliffs just to the left of the highest part of the Brazos Cliffs (see photo at right).

We did 11 roped/belayed pitches using double 50 m ropes, and simul-climbed several hundred feet more before unroping at the top. I will try to describe the roped pitches here, but please also look at the attached photos and their captions. In particular, take a look at the attached hand-drawn topo by Norbert Ensslin (a senior member of the Los Alamos Mountaineers).

Approach the base of the Great Couloir. There are two possible starts to the route: (a) "direct start" to the left of the Great Couloir and (b) the Great Couloir start. We did the latter.

Direct start:

p1: climb up a buttress with featured rock (to the left of the Great Couloir) up to a tree on the skyline (see photo)

p2: continue up clean rock to another large tree at a good ledge (see photo)

Continue with p4 below.

Great Couloir start:

p1: climb the start of the Great Couloir almost a full rope length; snow/ice probable near the very bottom early season (see photo)

p2: continue up solid rock with some vegetation (see photo); a 60 m rope here would have allowed us to reach a better belay spot.

p3: traverse left a bit and continue up solid rock to the big tree at the top of p2 of the direct start (see photo)

p4: from the tree, head slightly right then up crack system; go up to the right of a roof then back left onto the top of the roof; belay on a small ledge or from inside a small cutout about 10 feet above the ledge. This pitch is sustained 5.7 and exciting.

p5: continue up a crack system and pass by the left side of the prominent "boxcar" feature; stem on some small features; medium/large hexcentrics and small/medium tri-cams proved useful; belay near the top of the boxcar.

p6: traverse left about 80 ft. to some brush (recommend simul-climbing this pitch); continue on some 4th class scrambling (that can also be simul-climbed) to a notch with a tree that is the start of the "Cat Burglar" pitch

p7 (Cat Burglar pitch): climb up the exposed face toward the left of a big roof; upper part of the pitch has scarce protection.

p8: traverse left past a tree, then up a bulge; past the bulge, there is an exposed traverse up and left taking big protection; the next belay is on a small perch with a tree.

p9: head up a chute and then some stemming in a left-facing dihedral ending at another big tree for belay.

p10: some tricky climbing up a small right-facing dihedral up to a small roof, then up and beyond a tree into a wide chute to a small belay stance taking small pro in cracks on the right wall of the wide chute.

p11: continue up the wide chute, then right and up around a roof up to a little notch in the rock.

p12-14: we simul-climbed 3rd-4th class; the ridge started to flatten out and approach the summit; we unroped just a short scramble from the summit plateau; the last bit of scrambling was mostly 3rd class along the ridge with a couple of exposed 4th class moves.

Descent: Walk toward the left (west) down a moderate wide slope, being careful not to angle too far left, lest you get cliffed out. The trick is to stay right far enough to enter the descent gully while avoiding cliffs. Descend about 2,000 feet in a steep gully on mixed scree & talus. Stay to the left of the gully to hike on dirt rather than scree. When the gully flattens out and becomes consistently forested, angle right or you will miss the dirt road like we did and end up on the lower dirt road by the Rio Brazos and lots of extra bushwhacking.

Times:
approach ~1-1.5 hours
climb 6-12 hours depending on your climbing speed and routefinding abilities
descent ~1.5-2 hours

Location
Take Route 512 east from US84, about 7 miles to pullout parking on N side of road (between some trees and a garbage dumpster; near a row of condos), just before the split to Corkins Lodge. Hike east along road, bear left at Corkins Lodge sign, walk north a few hundred yards, then bear right near A-frame house and continue hiking another mile or so to turnaround at end of dirt road. The dirt road gets very rough and rutted toward the end (unpassable even with high clearance 4WD), and it is all private property so no public parking. Total walking time to turnaround is about 1/2 to 3/4 hour. Hike east another 100 yards past turnaround, then turn north uphill toward base of cliffs, lots of bushwhacking and talus/scree scrambling, fairly steep terrain near base of cliffs, which are ~500 feet above end of road (just a guess).

Protection
full trad rack including set of stoppers and cams to ~4", 10-12 double length runners, emergency rap gear, 60m double ropes recommended.

Cat Burglar : Main Brazos Cliffs from the approach hike. The Cat Burglar route goes up the steep left-angling ridge in the middle of the picture. The "boxcar" feature is visible about 3/4 of the way to the top. The route goes just to the left of the boxcar.

Cat Burglar : Direct start of Cat Burglar (Great Couloir is on the right). I think the trees at the top of this photograph mark the top of the 1st pitch of the direct start.

Cat Burglar : David Rogers scrambling up to the base of the Great Couloir, where we roped up. The boxcar is just visible high above. Our route went up the right side along the big crack above the highest patch of snow.

Cat Burglar : P2 of the Great Couloir start looking up from the belay. We should have scrambled up to the left about 30-50 feet higher and set our belay there so that 50 m ropes would reach a good belay spot. Also, this would have joined the direct route after 2 pitches rather than 3. The upper part of this pitch (above tree on skyline) gets harder and slightly runout.

Cat Burglar : P3 ending at the tree on the skyline. The tree is the top of P2 of the direct route. This was a good pitch of clean climbing.

Cat Burglar : About halfway up the boxcar pitch (our P5) right below the boxcar roof, which is just out of sight to the right of the photograph.

Cat Burglar : Start of Cat Burglar pitch (P7).

Cat Burglar : Hand-drawn topo of Cat Burglar (5.7) by Norbert Ensslin, a senior member of the Los Alamos Mountaineers.