Welcome to the New Mexico section of Mountain Project!
The contributions that are made to this site are greatly appreciated; this site is made up of an awesome community of users that make the site what it is.
Although there is very little information regarding “rules” for submitting climbing areas and routes to this site, the New Mexico Administers all agree that the following guidelines may be helpful to truly make this site go “Beyond the Guidebook”.
1) Don’t be a jerk (this one states the obvious). 2) Route and area submissions should truly be helpful to those out climbing. Before posting, you should have some first hand experience actually climbing the route. This always results in a much more useful description. 3) Please, please, please… Don’t copy route descriptions directly out of guidebooks, online publications, etc. This is plagiarism! Remember, BEYOND the guidebook! 4) Please use the spell check and make an effort to use correct grammar.
Again, the Mountainproject community truly appreciates the efforts taken to make good route descriptions. If you feel that a route or area description is not up to standard, a brief email to one of the area admins for suggestions on improvement will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to make the New Mexico section of Mountain Project quality! We look forward to seeing you out there!
West Ridge 5.7 III
Description
This route is described in Dick Ingraham's guide as the NW ridge http://web.nmsu.edu/~amato/ingrahamguide/index.html. It involves some meandering and plenty of route-finding, which makes it exemplary of Organ Mountain climbing. Doubtless, there are scores of variations on this route, but most of them offer good climbing on decent rock. The overall character of the route id to find the path of least resistance. The first pitch scrambles up some easy ground on the west side of the Citadel, to the right of The Nose. Pitch 2 traverses left on the large ledge system taking you to the north side of the Citadel. Pitch 3-5 work up the ridge whichever way seems best. If you stay left from pitch 2, you end up doing more face climbing. One can easily end up facing a difficult move, or not having pro on this face, but there are many possible lines. The climbing eases closer to the top, becoming low-5th, or even 4th class for the last pitch. At the summit is a nice desert garden. relax and read the summit register under the juniper tree.
Location
Path of least resistance up the NW ridge of the Citadel. An easy descent can be made on the north side, but requires some scrambling/down-climbing. Scramble down off the summit and back to a small, exposed ledge on the north face over a 100' slab. Find the poot slings and you can do a single rope rappel to gain a large ledge beneath the slabs. The east side of this ledge is a dirty gully which can be scrambled down. While you are scrambling down check out the cool roof system to your right, several harder lines exist.
Protection
Standard rack. Some topos show fixed pins and bolts, but depending on how you meander up to the top, you may not run across these. There are some nice comfy belay ledges that stay shady most of the morning.
The Citadel
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