Enchanted Tower and the Tick Monster

First, I would like to thank the tick monster who recently graced us with his/her presence a couple weeks ago at the tower. Second, what the hell?! If you happened to be out at the tower last weekend or just before I'm sure you saw that the crag was temporarily turned into a gym with every possible foot and hand ticked with about a pound of chalk across multiple routes. No one minds a tick here or there, assuming you forgot to brush it off when you were done, but this was a little excessive. Giant ticks are ugly to look at as it is, when they litter the entire tower, well... it's equivalent to bolting a perfectly fine splitter. So do us all a favor Mr/s. Tick Monster clean up after yourself. We did our best to clean up after you so your welcome. 

bruno-cx wrote:

Nice click bait title.  

Disappointed to see that it was about chalk marks instead of a giant tick spreading lyme disease to out of town rock climbers.  

Not sure why the holds on the tower need tick marks as there is not a move harder than V4 on any of the routes.  

I wish it were a giant tick spreading lyme disease.

It's interesting how if 10,000 years ago some hooligan drew a crappy deer in a cave it's history, but if someone puts a tick by a hold it's graffiti.

Tim Lutz wrote:

the Tower is accessed through some creepy redneck compound with feral dogs, up dangerous steep unmaintained road with tons of scree, surface poo bc no toilet, 30 year bolts taken from the Box, but the guy from AZ says:

tick marks! 

lol!

WTF does being from Arizona have to do with any of this? It kind of sounds like you would prefer a nice paved tunneled road straight from the 60 along with a nice posh 5 star hotel at the base instead of campgrounds. Maybe we could also request a nice juice bar with WiFi for you and some escalators with wheelchair access up to the crag. Oh, we can also throw up some signs with giant plaques providing route info in extra large font. While we are at it we could also request that all possible holds be perma-ticked with your choice of neon paint or white paint, whatever the common preference is, also perma-drawing all the routes would be smart. Screw it, we can even throw up some auto-belays for you too. What are typical gym fees now-a-days, $18-$25 for a day pass? So add on a $25/per adult and $15/per child to gain access to the climbs, after signing a wavier and watching a safety video of course. I also think it best to drop in some 'crag-managers', just to make sure everyone is belaying properly and that no one's feelings are being hurt. 

And its not a creepy redneck compound it's the gate to middle earth. Get your facts straight.

bruno-cx wrote:

Being from AZ has everything to do with it. Out of town visitors from AZ caused the problem due their inability to follow the rules for accessing the tower when the gate was locked. 

Read the historical access rules in case you don't remember them:
https://www.mountainproject.com/v/enchanted-tower/105789938

I'm all for obnoxious tick marks and over chalking holds, just not at the tower since the climbing is so easy. Instead of a juice bar I would like to see the tradition of leaving a bottle of Jack Daniels at "Jack Daniels Pit Stop" on Zee Wicked Witch revived. Would not mind taking a shot or two when I am resting.  I suspect a someone from AZ removed the last bottle of whiskey I left up there.  Possibly an old alcoholic trad climber from Tucson with an affection for shagging sheep and climbing slabs at Cochise Stronghold. 

We aren't talking about access issues or PAST gumbies ignoring them dude... That is a problem at nearly every crag that has regularly changing and special circumstances involving access to the climbing. Reserving the blame purely for Arizonians is fairly ignorant of you and the rest of the locals that do so. I could say the same for tourists from New Mexico and their poor judgment at out-of-state crags as well. And I am sure you are all for ticks and chalk buckets on route.. The point of this post is that leaving ticks up and excessive ticking is frowned upon at nearly every crag I have been to but, apparently in New Mexico the locals prefer to have their beta spoon fed to them and for their crags to look and read like a gym. 

Now that we are done with access talk and blaming Arizonians for New Mexico's woes, I am down to revive the Jack stop on Zee next time I am there! I will leave a pint up there. Sorry it won't be bigger but I'm not for leaving a glass bottle up there, someone from Arizona might break it. 

New Mexico climbers are always blaming Arizonans because they don't want to take responsibility for anything. Boohoo we have to drive two and a half hours from Albuquerque now. Shit, the locked gate added an extra 35 minutes to our 6.5 hour drive and we aren't whining! Bunch of crybabies. We used to be the fourth car in line at that gate at midnight behind the Albuqueerque Boys. They are just jealous that we can climb 350 days of the year and they can't. Half the reason the gate was closed is due to the NM hunters going through at all hours. I will say that New Mexicans are fun to hang with when they aren't whining. See you next week E Tower.

Tim Lutz wrote:

So if you climb '350 days a year', why are the AZionians driving 6.5 hours to climb on NM tickmarks? One of your 15 days well spent!

PooPooPie, why deny that AZ likes to leave the surface duece on NM soil?  The evidence is in your very name! 

I didn't deny that, shit happens. I can say in confidence though that I saw a large group of New Mexicans venturing off with shovels to leave their glory hidden among the evergreens. The build up of poo is being contributed by many from many states, including NM. On that note, this is actually an issue and can become quite serious, we all saw what happened to the local environment at the creek before the dugouts were made. And I really do encourage the locals to push a little harder for similar dugouts before it gets out of hand. A separate post could/should be made and a legitimate discussion about that issue. And by the way it was a group from NAU in Arizona that conducted the study at the creek which inevitably resulted in the building of the poo collectors. So in my eyes Arizonians are more like the guardians of all crags in the west. Best respect your superiors. ;) 

Sighhhh...last time we shared the tower with a large AZ group there were something like 20 cars from Phoenix, with 20 tents in one site. After dark we were roused by a massive racket, which turned out to be one of these stewards of the wild dragging a giant tree behind their truck, by chain, down the road to their already massive campfire. The next morning, after being serenaded well into the night, we woke to an unattended campfire & TP all over the place. So...yeah, tick marks bad...

Everyone is so angry... brush off your tick marks, poop in a wag bag, treat others with respect.  Cheers

Good thing the pros never resort to those weaksauce ticky tac tactics

the schmuck wrote:

Sighhhh...last time we shared the tower with a large AZ group there were something like 20 cars from Phoenix, with 20 tents in one site. After dark we were roused by a massive racket, which turned out to be one of these stewards of the wild dragging a giant tree behind their truck by chain, down the road to their already massive campfire. The next morning, after being serenaded well into the night, we woke to an unattended campfire & TP all over the place. So...yeah, tick marks bad..

Twenty cars and twenty tents in one site?! Sounds like a considerate move on their part. They could have been asses and spread their group across the entire front campground and forced everyone to the further grounds. The tree thing I'll give to you, places like this you should be bringing in your own wood. Twenty cars is a damn big group, that is at least forty people, of course they were going to have a massive fire and of course they are going to be loud. With a group that size, even with a respective auditory level, it is going to be loud. I'll give the unattended campfire to you too. Leaving a burning fire unattended is worth knocking some teeth out in my book. It should be acknowledged that that mistake is not committed excessively by Arizonians.

Quick tip for climbing trips, bring earplugs crag campgrounds get loud at night.

This sounds like you encountered some top rope tough guys from Planet Fitness that like to rage on 5.10 and then call themselves climbers. They probably heard that if you climb 5.11 at the gyms in AZ you could probably do 98% of the routes at the tower.They are a bunch of jabronis and have no affiliation with our state. 

 We are not all saints in AZ but the core group of actual climbers in AZ, NM included, are. And like I said before, there are extremely stupid people on both sides, generalizing Arizonians as a bunch of frat boys with zero regard for anything aside from themselves is an ignorant stance. I take pride in our lands and I do my best as a fellow steward to maintain it and educate others, as do all of the people I climb with.  NM, CO, UT, CA, NV, WO, etc all have EWUGE groups of doucherie that give their states a bad wrap, that does not mean all climbers from those states are troglodytes. And with climbing becoming more and more popular we are all going to start encountering more city folk. Those are the people who destroy our land and it is out of pure ignorance. Generally speaking, they do not know the dos and don'ts of something as simple as camping... And when you have a POTUS that clearly does not give a shit about our environment, how do you think the sheepeople are going to interact with the land? All crags across the US are seeing a significant increase in injure and ill informed actions. It is up to The Access Fund, REI, AAC, Patagonia, The North Face, etc to partner up with local gyms and stewards to educate the gumbies. 

bruno-cx wrote:

@Poo Pie -- Pretty pysched to go to the tower and take swig of whiskey at the 'Pit Stop"  Been at least twenty years since some hooch has been left in it.  I left a Nudie magazine in there once, I don't think the climbing team Moms appreciated it.

hahaha hell yea!

Christian wrote:

Good thing the pros never resort to those weaksauce ticky tac tactics

Everyone ticks bunny bean.. What flew straight over your head is the point of this post, that you should be cleaning your ticks when you are done. And I guarantee Honnold did not tick every possible foot and hand, only the crucial micro feet and obscure features. Which is what a tick mark is meant for. Adding ticks to giant obvious features is pointless, then to not clean them, well that is selfish and is bad form.

I don't use giant tick marks but I use more than normal, and the same crappy memory that leads me to use more than average leads me to often forget to clean them, or forget to bring the brush, etc, etc 

Maybe they were coming back the next day and ended up at another section? who knows?

You seem to have devoted 5% of your energy to acknowledging the possibility  of an oversight and 95% to being pissed off about this obvious conspiracy against you.

Everyone forgets to brush a tick or two or maybe a route, most likely out of laziness, but it was a significant number of routes with an absurd amount of ticks that took a group of us quite a bit of time to clean up. Thus the tick monster. You are close but, I would say I have devoted about 1% of my energy to this post and about zero of my energy to being pissed off. However, I did devote a lot of my energy in cleaning up the tower. Brushing off excessively chalked holds, all those ticks, scouring the campground and hillside for trash, and fixing some of the retaining walls. 

Nobody here has come close to irritating me with their responses nor did the tick monster piss me off. If the tone that is being applied to my posts sounds negative and angry please adjust it to a more chipper one. No scowling faces over here! Oh and the only conspiracy I believe in is the Chupacabra draining the blood from Mexico's president and the government replacing him with a clone.

Yeah, and the X-men were at Diablo. Never saw so many needlessly x-ed blocks.

Ticks suck the blood out of you. Good on you for cleaning them up. As far as pissed off I am not pissed off at all, noobs have to learn, New Mexicans talk shit about us we send it back all in good fun. Face to face I have always enjoyed the company of NM climbers. Points about ticks and poop made the rest is just good natured jabs. If we are not giving you shit we really don't like you!

Poop!  No generalizations intended...you guys have more people, so bigger groups and more bandicoots...and I also miss the pit stop. Eric R. is the shizzle btw. 

It's not even your local mate. Don't worry about it.