EL PASO — In bouldering lingo, a climbing route is called a "problem." Some problems here in Hueco Tanks State Historic Site are tougher than others.
Mine was a gentle overhang pocked with shallow depressions, among the easiest routes in the park. No need for a 5-inch-thick pad to soften my landing, I thought. After all, I'm only a few feet off the ground.
I clung to the gritty granite, struggling against gravity until my grip on a thin ledge failed and I fell to a flat slanting rock below, landing on my keister on the desert floor.
My climbing partners for the day -- a group of Aussies from Perth and climbing junkies from Colorado -- barely looked up at the sound of my thud. Falling from boulders is part of the fun in Hueco Tanks. In fact, it's a privilege. This 860-acre park -- a protrusion of sun-burned boulders in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert east of El Paso -- ranks among the top two or three bouldering sites in the world.
Since the sport's popularity began to surge about 10 years, bouldering enthusiasts have descended on Hueco (pronounced Way-co) Tanks like ants to a picnic. The boulders, some the size of school buses, others the size of skyscrapers, are pocked with millions of huecos (Spanish for hollows), created during a magma eruption 35 million years ago. The winter weather is usually mild -- with high temperatures around 60 degrees -- ideal conditions for winter climbing, considered the best time to scale desert rocks.
But there is more to Hueco Tanks than climbing. This lumpy outcropping of pockmarked rocks is adorned with more than 2,000 pictographs and petroglyphs from Native Americans who have been visiting here since 8,000 BC to draw water from the pools that form in the ubiquitous hollows. The park represents one of the largest collections of Indian rock art in North America and annually draws hundreds of historians, educators and fans of Native American culture.
Thus the problem for Texas park officials: How do you preserve historic Indian rock art while accommodating visitors who come from as far away as Europe and Australia to climb on those same rocks?
In mid-November, just as temperatures in West Texas dropped to comfortable levels, I flew into El Paso with climbing shoes in my backpack to experience the park that draws climbers and history buffs from around the world, and to see whether such divergent groups of visitors can coexist on this tiny island of pitted rock.
