New Mexico Bouldering by Owen Summerscales is set to release later this week and here at Squamish Climbing Magazine we couldn’t be more excited. The new guidebook, featuring the Land of Enchantment, covers the recently discovered huge quartzite and sandstone areas of the Ortega Mountains and Roy in northern New Mexico. The author, Owen Summerscales, has put a lot of time into this book, including an emphasis on beautiful pictures and layout. The book itself features over 1000 problems, 80% of which were previously undocumented. Squamish Climbing Magazine had a chance to catch up with Owen to chat about the experience of finding such a new area, his process writing the guidebook and how the local community hopes to manage impact to such a new area. Here is what he said.
Hi Owen, thanks again for chatting with us. This new area on New Mexico is getting a lot of hype and we wanted to go right to the source! Can you tell us a bit about the guidebook and the area?
The guide covers in detail six areas in northern and central New Mexico: Socorro Box Canyon, Monster Island, Ponderosa, Albuquerque Sandia Mountains, the Ortegas, and Roy. The latter two areas are massive new bouldering areas, comprised of extremely high quality quartzite and sandstone respectively, which makes a significant departure from the state’s predominant climbing on volcanic rock. Currently the Ortegas and Roy are at a relatively early stage of development – my guidebook introduces climbers to these destinations with around 300 problems described for each area. However, the potential numbers well into the thousands of problems, and ultimately they will each have to have their own separate guidebooks to do them justice in the long-term.
I am a relative newcomer to the development in Roy, and my contributions there are fairly minor, but I have been much more heavily involved in the development of the Ortegas – it’s only an hour from my home in Los Alamos, which helps!
Keenan Takashi on Icarus (v7) in Roy. Photo by Owen Summerscales ©
What was it like to first discover an area that seems so ‘world-class’?
To be part of the crew which discovered – and continues to discover – the quartzite gems of the Ortegas has been beyond belief. Especially coming originally from England, where even the discovery of an obscure new lichen-pebble might be newsworthy, the New Mexico experience has totally blown my mind! This was totally unexpected for me – when I moved to New Mexico just five years ago from California, I couldn’t find much information about bouldering here at all. A few Santa Fe locals (mistakenly) told me there wasn’t much, and it had an overall reputation for often being chossy – you’re better off just driving to Hueco I was told. After the first few years of spending a lot of time climbing and exploring the volcanic areas of northern NM, I won’t forget the first time I saw the quartzite, after hearing about it from a friend. It was totally unreal, the best rock I’ve ever seen – swirled, almost pure bullet quartz with discrete lines of sculpted holds – and furthermore it was on our doorstep, a stone’s throw from the well-known sport climbing area of El Rito. No one has really been able to answer the question of why wasn’t this known about earlier! The likelihood is that the previous generation may have seen some of these quartzite outcrops but were looking for sport or trad climbing and disregarded them as being too short.
Was it great boulder after great boulder or did you have to search around for the good lines?
Definitely there are missions which leave you empty-handed but there have been a few days when all the features of the rocks you find just align perfectly, and you realize you’ve just found a future classic area. I feel very fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time to get to experience this.
I came late in the game for the development at Roy, but this is a very similar story, with stunningly good rock in almost limitless amounts if you know where to look – however, it really is in the middle of nowhere among cattle ranching lands, so it perhaps is less surprising that the previous generation did not unearth the real climbing potential here.
Nialls Chaves on Buttercup (v5). Photo by Owen Summerscales ©
Any crazy stories as the development continued?
My friends were struck by lightning last summer whilst exploring new boulders, a literal bolt out of the blue on a sunny day; tragically, one of their dogs was struck fatally. Luckily the people survived with minor trauma (tinnitus), but if they were standing just 10 feet further uphill they likely would’ve been hit directly, with much more severe injuries. Much of northern NM is high in elevation (7000-13000 ft) and prone to lightning storms – this was a sobering reminder to be extremely careful when we’re out climbing.
Is lightning pretty common in the area?
Lightning is very common in New Mexico, especially during the monsoon season and at high elevations – the area they were at is at 9000 ft.
I want to talk a little about what it takes to make a guidebook. Did you have any idea it would be so much work?
Yes and no! I had worked with Dave Hatchett on his Tahoe bouldering guide series for the Loon Lake area, so I knew it was a lot of work. So I already had that mindset of making notes, taking topo photos etc when I came to New Mexico, but my intent was just to release a small pdf to one of the minor volcanic areas, Ponderosa. It just kind of evolved/spiraled as I spent more time here and met more people. The idea of writing a guide to Roy from scratch was pretty overwhelming, but the timing seemed to be just right, and I just took it piece by piece. Still, looking back it’s pretty crazy to think how many hours the NM guide has consumed in the last two years.
For me, good photography was an important aspect of making the guidebook, as this is one quality that allows a book to stand out from online resources. For sure obsessive attention to detail is important, as is the simple reality of being a good listener and trying to go out of your way to get in touch with everyone in the local community, not just sticking to the perspectives of your friends.
Eric Bissell on Ripple Wall (v9). Photo by Owen Summerscales ©
That kind of attitude is what makes a guidebook stick out from the rest! Did you meet a lot of people who were psyched that you would otherwise not of met?
Yeah for sure, and especially given how many bouldering areas we have down here, the chances of running into other climbers can actually be pretty slim.
Jamie Stull on Long ass (v2). Photo by Owen Summerscales ©
What was your process in developing the maps to go with the area?
I had a little help on the maps from my friend and major NM developer, William Penner, who used his skills as a land analyst to provide me with contour lines that were interpolated at a custom level, so that they could be used a little more meaningfully for micro navigation. But overall, I GPS the boulder’s locations, transfer this to a google maps layer, then use that as a base to hand draw over important features with Adobe design tools. I’m always very impressed by a good climbing map, and always on the lookout of how to improve my design skills. Still looking for a decent icon for a juniper tree…
Were there any guidebooks out there that really inspired this one?
Wills Young’s Bishop Bouldering, and Dave Hatchett’s Tahoe guides. I’d also give a shout out to Tom Moulin’s Red Rocks guide, as this is stellar, but I didn’t really borrow many of his design features, having said that. I think bouldering guidebooks in the US, irrespective of their publisher, are now coalescing on a universal color scheme for the difficulty of problems, that is based on the Bishop guide, with a 4 star system that is used in Jamie Emerson’s RMNP or Matt Wilder’s Hueco Tanks books.
Noah Kaufman on Thor’s hamer (v6). Photo by Gary Parker ©
Do you think it will be hard to transition from an area being relatively unknown to being a pretty popular place on the North American circuit?
Good question! Nowadays, the discovery of a major new bouldering area is almost unheard of, and the transition from unknown to known is likely to be far more bumpy than it was for the older areas, with more people in the sport now and of course with the internet. One important factor is keeping people on the same trail, and this is something that we have encouraged by spending time ‘cairning’ the best routes between areas, and mapping them in the book so hopefully the destructive bushwhacking and spidering of the trails. In Roy, it will be important to make sure that people close gates after them, as some of the public grasslands as rented to ranchers to graze cattle. So it is very important that climbers respect this dual-use of the land and do not let wildstock escape, or harass the animals in any way. Roy does have a solid infrastructure of FS campsites and roads which I think will help the area absorb climbers better than areas like Joe’s Valley have, hopefully these resources are sufficient.
How does the community plan to manage people’s behaviour as climbing culture is handed down from generation to generation and especially with a lot of people coming from the gym culture to the outdoors?
That is tricky, and we have to be reliant on our community for this. In NM, the climbing community is pretty tight, which is helpful for communication, but having said that, the number of people who boulder outdoors is fairly small currently, but likely to increase sharply with the guidebook. It is also complicated with areas like Roy that are almost as close to an urban center in Colorado, in which case this is more like a shared resource between different communities, without necessarily much communication or overlap between them. On that note, I’d just like to say – some of those out-of-state climbers need to learn to erase their giant tick marks! It takes about 5 seconds to do…
Siemay Lie on Spiders from Mars (v7). Photo by Gary Parker ©
I’m personally a big supporter of the Access Fund, and their work pinpoints this exact problem – teaching people how to both respect the outdoors and nature, as well as the local residents whose homes and livelihoods are based in these rural areas. Go join The Access Fund if you haven’t already!
I know other new areas that struggled to keep up with best practices for people to preserve an area. Any idea how we can shape culture as a collective while we use these public but very special places?
I always think the best way is just to straight-up call someone out when you see them disrespecting the area, knowingly or unknowingly. The best maintained areas are those that have a regular group of locals who are there to make sure these practices are followed. To illustrate this, some of my friends were climbing at the Enchanted Tower, when they saw a mini-bus arrive and a load of people scatter in all directions to answer the call of nature. They saw in plain view someone take a dump right by the trail, just yards from the cliff. So, a little time after, my friends diligently went out there to scoop up the mess, seal it up in a plastic bag, and leave it on the hood of the bus with a nice note to go with it. You don’t always have to get your hands dirty to make a point to someone, but sometimes it’s better in retrospect than just being polite and non-confrontational.
Were there any legal issues with developing this area that other could learn from?
Not really. I think it is important for developers to know what the Forest Service rules are – for instance, you cannot actively build trails, but you can inadvertently create social trails by the means of hiking the same routes over and over again.
Owen Summerscales on Chewbacca (v6). Photo by Jamie Stull ©
You have spent some time in Squamish and that was pretty special to you. What made you move to the states and how has it been transitioning to that lifestyle?
I originally grew up in Yorkshire, England and moved to Vancouver BC in 2007 and Squamish is really where I cut my teeth in outdoor climbing – trad and bouldering. That’s also where I was introduced to the addictive world of developing new climbing. The Grand Wall forest is a pretty special place, and the trad climbs on the Chief are incredible. Honestly I was just a bit bored with the UK, I just wanted some bigger horizons, bigger mountains and better weather! When I left I didn’t think I would stay – but I have!
Thanks Owen, for answering our questions and the time you put into the book. We can’t wait for the release and are very psyched! To order a copy New Mexico Bouldering, please visit their site here.
