Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

January 29, 2023

1295m

Nuevo León, México

Co. La Aguja Chiquita is the little tower next to Co. La Aguja Grande with hardly any notable prominence but still boasts an iconic profile. The entire east face down to the saddle with Co. Gordo is overhanging. The scramble route exists on the west side via one of the bushy ramps. The ascent is considerably easier than La Aguja Grande hence it sees more visitors, but still requires class 3 moves with some exposure. Elise and I opted to add this bonus peak after scrambling the 4th class Co. La Aguja Grande. We were both tired and demotivated but this was not a peak to be missed.

Again our only “beta” was the GPX track downloaded from Wikiloc but a track is worth a thousand words. It was obvious that the route ascends one of those “green ramps” on the west face. We knew right away that our legs would see more scratches but let’s face it. From Grande/Chiquita saddle we picked up a climber’s path traversing around an intermediate tower on the south side before picking up a better, more defined path traversing north away from Aguja Chiquita’s south ridge. This traverse was then followed by a section of loose and bushy scramble to get back onto the south ridge. The route on this peak was quite a bit bushier and thornier than anticipated.

We briefly lost the route but regained the path by again, traversing horizontally onto the west face and this time we would traverse onto one of those vegetated ramps. The ramp itself wasn’t as exposed nor steep as seen from afar, but definitely had more thorny plants. The going was actually quite simple until the section directly under the summit ridge where we did some “class 3+” moves. The amount of erosion by water on this peak’s limestone formation is something I’d never seen before. The highlight of this scramble is the brief traverse across the narrow and exposed summit ridge. There’s nothing specifically difficult, but the position was very aesthetic and the scrambling was very enjoyable. The summit ridge was arguably the only enjoyable part of the entire route.

Elise pulled out the beans and the tortillas for our lunch so we did a longer stay on the summit than anticipated. The day was indeed hot, but wasn’t as bad as we thought probably because of the lack of humidity compared to the previous day. We then down-climbed the same route we took and got a few more scratches on our shins. It’s impossible to completely avoid the cacti without wearing gaitors. The descent from Grande/Chiquita saddle back to the car was boring but short. The temperature gauge in the vehicle already showed 31 degrees and it wasn’t even the hottest time of the day yet. I opted to immediately drive us back to Carricitos while still having fresh memories about the road’s numerous cruxes. The driving was actually quite trivial but I drove very slow as I did not buy any insurance and the vehicle only had the stock tires. After getting back to Hidalgo we again did our routine grocery shopping for the following day. In the evening a few of us together went out for a dinner in Potrero Chico. The locals apparently come here for partying on the weekends and that was a loud show. This was their second night in a roll of partying and I thought that was rather rude.