Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

January 29, 2023

1398m

Nuevo León, México

Co. La Aguja Grande is an obscured rock tower in the deserts of Nuevo León state of Mexico. It’s not terribly far from the popular climbing area of Potrero Chico but very few asides the locals know the existence of this peak. Co. La Aguja Chiquita is the smaller tower nearby. Elise and I had seen these towers from the summit of Picachos El Fraile the day before and were intrigued by their aesthetic appearance. I thought those would make the perfect objectives for the following day if we could find some “beta” or any indication that serious rock climbing wouldn’t be required. A few hours later in our hostel in Hidalgo we found several trip reports on Wikiloc, unfortunately all in Spanish, but a few of them included their GPX tracks and that’s basically all we needed. It did not sound like a rope would be required but we decided to carry one just in case. The climb turned out to be “class 4” with exposure.

Several trip reports indicated a 4×4 vehicle was needed to drive to the actual trail-head whereas a 2WD car could make to as far as the village of Carricitos about 4.5 km from the trail-head. Our rental car did not have 4×4, but did have a reasonably high clearance so it’s hard to say where we would end up parking at. To give us enough contingency we had to plan as if we needed to park in Carricitos. The forecast for this day was nuclear hot with the afternoon temperature approaching 30 degrees, so we were forced to wake up early again. I set the alarm at 4:45 am and by 5:30 am we were on the road. The driving wasn’t difficult in the dark but required extreme caution as speed bumps and gigantic pot-holes coming out of nowhere are nothing but “norm” in Mexico’s highways. We had to drive about 10 km of dirt roads to get to Carricitos and the condition was bumpy but not too bad. The final 4.5 km beyond Carricitos was the real unknown and the strategy was to only solve the problems immediately ahead. There were a few rough sections but no real show-stopper. The road became bushy at places so I made sure to drive at a snail’s pace to not put pin-stripes onto the rental vehicle. The conclusion was that we managed to drive all the way to the trail-head and that was quite a pleasant surprise. We got there right in time for the sunrise and the towers were extremely daunting but beautiful.

Given that we had driven to the trail-head we thought this day would turn out to be “nothing” but we were wrong. There’s still fair amount of work needed to ascend these peaks, especially under the toasty sun. The day’s already becoming hot as we stepped out of the vehicle. The first stage was by following the old road and then the unmaintained trail to the saddle between Aguja Grande (big needle) and Aguja Chiquita (tiny needle). This stage was rather no-brainer but we did have to pay attention to the thorny plants. We decided to scramble the big needle first as that’s the main objective. The route did not look straightforward nor did we really have a clue of what exactly to expect, but by breaking the daunting task into pieces I knew there must be a way. The GPX track directed us upwards into a shallow gully relatively free of the bushes and we utilized that to ascend to the base of the imposing cliffs. The only way now was to traverse climber’s right (north) and break those cliffs one by one. The route was actually quite obvious with paths and cairns but it’s nearly impossible to avoid the thorny cacti. There were also several class 3 sections with moderate exposure to top out onto the NW Ridge.

Up to this point I would describe this route as “ugly” or “painful” with hardly anything worth to recommend, but the real fun part is the NW Ridge. There was no more bushwhacking needed and the scrambling would soon become class 4 with lethal exposure. We traversed a narrow ledge into a gully feature on climber’s right of the ridge and climbed a series of stiff class 4 steps. Near the top of this gully we had two top-out options. The easier option appeared bushy so we climbed a vertical chimney on climber’s right with at least one or two harder moves. This was followed by some exposed class 2+ ridge scrambling to reach the false summit.

The true summit appeared daunting but turned out to be fairly trivial. After the down-climb into the true/false saddle we scrambled the “nose step” on the connecting ridge head-on. The step appeared technical from afar, but was actually not even in the realm of class 4. The rest of the scrambling to the summit went without event and there’s a huge sense of accomplishment for reaching an obscured semi-technical desert tower. This climb proved once gain that the harder peaks in the deserts are usually not the prominent “sky islands” but rather the seemingly lowly towers.

After spending about half an hour on the summit we leisurely started the descent. There wasn’t really much worth noting asides we tried our best to reverse what exactly we did on the ascent, including some variations. The down-climbing wasn’t as sketchy as I thought and I did not end up needing to use the rock shoes that I had also brought for this trip. I simply down-climbed everything in the trail runners and I never felt uncomfortable. Avoiding the cacti was even more impossible on the descent and we both got stabbed multiple times. The “tiny needle”, Cerro La Aguja Chiquita no longer appears dramatic from the saddle but we had agreed to ascend both peaks so we must carry on.