The Trip

Pictures at the bottom :)

What a wild trip! I don't think I've ever been on a climbing trip where I went after it as hard as I did on this one. It's now my second most climbed month of all time, beaten only by January 2025 when I rope soloed the crap out of Rio de Janeiro! Out of 13 full days I had at El Potrero Chico, I climbed on 11 of them, and the two days I took off were because I threw out my back the day after climbing my first big route of the trip! (it was super weird. I was feeling good the evening after climbing a 1,500ft moderate route, but while sitting down eating breakfast the next morning my back painfully seized up and refused to relent for about 48 hours. I probably didn't drink enough water!)

In terms of my goals, I admittedly got a little sidetracked by the sick multipitch¹ opportunities there. I did do a ton of sport climbing and I'd say I tried hard, but I didn't fall as much as I hoped I would. I also topped out Time Wave Zero, but I dialed back my expectations and had no aspirations of trying for the send and instead opted for time by pulling on draws and stepping on bolts on both crux pitches. Despite those two drawbacks, I'm incredibly stoked on the trip and I got SO much out of it!!

The crew for this trip were all Seneca people, with a total of 5 including me. We weren't too concerned about the odd number because we know what we're doing and can pretty easily make do in a party of 3, but it's certainly not as convenient as splitting into pairs.
Aaaaand that's where Taylor came in! He was running solo on the same flight as my pals Colin and Chris, who chatted him up and bam, I had a partner lined up for day one! Taylor and I ended up climbing together a whopping 7 days throughout the trip, so we were definitely primary partners. We were so well matched in stoke, abilities, and strength that we just flowed through everything we tried!
I also learned quite a bit from him. As a guide, I know a lot of guide tricks, but Taylor grew up in the Cascades, has done a bunch of big alpine climbing out there, and is several months into a long term, multi-destination climbing trip. All that to say there were several skills that I haven't had to use much before this trip that Taylor had absolutely dialed, and now I can say the same!
Anyhow, prepare for a series of vignettes about neat things that happened on the trip:

On day one of climbing, we all hit an easily approachable area called Los Lobos. Taylor and I crushed the only multipitch there(Will The Wolf Survive, which was awesome!) then tried our luck on a harder, long single pitch just down the way (Lobos Trabajando, underrated!). I'd looked at it on the way up to the multipitch, and was feeling stoked to try hard on something. It was about 125ft high, so a looong climb, but luckily it had plenty enough rests that I didn't get too pumped out.
My favorite part was the technical crux about half way up, a super improbable traverse across a ~6ft nearly blank face. I faffed around for a bit, trying different things until I finally found the moves that just unlocked it and made it feel so easy! It's such a delight when you solve a climb like that. Next up was the physical crux, just two moves below the anchor. It was a couple moves on really thin holds to what was obviously an amazing undercling..... with an 8-inch lizard guardian chilling out next to it. As I got close to the undercling, he scampered inside! I figured I had a 50/50 shot of pulling out a lizard-adorned hand after using it, but I wasn't about to let a lizard keep me from an onsight so I went for it, and he didn't retaliate!
I joked with Taylor about it and he was pretty concerned about how he might fare. When he got up to the hold, the lizard hopped out onto the face next to it, startling Taylor so that he took his hand out of the hold, which gave the lizard room to jump back in again!! Luckily that's the only misadventure of the day. We did a little more mellow climbing afterwards before calling it a day :)

The next big item on our list was to try a big multipitch. We both wanted to do Time Wave Zero, a 2,300ft route and one of the Potrero mega classics, but we wanted to test our mettle on a less difficult, shorter version first. We opted for Yankee Clipper, a 1,500ft moderate route with a really hard final pitch.
We had the habit of playing rock, paper, scissors for who would take the first lead, and Taylor took off first, maybe 45 minutes before dawn (you gotta get a crazy early start to beat the crowds/traffic jams/rockfall hazards on these big, popular routes). We swung leads, linking every pitch we could, climbing about 200ft at a time. We had an awesome flow!! We were a little worried towards the top, as somebody had been bitten by a rattlesnake at the 1,100ft mark or so the day before we got there, then had to rappell the whole thing while coping with a rattlesnake bite. Happy to report that they were ultimately fine and we saw no rattlesnakes!
Almost before we knew it, we were nearing the top. I took the easy, super exposed pitch below the crux pitch, then Taylor took us to the top! It was a bit of a strugglebus for both of us on the crux pitch which was steep, thin, and incredibly sharp, but we pulled it off!

On the way down I got to really get my practice in simul rappelling² and we had our system dialed in no time.

One day Taylor and I did a climb called Pitch Black, one of the classic harder 5.10 multipitches, about 800ft tall. I got to pull the crux pitch, which was delightfully thin and sustained, but that's not why I'm writing it up. After leading the second to last pitch, I pulled out my phone to see if it would be possible to just keep climbing and do the last pitch as well (it wasn't). When I pulled out my phone, it just so happened that my friend was calling me at that very moment! The belay ledge was quite comfortable and it had been a minute since we'd spoken, so I answered and chatted while I belayed Taylor up to me. I still felt like we had more to chat about, so after introducing Taylor to my friend and giving Taylor all the gear he needed to lead the next pitch, I just kept chatting with my friend while belaying and then while I climbed the last pitch to the top! It was a uniquely fun experience to be chatting on speakerphone while climbing!

A few days later we devised a group plan to climb The Spires. Taylor and I would take the shorter spire and Chris and Colin would climb the other, then Chris would get some awesome drone footage of all of us way up there. Taylor and I were first to the top of our spire, so we just chilled out up there. While we were waiting, a girl was climbing a hard route on our spire, and she rapped on a hold at one point to assess the rock quality. Apparently it was somewhat poor throughout the entire spire, because both Taylor and I felt the vibration through our butts as we sat on the top of the spire about 20 feet above her!!
That was when my animal brain started going "*alert alert alert* get the HELL off this rock!!!" Realistically speaking it wasn't going to go anywhere because it's been standing for so long and sees multiple ascents every day, but still. Freaky.
Not long after that, Chris' drone crashed on takeoff, so we don't even have any pics to show for it!

A few days after that came one of my favorite days of the whole trip. The day Taylor and I did Time Wave Zero!! It's 2,300ft of climbing with only two brief sections harder than 5.10d. Basically we were reasonably assured to do super well, especially if we abandoned our egos for the two difficult sections. Which we did.
The day we decided to go for it dawned in the low 30s, and it was at its coldest when we started climbing about 45 minutes to an hour before dawn. Taylor won the game of rock paper scissors for the first lead, so he got to tackle the first 5.11a crux. He did great, and I pulled on gear and stepped on bolts to get through, then had to give myself a moment to get the feeling back into my fingers!

From the very beginning we were simul climbing³, something I had only done once before this and didn't particularly enjoy at the time. Essentially, I stood still at the start and belayed Taylor a full rope length, or 200ft. When he reached that point, instead of stopping to belay me up to him as we did on Yankee Clipper, I would start climbing as well, keeping pace with him and simply having our attachment to either end of the rope serve as the belay, then Taylor stopped when he ran out of gear to clip the rope to the rock. With this system, we could climb 400ft at a time, half of which had both of us climbing at the same time! We got totally into it, such that it felt more like we were groovin' up the wall rather than climbing.
The summit is guarded by a steep, 15ft section of 5.12 climbing, but it's so closely bolted that I just hauled on the quickdraws⁴ to reach the next bolt, then stood in a sling for one final move before getting back into the climbing!
Apparently Taylor tried to avoid pulling on gear in order to free the whole thing and only got a couple moves shy. I bet he could get the whole thing clean on another visit to the canyon!
We had a nice long snack break, then headed down. What took us 7 pitches to lead simul climbing as we were took 23 rappells to get back down. Oof. But at last, we touched back down on the ground 8 hours and 30 minutes after we started! We did 5 hours 19 minutes to the summit, ~20 minutes resting, and 2 hours 52 minutes descending. Not a bad time for a first go!
Chris and Colin were climbing some stuff super close to the start of Time Wave, so we went and hung out with them.
I somehow got convinced to try a hard, steep 5.12a nearby. It didn't take much convincing to be honest, but I was still surprised because I was so worked! It was my first time pulling on tufas⁵, which was so worth it. I ALMOST onsighted it, I was just a few moves shy of the anchors before I fell! I'll take almost onsighting 5.12a after climbing 2,300ft though!

After that we only had two days left. I was pretty tired, but after having taken those two back-mandated rest days, I was loathe to not climb while in that world class climbing destination!
I'd had my eye on this particular crack on a face called Mota wall for literally the entire trip, but hadn't gotten a chance to do it yet. The day after Time Wave was the day!! I went up with Chris to climb a route called Snott Girlz, 5.10d, aaaand I got the route wrong and it wasn't the one that climbed the crack I had been looking at. Also it was a crapppp climb, despite being highly rated on Mountain Project! I suspect that it was rated highly for the first two pitches, which were excellent, and most people call it quits after that. The last 4 pitches were garbage interspersed with two 15-30ft sections of good climbing!

The misadventure on Snott Girlz meant I absolutely had to climb on the final day, else I would risk Snott Girlz being the last climb of the trip. This time I went out with Arthur to climb Pancho Villa Rides Again, the line that ACTUALLY climbs the crack I'd been lusting after! It was similarly rated to Snott Girlz on Mountain Project, but I consider it to be in an entirely different league all together. It was such an incredible climb! I even saw some ground squirrels dashing about among the talus at the base of the cliff!

After climbing I was good and worked, and I joined the rest of the crew at the airbnb and we spent most of our time packing or sitting on the porch watching and joking about people climbing on the walls we could see from the porch.
A perfect way to end the trip!!

Click the icon in the upper right to see descriptions of each image :)

Thinking about the trip in general, I feel like this was just such a perfect climbing trip. I only wish it was longer!
It had everything. Great friends, wonderful memories, exploring a new place, kind locals, exciting wildlife, and, above all, lots of amazing climbing! I wish I could write about every single moment, but that would be a lotttt.

I can't wait to go back one day, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface!