One of the richest tall tales in climbing is the story of the first ascent of ‘El Gavilan.’ When a team of adventure climbers went to rebolt the largely forgotten route in 2019, a filmmaker joined them.
One night in 1997, climbers Jeff Jackson and Benji Fink cowered inside a dark hole at the base of a limestone cliff situated 1,000 feet above the Mexican chaparral. Jackson, or “El Jefe,” remembered shivering in fear that night, huddled closely against Fink. Outside, their binoculars revealed that a legion of slender beings with alarmingly large heads approached across the desert. From the climbers’ vantage, their progress appeared inextricable.
It’s hard to overstate how alone the two men were: the only way to get to this formation, locally called “La Popa,” was to find a hermit named Luciano who lived in a remote cave with his burros. Jackson later said the old man’s skin was like that of a lizard, and it turned out only he could adequately navigate the labyrinthine cactus fields that choked the baked earth surrounding the cliff.
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Now, though, they were here — to their acute dismay. Local garbage collectors at the distant climbing paradise of El Potrero Chico had told them of “hombritos verdes,” little green men, who sometimes ran alongside their truck at night when their work compelled them to traverse the macabre highways near this wasteland.
But Jackson and Fink didn’t count on encountering so many of them at such close range. Huddled in the crevice behind the burden of their gear, they clutched at their liquefying resolve.
Tomorrow, they would start up the wall and establish a leading-edge big wall sport climb called “El Gavilan” (The Hawk) — they hoped.
How a Sport Climb Becomes a Legend
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