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Professionally Guided Rock Climbing in Southern California

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Last November, my team and I had the opportunity to explore some virgin rock in Mexico. Our destination was Canyon Tajo in Baja California. Only a 2.5hours drive from San Diego got us to the incredible massive rock formation called "el gran trono blanco" the great white throne! 1600 feet of beautiful desert granite in a remote and less traveled area. There are no guidebooks and only a little bit of information about this place online. So our mission was to climb a great line… Something that calls us, something that you look at and say: YES! This needs o be climbed. And so we hiked down the incredible steep south gully – stopping every 5 minutes to look up and find a line. Kind of overwhelming cause there are so many. After a good 1 and a half down the gully and a couple of discussions about the perfect line I decided to give it a try on this beautiful giant flake that snaked up the Southwest side of Trono blanco. It was not too easy to get to the start of the feature but once there we could all see that this was worth it. Our intuition was right. We found a line and after the first 2 pitches it became evident that we are now on terrain that has been climbed before. "Mexican Shoestring" is how I named a variation start to the existing route "millennia" that has been established by John Smallwood in 1999. It is not easy to find the area of gran Trono blanco when driving in from the dirt roads… So our beta included: "make a left turn by the shoestring that is hanging of the tree" well!! Where is that damn shoestring? It caused us some trouble and so the whole shoestring became a metaphor for route finding on our entire trip. Here you can see the red line signaling a new climbed line that eventually leads into John Smallwood's fantastic climb! @shepherdimages great times.

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