Archive for April 28th, 2008

Rock Climbing Hueco Tanks

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

You’re not saving the world, you’re just enjoying yourself and enjoying nature and hopefully sharing it with others.

Robert Rice runs the Hueco Rock Ranch. Rice says that the joy of rock climbing comes from the challenge.

If you enjoy the personal challenge, try to go up the hardest, most beautiful, appealing line to you and get there that way. And that’s why we climb.

There are different ways to get out on the rock.

Within rock climbing, you’ve got traditional climbing which is placing gear in the rock that’s retrievable as you go up it. A newer variation of that, you’ve got sport climbing. Sport climbing is where they use some sort of a drill and they put an anchor into the wall and it has a hanger on the outside and you can clip your carabineers to it and then you clip your rope to it. And then an even newer discipline of the sport is bouldering. And that’s climbing the detached boulders or shorter faces or roofs that can be protected with what we call crash pads. That’s basically a four foot by four foot three inch thick foam pad and the other participants, the climbers, become spotters.

Texas state parks have some world class climbs. Hueco Tanks State Historic Site attracts climbers from all over the world. For maps and more information on where to climb in Texas State Parks, visit passporttotexas.org

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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CLICK HERE to watch a video of Heuco Tanks State Historic Site.

Find a clickable map to Hueco Tanks State Historic site: http://www.huecorockranch.com/. [cut and paste URL into browser]