The Dirtbags Aren’t Dead, They’re Just In Mexico by Luke Mehall (an excerpt from Volume 25)

Don’t you put any more stress on yourself It’s one day at a time

—Mac Miller, “Circles”

Part of me always thought I’d die young.

I had this feeling even before I was a climber, long before I took the risks with our lives that we climbers take.

It was probably related to the depression I inherited through genetics. Or maybe it was the state of the world that I was born into. A combination of both, I assume. At forty-five years old, now I’m just unpacking it. Mostly in therapy, but if the vibes are right, in conversation.

Given that I’m forty-five, I’m too old to die young. I still can’t believe I’m this age, but as Greg Brown once wrote, “My friends are getting older, so I must be too.”

This piece is an excerpt from Volume 25, now available. Banner photo of Felipe Garcia by Ivan Ioza

I think part of me thought I’d live the dirtbag dream forever. Live to climb; climb to live; fade into the sunset. We hopeful romantics often get too caught up in the romance of life, thinking that life is a story. When in reality, while life has beauty and romance, it is also very humbling and sobering.

My fate, as far as I can see it, is to be a leader, storyteller, and curator for our climbing community. It wasn’t something I purposely set out to do, but as a publisher, writer, and route developer, it naturally happened. And I’m comfortable with the role. I can’t imagine my life without it.

“The Dirtbag Dream Is Not Enough” was the title of an interview I once did with the Clipping Chains podcast, an underrated show that covers the intersection of finance and climbing. I think I said the line during my interview, and it sums up exactly how I feel about this stage of life. While ten years ago the climbing community was debating whether the dirtbag was dead, and I passionately engaged in that debate; now I simply steer my life in a direction knowing that simply living to climb is not enough.

So now I climb to live.

This last season I just sent my hardest sport route. I won’t bother noting here what climb that was, or even the grade, because I don’t think that part matters.

What matters for me is that I’ve found an area of climbing where I can still excel. While this world is full of half-wit comedians who get up onstage and complain about how life is running them over once they hit forty, we climbers are a different kind; the optimism embedded in our sport changes us, moves us in a whole other direction than where the mainstream is going.

My hardest sport-climbing send took place in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, a place that has captured my heart and spirit over these last couple years. I’ve been climbing in Potrero for two decades, but only recently did I start spending entire seasons there.

Before Potrero stole my heart, it was the land of Indian Creek in Bears Ears National Monument that had consumed my passion for climbing. Way out in the hinterlands, away from the crowds, I shared countless first ascents with the greatest of friends. Sometimes the climbing life is so powerful that even words fail to describe the feeling. You really only know it in the moment, and then the moments settle into your psyche, a safe place to return to and experience nostalgia.

In that era, Indian Creek felt like home, and I never wanted it to end. Days were spent with cell phones in airplane mode and plentiful camaraderie, time spent on new routes, and more than enough space for jokes and stories. None of my friends really had kids yet, and we lived for this experience. By the time we were packing up to head back after a long weekend, we were planning another long weekend.

This era ended right around when COVID came along. It would have ended one way or another—the dirtbag dream is not enough—but the pandemic put a sharp end to it. The beautiful upside was friends starting families, new chapters, new loves—a natural progression for people who wanted more.

I wanted more too. In this time period, writing and podcasting slowly evolved into my life’s work, and I was able to get out of the restaurant business and into full-time work for what I can only describe as my dream job. So, in addition to pursing all my dirtbag dreams of climbing on long weekends, during the week I explored my mind and helped others craft their stories.

I kept going out to The Creek throughout the early pandemic years— when they let us in —but as many things became, the experiences were more solitary, just me and a friend or two. My dear friend Dave Marcinowski stuck with me through thick and thin as we battled what became my final hard Creek crack-climbing project: The Queen, a climb that I put up and then took four years to do. (Dave did it in less time than me but stuck with me for my attempts.)

The ending of The Queen experience also coincided with the finality of my obsession with The Creek. I’d taken crack climbing to my highest level, but I knew it was time to move on after that.

For yours truly, nothing highlights the passage of time, and the reality that everything must end, like climbing experiences. That’s part of why they are so beautiful. The outcomes are never guaranteed. You often need a partner that has to offer camaraderie and balance.

If you’re lucky, climbing eras in one’s life are like crescendos: one builds up and offers more to the next, all while dealing with the crashes and the lows that life and climbing inevitably offer.

I never wanted that Creek era to end, but it did, and it ended so sweetly, giving me my longest project, my hardest pitch, with the best of friends; we left it all on the wall, gave the dream everything we had.

The era was over, but the dream was not; the climbing dream never ends; it’s just passed on to others. As a crew, we’d developed around a hundred new routes in the Cave Wall zone, and now they are there for others to enjoy, a place of refuge where if you’re lucky you can ride off into the sunset, if only for the evening. Just be sure to have your headlamp for the long walk down.

I wasn’t sure what was going to be the next climbing chapter in the book of life, but I definitely didn’t think it would be El Potrero Chico. However, one day Two Tent Timmy, my original climbing partner and best friend, texted me and asked if I wanted to do a trip there in early December. My policy with Tim is to always say yes when he invites me somewhere.

I thought I was done with Potrero. It’s not too hard to climb through the multipitch classics in a trip or two. Plus, in the Monterrey zone, my interest had gravitated more toward places like El Salto and the Cumbia Cave.

As the text chain spread out and invited more close friends, Mark Grundon was also on board. In 2007, Mark, Tim, and I drove down to Potrero together for a winter trip, and it rained nearly every day. It was both Mark and Tim’s first time there, and though the climbing conditions were less than ideal, it really planted a seed for Mark.

In the following years, Mark started guiding down there and later met his wife Norma around a climber campfire party. He’s also become a prolific first ascensionist and a well-respected contributor to the community. Mark and Norma have a daughter named Isabella; she’s been hanging out near the crags of Mexico since her birth.

Tim hadn’t been back to Potrero since that original trip, and here we were, fifteen years later, reunited for adventure in the Monterrey airport. We took an Uber to Norma’s parents’ house in Monterrey where Mark had his minivan parked.

After obligatory tamales at a neighborhood spot, we were all packed up in the van and headed to Potrero. Driving in Monterrey is pure craziness, especially before you learn the unwritten rules of driving there, and fortunately Mark knows how to navigate the madness. He’s like my modern-day Neal Cassady.

It’s always very symbolic to the experience of climbing in that area: one minute you’re in the craziest traffic you’ve ever seen, and the next the cliffs of Potrero are in sight, and calm and relief wash over you; the tacos and tamales are so close you can taste them. But we weren’t there yet.

We were driving over a bridge, in a good mood because we were friends united in Mexico, and then all of a sudden we heard a loud thud; we’d driven into the biggest pothole in Monterrey, and shit, the tire had popped. And because we were on a bridge, we couldn’t just pull over.

So there we were going sixty miles an hour with three tires, the fourth riding on the rim. Mark kept his cool, with his years of Mexico driving experience, and managed to keep the van rolling straight, until we got off the bridge and could pull over into a parking lot.

Sure enough, the tire was trashed, and thus we got out the spare to replace it. Surely this would be the crux of the day, I thought, but when we went to put the spare tire on, it didn’t fit. So there we were in the middle of a busy intersection in Monterey, the second biggest city in Mexico, and we were stuck.

As often happens in Mexico, strangers offered help; one guy even offered up his spare tire from his car, but that, too, didn’t fit. Mark called the guy who sold him the tires, and he even drove down but didn’t have another tire that would fit. So it was decided the van would have to be towed, which meant we needed to find a way to get to Potrero, still well over an hour’s drive away.

We ordered an Uber, and when it showed up, the driver didn’t want to go all the way out to Potrero, and so he bailed. That happened multiple times, and we started to think we’d have to find our way to a hotel for the night, but the last Uber arrived and told us it was no problemo, and so we went.

The high vibes of Mexico were in the car that night, as the driver queued up some cumbia music and kept up cheerful conversation in Spanglish.

Finally we hit Hidalgo, the small town outside of Potrero, and the intensity of the evening faded into tranquility. Our Uber driver dropped us off at Rancho Sendero well past midnight. After we dropped our bags off in our room, we sat outside; a warm breeze blew through the palm trees, making a comforting sound. Under the night sky, sitting in green grass with a big palm tree overhead, swaying in a light breeze, I had a feeling of deep peace and being home again……

This piece is an excerpt from the new Zine, Volume 25. Subscribe / get a copy to read the full piece.