A huge east facing wall, around 500' at its highest point, and more than twice as wide. There are many enticing crack systems which give the wall its checkered appearance. Several large boulders litter the valley below and offer many challenges of their own. There are only a handful of recorded routes (as far as I can tell, if you know of more please speak up) up this immense face, many of them without names. There are endless variations connecting different crack systems, and most route descriptions read, "crack and face climbing lead to the top" without elaboration. Research is hardly necessary, simply choose a line and have at it, its bound to have decent pro and fun climbing for 3-6 pitches.
Getting There
About 6 miles north on Jornada rd there are a few dirt rds which head directly toward this huge unmistakable face. Most of these rds converege and take you to your desired location. High clearance is probably required. A small parking area is located about 2 miles west of Jornada rd at the ft of the mountain. A well used climbers trail guides you to the base of the cliff and takes about 15m to hike.
The Classics
Mountain Project's determination of some of the classic, most popular, highest rated routes for Checkerboard Wall:
By Aaron Hobson Administrator From: Las Cruces, NM Feb 28, 2006
I have given one of the "un-named" routes on this wall my own name, to make referenceing easier. There are many lines on the Checkerboard wall that are named "un-named" on topos that I have acquired. For the purposes of this site I have given names to routes after climbing them and posting information about them. If you know of other names I'd love to hear about them.
Also, the variations on Checkerboard criss-cross quite a bit. I'm trying to decide on the best way to capture this. For now, I'll just post stuff however it occurs to me, but this section can be reorganized failry easily. I'm open to suggestions/comments/ideas.
Once you get to the top, follow the saddle back to the next summit. You can find a little Ginkgo Biloba bottle with a summit log on the rock pile. I'll try to put a summit log by checkerboard next time I'm up. There are also some awesome 100-200 ft pitches on the west side of the second summit, check it out it's worth the time.
One of the better routes was named "Wally's Folly" after Wally Houseman who was happily belaying the leader on one of the ledges around 1970 when he realized there was a loud buzzing between his feet. He got struck on his boot heel by a a moderately large rattler. Fortunately, he was wearing heavy mountain boots which probably gave the snake a headache and bent fangs. He did a bit of dancing on the ledge but maintained his belay.
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