- In El Paso, it's literally five minutes to
get to a mountain, and you just can't beat that.
I'm Clara Cobb, and I'm an El Paso native.
I run a couple of social media sites here in El Paso.
What you really do is tell stories,
and that's my attraction, absolutely, to Hueco Tanks.
It's a place where people have been telling stories
for ten thousand years.
Hueco Tanks isn't the smallest state park,
but it's definitely the most exclusive.
It's capped at 72 people a day, and there is a list,
but the easiest way to get on the list is to sign up
for a pictograph tour, which takes you behind the scenes
to some of the more exclusive places.
- Welcome to Site Seventeen.
- Right?
- The is the Lower Seventeen, also known as "newspaper cave."
You have, right up here above us, these kind of
cream colored shapes.
That dates back to Apache era, that's roughly somewhere around
200 to 400 years old.
A bit more recently than them: this kind of orangish...
- CLARA: A horse!
- TED: ...horse shape, right here.
Everyone always thinks that's Native American cave art.
It's not.
[laughs]
If you look behind the tree, you'll see there's a
nice inscription....
- CLARA: This is definitely a cultural intersection:
the native people, travelers, from the Butterfield Trail
to the Buffalo Soldiers, they all came to Hueco Tanks.
We have such a rich cultural, diverse history.
- These are all Tigua names.
This is one of the things that show that the Tiguas
do have a historical presence here at Hueco Tanks.
- CLARA: You know it's fun that it's on the border,
because the longer you're on the border, the more you realize
how people and their stories transcend
those man-made borders, I guess.
- TED: So the painting we're looking at actually takes up
the entire wall.
You want to be careful not to touch it.
- You can see all the other stories people
have left behind.
That's what makes us all kind of unique and everyone has their
own journey and story and perspective and that's
kind of just really special.
When I first moved back to El Paso almost three years ago,
I didn't really know the trails anymore.
Through other people's stories, their blogs,
their social media posts- that's how I re-acquainted
myself with opportunities here.
When you have a place like Hueco, you don't not climb.
This is world-class rock-climbing,
bouldering specifically.
It's the birthplace of American bouldering.
And people come, very seriously, from all over the world,
to train, and to practice and to climb Hueco Tanks.
[breathing heavy]
I am a hobbyist rock-climber.
- The only way you can become a climber is climbing.
So, sometimes you'll have to think and act on the fly.
But the sequential problem is so hard, that you literally
have to find your abilities with your body and actually doing it.
And that's what a lot of people don't understand about climbing.
- CLARA: My skill level is fall down seven times,
get up eight.
- Oh, you okay?
- [laughing] Yeah.
But I like doing it.
- LOWELL: Pump up on that hole!
Get that hole!
- CLARA: It's about having a challenge and overcoming it,
facing adversity, solving those problems.
- LOWELL: We have a saying: think less, climb more.
- CLARA: Think less, climb more.
- Good! Good!
Get that big jug with your other hand.
Yes!
Good, Clara, c'mon.
Good.
Come back down to this big hole waiting for you.
Right there.
Aww!
Much better.
- CLARA: When you see chalk, it shows you the route
that someone else took, their solution to the problem,
it's a hint on how to get through the route.
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best solution
for you, but it certainly gives you a little preview,
a sample of one way you can solve that problem.
- Not today.
- El Paso has so much access, but I think we all are
kind of suffering from a lack of knowledge on how to use it
and what to do when we get there.
You'll go to other places in other cities and people will
tag like "secret spot" or "oh, I can't tell you because
there's too many people going."
Here people are very open, there's no secret.
The first year I was here, I had more than 60 groups of friends,
something like 270 people total,
come out and visit based on my Instagram photos alone.
[uplifting music]
Unfortunately, Hueco closes at five, but when it does close,
I like to bust it back into El Paso
to Franklin Mountains State Park
and do a little happy-hour hike.
Taking a selfie is kind of cool, but taking a selfie
on top of a mountain is like super cool.
You can't go and do something cool if you don't know that
opportunity exists, and I think that's the thing that
I get excited about: giving people the opportunity
to know what opportunities they have.
When you're talking about parks, and you're sharing your
experience in parks, already you've become a park ambassador.