Parque La Huasteca

La Huasteca is a canyon in the municipality of Santa Catarina, on the western edge of the Monterrey metropolitan area, where the Santa Catarina river has carved a deep gap through the front ranges of the Sierra Madre Oriental between the Cerro de Chipinque and the Cerro de Santa Catarina. It forms part of the Parque Nacional Cumbres de Monterrey, which UNESCO also recognized as a biosphere reserve in 2006, and its entrance is known as the door to the labyrinth of the seven sierras. The canyon appears on Santa Catarina's coat of arms. Downtown Monterrey is just under an hour away by car.

The rock is mostly limestone laid down in the Late Jurassic, around 161 million years ago, and folded into mountains during the Laramide orogeny; the result is a landscape of fins, towers and cliffs more than 550 meters high. The canyon floor is dry country, with lechuguilla agave, yucca and huizache, and the gorge also holds the Rompepicos dam. The first recorded summit here was in 1954, when Federico 'Lico' Ramírez García climbed what is now Pico Lico, and the Pirineos club claimed the best-known peak, Los Pirineos, in 1957. Sport climbing took off with the Medina brothers in the late 1980s and 1990s, and today La Huasteca has close to 400 bolted routes, from beginner grades to 5.14, including a 350-meter line on Pico Independencia first climbed in 2014. Hurricane Alex in 2010 scoured the canyon, damaged routes and lowered the riverbed by as much as a meter.

Beyond climbing, the canyon is used for hiking, mountain biking and rappelling. The best-known guided adventure is the Nido de los Aguiluchos, a route at about 1,250 meters that mixes hiking, short climbing sections, a natural window called La Ventana and three rappels of 32 to 35 meters, one of them down toward an opening in the ridge visible from the Saltillo highway; it takes 5 to 7 hours and is best done with a certified operator, who supplies harness, helmet and ropes. Access to the canyon has been regulated: in 2025 the municipality limited vehicle entry to residents of the communities inside, required walkers to register at the entrance, and banned pets, alcohol, speakers, fires and overnight stays, with hours of 6:00 to 16:00 during heat waves. Since 1996 several housing developments have been proposed inside the canyon and blocked by public opposition, and its protection remains a live issue in Monterrey.