Cochamó Trip 2020 - Part 3
How to start this off? I want to start by trying to not be so hard on myself for not finishing what I started. Those who know me well, know that I mean what I say and that if I say that I'm going to do something, I'll try my hardest to stick to my word; almost to a fault. I was so excited and rejuvenated returning from my last trip to Cochamó in March 2020; I told myself to write multiple blog entries chronicling my adventure. I started off on a good foot, but eventually lockdown depression kicked in and I lost motivation. Writing is not something I do on any sort of regular basis so it was easy to let that idea slip away to make room for endless doom scrolling and planning for the zombie apocalypse. Well it's time to finish what I started.
I returned from Cochamó to the United States at the beginning of March 2020 elated and full of eagerness; but we all know what happened next. I was on one of the last flights leaving Santiago, Chile about a week before international travel shut down. I made it back just in time for lockdowns to kick in. I couldn't believe what was happening and started wondering if the world was about to fall apart. I am writing this now, just shy of 2 years from that moment, in a plane returning to Santiago. The Omicron Covid variant is surging to levels never seen before in the U.S. and 12 hours ago, after a year of preparation, I didn't even know if I would be able to step foot on this plane. In current times, a negative Covid test is your golden ticket to travel. As luck would have it, I am Covid negative and just crossing the equator, sights set south to Patagonian Summer.
Cochamó Part 2 wrapped up just about half way through the 2020 trip. Josh just arrived to Puerto Varas and we are prepping to head back into the Valle. As I was trying to describe in the previous posts, Cochamó is this magical place where your worries melt away and you live life fully. One of those doses of magic happened upon returning to Camping La Junta. Josh and I are walking into camp under beautiful bluebird skies and who do I see wandering around camp? Whilly!
Whilly, the tree hugger
Whilly was an instructor for the guide training school that I attended in 2015 - 2016. He became a very important mentor in my development to becoming a rock climbing guide. It had been 3 years since the Mountain Training School closed its doors and since the last time I saw Whilly. At that time we did not know the school was closing down, we didn't know the next time we might be able to connect, and we also definitely did not know either of us were planning to be in Cochamó this season. In 2016, we discovered the enchantment of Cochamó together on a MTS course. Boy it was great to see Whilly's big ol' grin, and receive a bear hug after we finally realized we both weren't dreaming. We spent the next few hours catching up, exchanging climbing beta and planning the next weeks over a big hearty shared meal.
For the next two weeks, Josh, myself, Whilly and his partner Dani, climbed thousands of feet of perfect granite in Trinidad, Anfiteatro, and La Junta. New friendships are born. Stoke is shared. Food is eaten. Stories are told. Laughs are had, hugs are warmly enjoyed.
California or Chile?
Josh and Whilly's time in the Valley swiftly came to an end much too soon which is quite common in Cochamó. Their departure lined up with an extended period of rainy weather which I took advantage of by renting a car to explore the country side. Driving along the coast I would believe you if you told me I was in Napa Valley California but oddly slightly different as all signs are written in Spanish.
When the rain subsided I arrived back in Cochamó without a partner or a plan. Most climbers seemed to have their dedicated plans and partners all lined up. One evening under the watchful eye of Cerro La Junta, I found myself lamenting to Dani [of Refugio La Junta] of my discontent with the state of disrepair of many heavily trafficked rappel anchors in the Valle. I had the knowledge and willingness to do something about it but found myself without any materials to do anything to help the situation. Dani graciously offered the hardware and tools to put this idea to action - the first Cochamó anchor initiative was born. I spent the next two weeks lining up any willing partner in camp to romp up classic after classic in need of anchor rejuvenation. All told, with the help of several partners, we improved (removed old cord and plated steel hangers and replaced with stainless steel hangers and rings) over 35 rappel anchor stations with the hardware Dani donated. I decided that if I found myself returning to Cochamó again, which was highly likely, that I would try to do even more work the next time. My goal is to build momentum toward creating sustainable, bomber rappel anchors on the most popular rappel lines in Cochamó. I hope to pass the torch on to the local climbing community as well as other community service minded climbers coming to enjoy the magic of Cochamó.
On one particular mission, I recruited Nick from Canada to help me replace the rappel line to Excelente Mi Tienente. Nick had injured his ankle in an unexpectedly harsh climbing fall and was weary to climb but insisted he could trek, carry weight, and rappel with me. We came up with a plan to hike to the end of Trinidad Valle, replace the fixed line to the descent of El Monstruo and then rappel down EMT to establish a more straightforward rappel line. This was going to be a large undertaking spread out over 2 days of work. We decided to hike to the Laguna in Trinidad and bivy the night before our big day of work. While lying there philosophizing about life and staring at the stars, we start to see peculiar bright lights in the clear, abundantly starry, night sky. First, one distinct light racing across the sky; and then 2 - perfectly spaced along the same linear plane, and then 3 perfectly spaced; 4, 5, 6, all the way up to 9 or 10 of these perfectly spaced lights racing across the sky. Are we witnessing the beginning of an alien invasion right now? Funny thing is, being completely disconnected from the world, it could very well be an alien attack and we would have been none the wiser. The lights disappeared as quickly as they appeared and our minds give way to our exhausted muscles and we fall asleep. We wake up the next day and focus on our mission; an epic-ly full day hiking then hanging in harnesses and replacing old tat with stainless steel. When we arrive to the bivy late that night, we excitedly watch the sky in hopes of seeing the odd phenomenon again - but it would never arrive. Did we make this up in our heads? We tell the other climbers around the campfire what we saw and to our amazement, they saw the strange light show too! We all hypothesized what it could be that we saw but no one was convinced of what it actually was. When I returned to the hustle and bustle a few weeks later, I read a news article about Elon Musk's Starlink launching about fifty something satellites into space. I think seeing aliens is a better story but this is a memory I will not soon forget.
I ran out of hardware with just a few days left to my trip and a spectacular weather window in the forecast. There was a thought churning deep in my mind since I first laid eyes on a particularly splitter perfect finger crack hiding unseen, around the corner from one of the most popular routes in all of Cochamó. I first discovered this crack while scrambling up a nasty gully at the end of my 2016 season. I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince partners to check this crack out during the 2018 season, and then bailed from a failed attempt earlier in the 2020 season. Over the previous week, I met and befriended Jonny, an exceptionally strong climber from the UK with a penchant for paragliding off summits after climbing them. I kept showing him aesthetic pictures of the finger crack and what will likely be the crux of the route high above the valley floor in hopes he would take me up on an offer to go ground up on the line, creating a new route in the process.
It didn’t take much convincing Jonny and the next morning we were off. I am going to save the nerdy climber description of the route for another post but what I’ll say is we had an incredible day romping up new and already established terrain. I onsight, FA’d a traversing pitch leading to what will be the crux of the route, an overhanging and arcing splitter crack in a beautiful wave of golden granite. Jonny was excited to jump on what will eventually be the most difficult pitch of the route. After a bit of playing around and sussing things out, Jonny announced while hanging at the end of the crux sequence, that he could not go any further or else risk catastrophe by ripping off an exceptionally thin, loose, and dangerous flake. He down aided until he could leave a stopper to bail and return to the belay. He suggested that the pitch felt to him that it could be harder than the Salathé headwall splitter [5.13b] which he had successfully free climbed during a previous season in Yosemite. We were just shy of the summit but with no safe passage to the summit and the sun quickly setting, we were out of time for the day. We began the task of threading ropes and rappelling back down to the base of the cliff and back to the bivies for some well-deserved shut eye.
I would finish my 2020 Cochamó season climbing the mega classic route Positive Affect [5.12a, 19 pitches], considered to be one of the crown jewels of Cochamó. Jonny and I bivied at the base of Arco Iris and woke up bright and early to make enough time to climb 3000 feet of perfect, clean, white granite. Positive Affect definitely lived up to its reputation as a stellar rock climb. Pitch after pitch of intense, perfect corners and cracks. Jonny took the lead on the last few pitches, which includes the crux pitches. My arms gave out a few pitches below and I had to resort to jugging the ropes while Jonny impressively finished the route onsight - without any falls – all the while leading the bear’s share of the pitches and all the crux pitches. On the summit, before I could ebven catch my breath, he unpacked his paragliding rig and took flight, flying back to camp with all the gear in tow. My mind was proper blown and I started the long hike back to camp wishing I had my own paragliding rig.
