Climbing

The nice thing about climbing, is that it is a low investment, low effort sport, the equipment is much cheaper than that of skiing, diving or paragliding, and you can always find many climbing sites near were you live (unless you live in the Netherlands), despite my fear of heights I decided to try to get into the sport. AndesXtremo the company I did a Paragliding course with, offers climbing courses as well, my guides were Marcelo and Santiago, both are climbing enthusiasts, which just made things more fun, but also offered me the opportunity to learn from guys with a lot of experience and passion for the sport.


The course started with some indoor sessions, the climbing site was the Cochabmaba football stadium!! , apparently some climbing enthusiast found it a very suitable place to build some artificial climbing walls, in the first few sessions, the focus was on handling equipment and some technique, after that we went onto a couple of excursions to sites near Cochabmaba, and we did some real rock climbing, after my short training I was able to do some 5c and 6a routes.


We did one more final climbing excursion, this one was to Corawara, a small town on the Altoplano , about 8 hours from Cochabmaba, the plan was to get there, camp for three nights, and have two days of climbing, but I wanted to go back to Cochabamba at least for Saturday, so I can go out with my girlfriend, because we could not go out the weekend before, and it would be my last weekend in Cochabamba, so I cut my trip short by one day, and only had one day of climbing, the original plans was to leave on Tuesday, and I would have been able to do the whole trip and be back to Cochabamba for the weekend, but two days of strikes and blockades ruined our plan, typical Bolivia.


Anyway the climbing site was a rock formation 20 minute walk from the town Corawara, a typical poor and run down Altoplano village, with a military base, apparently the military use the rocky area for training and some basic climbing, and you can seen signs of the military around the area, marked paths and some constructions. On the expedition with me were Santiago, and a Swiss couple who I already climbed with in Cochabamba, Sven and Silvi.


The area itself is very beautiful, but as typical of the Altoplano, the differences between day and night are quite extreme, strong burning sun in the day, and freezing cold on the night, and at 4000m high, I was struggling with altitude as well. We arrived to our camp site in the evening and started climbing the next morning, we started with a 4 route to warm up, then the next route I attempted with a 6a+, maybe I would have been able to do that on a lower altitude, but I I did not manage to do it, and worst, I felt that I all my energy was depleted after the effort, I did not feel I could climb anymore for a while, eventually I did do a another 6a route, a straight crack going all the way to the top, I climbed it twice, the second time went faster, but still hard, and I did not manage to do it clean, I fell once midway and rested on the rope before continuing, I think 6a/6a+ is more or less my current level, I can do it, but with a lot of effort. The levels go much higher to 9 something, Marcelo and Santiago can do routes of 7 something, 8 something is four climbing freaks, while the 9 levels only a handful of people around the wold managed to do.


After climbing the crack twice, I felt I was finished and I decided to call it off, more or less, I just did the 4 route again, but this time as a leader, the difference was that the first time I did it with a top rope, meaning I had a safety rope hanging from the top of the rock, sometimes you do not have the luxury of being able to tie a top rope, and you have to do leading, in this case you have anchors along the route usually 2-3 meters apart, but you need to climb and reach the anchor on order to attach your safety rope to it, it is more risky and if you fall, you will hang from the last anchor you reached, possibly a 2-3 meter fall, so you want to avoid falling when leading, and this adds extra psychological factor, usually people will do leading on routes that are lower than there maximum level, to compensate for the extra risk, anyway I managed to do it, I felt more tense than usual, but in the end there is that feeling of satisfaction and triumph when you finally make it to the top.