First climbing visitors

Ju & Dave were in Rio for a day on their way to Paraty and São Paulo, giving me a very good reason to take a day off work and cut class to go climbing with them.

We got on an easy climb on Morro da Urca (mountain adjacent to the Sugar Loaf) - as we started late and the weather was looking iffy, Morro da Urca seemed like a good choice for having easy to get to and shorter climbs.

We chose a climb that made the summit, called InfraVermelho, approx 100m, leading up to a small cave next to a bamboo forest that surrounds the summit.

Was interesting to get Dave and Ju's perspective on Rio mountains - they noticed the crazy amount of vegetation that grows on the rock - bromelias, flowers, cactuses, bamboos... I've seen climbers use bromelias as holds in desperation - not the best idea as what happens is all the water collected ends up pouring down the climbers' shoes, usually.

The climb went great, easy and chill, but we got our dose of adrenaline on the last pitch, right under the cave and the bamboo forest, was absolutely soaked from a rain a few days ago, making for a pretty scary looking piece slab - if it were dry it would probably be a 5.5 (and thus, not that bolted) but wet.... ugh. Dave was on lead and on a valiant effort, drying up holds with chalk, made it up to the last bolts.

From there, it was a 20min hike through the bamboos to the summit. We took the cable car up to the Sugarloaf in time to see the sunset and have some beers.

The next day we woke up at 5:30am and headed out for a quick climb - we each managed to climb a pitch of a climb called Roda Viva on Morro da Babilonia (faces SugarLoaf) before I had to head to work.