Traversing

This weekend I went on a climb called Passagem dos Olhos (translated, would be Passage of the Eyes) a classic climb on one of my favorite mountains in Rio, Pedra da Gavea. The climb goes through a face in the mountain known as Head of the Emperor - well, because it looks like a pointy head I guess, with two big caves that look like eyes from a distance. In this climb, you go under the left eye and then finish up inside the right eye (a badass huge cave) then there is a cable sideways and downwards from there.

The climb is easy, beautiful, but very much in the air and traverses scare the crap out of me. Its so much easier to lead this climb than to second it. My friend and I lead different parts, but in many parts the climb sort of goes down, so although leading you actually feel kind of on top rope...

To get to the climb you hike 1.5 hours up the steep normal trail to get to the summit of Pedra da Gavea, then veer left once you see this face. Pretty easy to find, and it was the first time up there for both of us. We took some time in the shade trying to figure out if we waited, if the climb would get more in the shade or not... we ended up climbing at the worst time (11am) but the sun, when climbing, actually didnt feel as bad as in the trail (it was close to 90 and a gzillion humidity that day).

The summit of Pedra da Gavea is really look - its HUGE, super wide, like 4 soccer fields or something.

Dedo de Deus

Last weekend I climbed a mountain called Dedo de Deus (translates to "finger of god"), which is in a mountain range called Serra dos Orgãos, 2 hours from Rio. Its close to a region that was recently devastated by rains, and from the summit and the drive you can see the traces of it, its impressive - huge tears in the mountain sides...

This climb meant a lot to me because its a very iconic mountain here... its the mountain that "started" climbing in Brazil (was first summited in 1912).

The route we went up is pretty easy, and was conquered in 1944 (the route we did is called "Leste"). Its hardest pitch is maybe a 5.7-5.8, and other than that its a lot of chimneys... the thing is, it feels so exposed. Some pitches you go, go, go, and there's like, no bolts. Or one big chimney with a bolt only on the top of it. Ok, its pretty impossible to fall, but still... as I tried leading some parts of it, it felt really really scary. I'm not used to lead on this type of climbs... which actually feels like you are in a real mountain and are certainly more remote then most 3-4 pitch routes I'm used to doing smack in the middle of Rio. I felt confident because I was with a really experienced friend. And it was an easy route. He'd actually just soloed(!) it one week prior to us going.

The crux is actually on a variation of the original climb (to avoid a nasty chimney called blackout which is dark, damp, and filled with bird poo).

We got to the summit in 4 hours (the first 1.5 hours were just the approach. The approach is a real bitch - steep hike under thick canopies (no sun but no breeze either) then pulling yourself up these cables for maybe 100m (this part is in the sun. Sun+ steel cables=blisters).

Via Leste - Salinas, RJ

Saturday I climbed my longest route to date - a route called Leste in Três Picos National Park, in a region called Salinas, 3 hours from Rio.

The route goes up 700m in the East side of a granite mountain called Pico Maior. To get to the base - 30 minutes on a bumpy dirt road, 1 hour hiking fast through cow pastures and a steep trail up.

The climb is 18 pitches long, and not too hard - 4° V A1 E3 in brazilian ratings (something like 5.8 with 5.9 crux). A lot of slab, a lot of face climbing with good holds, two chimneys and a part done in aid. The bolts are faaaaaaar away from each other.

Most people start the climb at 6am in the morning - the guide book says to count 4-7 hours to do it. I went however with a friend who knows the route well, and, has a light and fast philosophy for climbing. We took two small packs, 1 liter of water each (which we filled in a creek in the hike up), a little food, climbed together for most of the route (except for the chimney parts) and made it up in 3.5 hours. I thought that was pretty good but there are badass climbers who do it in like, 1 hour.

Except for an altercation with a thorny tree in the beginning of the route, things went well. What happened was, the route hits a little plato with some vegetation (thorny underbush and some trees) and you are supposed to go right of it, up a more vertical wall, and then it goes back left again. We were climbing simultaneously at this point, so my climbing partner was 60 m and because I was under the little vertical stretch we couldn't see or hear each other. The rope got stuck in the tree... in a way that I couldn't move out right to do the climb. After some moments of indecision, I thought I might as well try "climbing" up the tree to free the rope... which turned out to be completely ineffective. The only way I was going to be able to free that rope would be by untying myself and pulling the rope from the other side...My friend finally climbed down to see what was up - I untied myself (I was in a big plato), and he pulled the rope from the top.

After that, the climb was pretty chill. The hardest parts of the climb were two chimneys. It had been a long time since I'd climbed a chimney and I had to remember the technique, but it is kind of like riding a bike I guess, it came back fast.

Getting to the summit was awesome. The day was perfect and the visibility as amazing, you could see the whole valley, the different mountains... its a beautiful region. We rappelled down the other side (many, many, many rappels) as you need two ropes to rappel down Leste.

In terms of cardio, it was pretty challenging - if you count 7km to get up + 7km to get down plus approx 3km hike each way, thats 20km to cover in a day. The amount of water was ok but I could probably live with carrying (and drinking) and extra half liter next time.

After the climb, a little trip to a river to soak my scraped legs...

Return to Infrared

Sunday afternoon, went to Urca for some climbing in Morro da Urca (mountain next to Sugarloaf). Lots of climbs looked wet, so ended up returning to the climb I did with Ju & Dave (called Infravermelho), that looked a bit drier. This time I lead it!! Felt great. Turned around before completing the last pitch which looked pretty soaked (as I remembered Dave's ordeal getting through the totally soaked slab to the top...)

Some friends were climbing the route next to mine, called Arco-Iris, and then traversed to my route to rappel down.

Was neat to see the full moon rise up over the water, and then do a few rappels in headlamp light. We miscalculated slightly the last rappel, we were already super close to the base but had to down climb a bit (rope too short!!) was a weird feeling to "let go" of the rappel and just slide off the end of the rope. Was fine though.

Have been using a marchand knot to back-up my rappels...

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie

On Sunday morning, went for a climb on the buttress of Corcovado (mountain that has the Christ statue on top). The climbs in that face all are named after movies (thus blog post title). The day and the setting were beautiful - you see Corcovado's main summit to one side (through a weird angle, with just one hand of the Christ sort of waving out at you), a view to the lagoon straight ahead, and a great view of the bay and the Sugarloaf on the other side.

The approach hike is interesting as well - around 30 minutes up a steep hill, passing a small spring and bordering this fence that boards off some millionaire's property (full of scary 'beware aggressive dogs' sign, made scarier by the distance sounds of barking and some dog-sized holes in the fence).

The climb itself was so-so... as slabby as a slab could be. It was pretty positive, thus pretty easy... but there was NOTHING to hold on to. After a two-pitch smear-fest, we turned around as the third pitch looked totally wet and with a weird greenish mold tone in the rock right around the crux.

I didn't feel like leading this one at all. The bolts were FAR... like 10-15m apart.

Rapelling down, the rope got snatched in the weirdest way (see picture)...

5.12's in Copacabana

On the climbing gym, I've been taking classes with this guy, Fabio. The gym is very small (especially compared to the ultra mega US gyms...) but the classes are super interesting, he focuses a lot on body positioning, and I think its helping me improve on vertical climbs (we are starting on overhanging techniques now).

We've never climbed together outside before, but yesterday he called me up and asked if I wanted to go to this crag called Falesia São João, in Copacabana. I have never even heard of this place before, and didn't even know there was a climbable face in Copacabana, but I really wanted to see him climb (he's about 40 now, but is a super insane climber... at one point he was Brazil's best sport climber, had sponsorships,traveled for competitions, the whole deal. He even got to climb with Lynn Hill!)

To get to this place you go through a park, up a 20 minute hike (which is kind of confusing to navigate, not a very marked route) until you hit a slab face. From there, its two pitches of an easy 5.5, 5.6 climb to the base of the rock wall.

Falesia in portuguese (at least in Brazil) means short, usually on pitch sport routes (I guess kind of what we did in Red Rocks).

The rock face was slightly overhanging, super abrasive, sharp rock, with holds that are crimps and pinches and a few lay backs. The face is vertical and in places slightly overhanging, and was really, really hard. We got on an 8a (5.12a) called Nebulosa and a 8c (5.12c) called Andromeda (the routes are named after constellations in that face.)

Fabio lead up both as it was nothing to him, totally graceful moves all the way up. I (obviously) hung a lot on the rope, chapped the skin off my fingertips but managed to finish the first, clean and rapp off (scary single bolt rapps) and get halfway up the second before calling it a day.

After that we ate peanuts in a small cave in the rock face, overlooking Copacabana neighborhood, and made our way back.

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.