This section of the trip was a real highlight. We loved it so much we spent a few days extra making an 11 day stay in total. Leaving Huaraz it was only a 1 and a halfhour drive up to the refuge and the climbing. Unfortunately our slightly bad run of luck continued as Ernie got stuck in a ditch, we spent hours trying to free Ernie before hiring a huge digger from the local town which easily pulled out 14ton Ernie.
The climbing was found on weird and wonderful rock found down in a valley. It was called the stone forest and from above it looked like something out of lord of the rings, it was a real fairy tale landscape.
The nature of the rock gave amazing climbing, cracks, huge pockets, sharp crimps, overhangs. It had it all and with awesome friction. I climbed every day and managed to notch up 5 7s. Spent some time working a 7c where many of the moves I achieved but left it towards the end of the stay and my fingers were too ruined to link all the moves.
Towards the end of the stay as my fingers were so ruined Seb and I decided to bolt a new route. It would be our first new route. We spent one full day jungle bashing to the top of the crag to attach a fixed line in order to clean all the vegetation and loose rock off the line. The next day we spent bolting and climbing the route to confirm the grade. We decided to call it Bloody Mary after the name of the sheep we had caught and eaten the previous night, and because I had left a lot of blood on all the holds after making the first ascent! We gave it a grade of 6b and were really happy with the climb. Felt like we had given something good back to a place which had given us some very special memories.
In the evenings the refuge was a real luxury as it was super cold at night at this altitude (4200m). We could eat our grub by a big log fire. There was a whole mix of climbers from different nationalities staying at the refuge which gave it a really good atmosphere. This was the first time we had actually met other climbers so was quite nice to chat to them. On a couple of nights the guardian got out a local drink made in the Amazon called Chichuassi. It was super strong and left many people worse for wear the next day, i quite enjoyed it and as the guardian said "it makes you strong!" On the last night Calum and Remi tried the famous San Pedro Cactus juice. This is highly hallucinagenic, the idea was to drink it and then go and spend a night in the forest under a full moon. The boys came back half way through the night and Remi was terrified of everything, if you waved your hands in front of him he ran in terror! One can only imagine what he was seeing!
Photos of this section of trip below - enjoy! Unfortunately I took so many photos at the start I ran out of battery for two of the highlights. The bolting and climbing of Bloody Mary and the sheep slaughter!
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