After our short stay in Bolivia we crossed the border into Chile. This was a real faf. They have very tight rules on what you bring into the country, i.e. no fresh produce. Before we got to the border we all frantically stuffed apples under the floorboards and yoghurt drinks into the depths of our climbing sacks to avoid getting in big trouble with the SAG dudes who came on to search the truck. Turns out you can bribe in Chile too and a few bits of cheese and a bar of chocolate and the guard let us on our way. Into Chile and one of the driest regions on earth, the atacama.
We had three crags lined up for this section of the trip all on beautiful hard igneous rock set in deep gorges carved into the desert. After a lovely overnight stay in San Pedro de Atacama where we actually enjoyed a fine meal out and some drinks for woody birthday the first crag was Tocanau. After completing two easy trad pitches I got on a 6c+ route which followed a beautful line of pockets up a near vertical sheet of rock, it looked perfect. The first 3 bolts went fine before I discovered the 3rd bolt was missing. Instead i place a small cam inside a pocket, it looked bombproof so I pressed on. Unfortunately I made a complete hubbub of the moves and fell going up to the next bolt. I didnt think id fall very far but the rock holding the cam exploded and the cam ripped out, so i kept falling. I landed reasonably hard on the ledge next to Woody who had expertly jumped off the ledge to take in some of the slack rope. Without this I might have hurt myself very badly, so thanks Woody- top work! Unfortunately my bottom which had almost recovered from the sandboarding pain was now pretty sore again, boo! On the walk back to the truck it seemed most people in the valley had heard my plummeting screams as they came up to check I was ok. On returning to the truck we were told we were unable to stay in the area as it was an indigenous village and they did not allow camping, I wasnt too fussed about leaving!
The next crag was socaire, similar climbing in a gorge with a beautiful little stream running down it and surrounded by volcanoes. We had four days here and I loved the climbing and the whole situation. Managed to complete a 7a+ which I was very happy with, it was fairly hard for the grade and we were still at 4000m of altitude. On one of the days Simon, Danny and myself climbed for a half day before venturing off with light packs to climb one of the nearby volcanoes. They were further away than we thought. We got to a disappointing summit after endless false ones at 5100m and then descended in the dark getting back to the truck at 130am for dinner! A highlight of the climb was seeing the weird pentinites that appear in very dry high areas. Weird sharp fins of snow or ice free standing from the ground, they were nice to look at but a pain to walk across.
All left Socaire in high spirits after some awesome climbing and with the prospect of more of the same at Tuzgle in Argentina we were very excited. My only low point of Socaire was when a party of French climbers turned up and although they had the whole gorge to choose from they plonked their little tent right within spitting distance of mine. To make it worse they then lit a huge fire as I was trying to sleep IN BETWEEN THE TENTS! Have they not done D of E? Very dangerous. Luckily Sarah the scary Welsh doctor had a go at them and made them put out the fire, they moved the next day!!
To see photos click below
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