I arrived here a week ago, after an extended trip around South America, eager to climb after months of travel. I was immediately enchanted by the rock, the fairy-tale vegetation, and the witch’s hazel, a type of greenish-blue moss, which drapes over the trees and rock walls. Yellow and orange fungi decorate the rock, alongside ancient pictographs and teenage graffiti.

The rock of Suesca is of the hardest sandstone, so hard that on the rainiest of days, it is still possible to climb at the majority of the crags. This is not the grainy sandstone of Indian Creek, but sandstone as solid as granite. One of my favourites is an area classic, a crack climb called The Occult. It starts with a fingery layback in a corner and then gradually opens to hands, followed by fists to the first anchor, and then launches back into a vertical finger section. The first pitch is 5.9 and the second pitch is 5.11a. The Occult is named because of the stories of ghosts of dead climbers that haunt the railway tracks. By the campfire, Ricardo continues to recount his phantom tales. “Twenty climbers died on these walls since 1950,” he says. “Ten were inexperienced city people soloing, and the other ten were experienced climbers.” Ricardo is tall and thin, with a dark complexion and smiley eyes. He loves to tell a good story as much as he loves a good audience.

The next day starts at 7 AM with Ricardo blaring heavy metal music. I chose to set up my tent a few feet from his doorway for added safety, but this morning I am rethinking this strategy. Freddy shows up an hour later ready to climb. “What’s your favourite climb in the area,” I ask him. “The highest multi-pitch in Suesca,” he replies. “It is four pitches and is called El L.P. It goes at 5.7.” I pour him a cup of coffee as the dog’s crowd around us. “El L.P. has challenging moves and continuous movement. It was put up by Antoine Fafret over thirty years ago,” he tells me. “Well let’s go do it then,” I say. Freddy leads the first pitch, which is varied and hard for the grade. It starts with slab moves to bulging blocks, which are gained by fist jamming and finishes up an easy crack to a ledge. The second pitch starts with a traverse onto steep overhanging pockets, then moves into a hand crack, finishing in another pocketed roof. I start up pitch three by crawling on my stomach onto a boulder to stand up to reach a crack. The crack is four feet above the ledge, and I place a good fist jam and heave up to massive buckets. I set up the anchor in a crack in front of a tree. The fourth pitch is a mix of pockets and finger cracks and summits onto a flat tabletop.

The descent is a winding adventure called Zig Zag, and requires some scrambling. The trail takes twenty minutes to descend; depending how much time is spent stopping to admire the view of the rolling hills, the numerous crack climbs, or the weird cacti and plant life that cling to the rock.