Rain, Rain, and More Rain in Valle Cochamó: The Yosemite of South America
I.
“Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way.”
—Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now
Dan looked like a wet, grumpy turnip. Katie had the Brown-Frown in full dazzle. I was one nipple hair away from throwing a huge wobbler at anybody who dared make eye contact. And Matt? Well, Matt was stoked no matter what. You know, the kinda positive attitude that makes you wish the guy would step on a landmine.
This was our little hiccup of a crew’s third attempt to approach Cerro Trinidad, a 3,000-foot granite dome that looms high above Valle Cochamó, in Chilean Patagonia. Yes, that’s right, our third try at the approach. After days of rain, after lowering our expectations, after crossing the frigid Rio Cochamó three times, we crawled through bamboo punji sticks, shimmied across slimy logs, and stumbled up through rain-soaked flora to the base. Finally, we laid our clammy hands upon a granite wall that, for beauty and scope, rivals anything in the States, save the Captain and Half Dome.
On a map, Valle Cochamó lies 40 miles east of Puerto Montt, Chile, on the northern edge of the Patagonia region. Katie Brown and the Coloradoans Dan Gambino, Matt Lloyd, and I had assembled in Puerto Montt, bused to the coastal village of Cochamó, and horsepacked three hours into the mythic valle. I had heard stories the year before from Argentinean climbers in Bariloche about Cochamó’s endless granite, multiple 3,000-plus-foot unclimbed walls, and aid and free routes up to 20 pitches. They always added that the tábanos (horseflies) were as big as your eyeballs, the weather was iffy, and the approaches would make you cry for mercy. Argentineans can talk shit like no others, but this time their words rang true.
As the crew rested, I raced off to find the start of my and Katie’s objective: Nunca Mas Marisco, an 18-pitch 5.12d established by a capable crew of six Italians in 2005. “Seafood Never Again” referred to the team’s bout with food poisoning from local mussels. My audacious plan had been simply to climb this, the hardest route in the valley, and be done with it. (How could it be 5.12d? I’d asked myself. What do Italians know about crack climbing?) But I was starting to learn that Cochamó doesn’t give itself away very easily. In fact, much of Cerro Trinidad, the valley’s most dominating wall, is full of impossibly smooth slabs. In the middle of the wall, you’ll find El Pie, a distinct feature 1,500 feet high and so named because of its resemblance to an enormous footprint. Capping each toe are mammoth roofs and overhanging corners, some of which constitute the cruxes of several aid routes. Marisco splits a buttress right of El Pie.
Our revised plan was to recon the first few pitches; we wanted to figure out some of the mysteries scribbled on the community topo down in camp. For example, why did the free-ascent rack call for several knifeblades on one of the crux pitches? Did that mean the buggers had pulled out their protection? As I stood below El Pie, swatting at thumb-sized tábanos with my mouth agape, our modest plan began to unravel: I couldn’t, for the life of me, find the start of the route.
The first pitch had a bolt, or so the topo claimed, so I assumed I could orient off this. In the coming weeks, I would assume many things that would prove laughable. But at the base of Cerro Trinidad on that first mission, I still had an overflowing well of self-confidence, so I crashed through the dense jungle, spotting what looked like a bolt and then dismissing it, over and over. When I reached the base of a long, slightly wet, arching groove, I was about 30 percent sure that, despite not seeing a bolt, I had found Marisco. Katie and crew sat on a nearby ridge, waiting for me to come up for air.
“Chris, it’s getting a little late,” Katie yelled. “I think we should just do the route Dan and Matt are going to do, and come back for this later!” Dan and Matt had elected to try Bienvenidos a Mi Insomnio, an awe-inspiring 20-pitch 5.11a. They, too, wisely planned on getting only a taste, on the first few pitches.
It was already midmorning, and we had to descend the way we’d come. Since I’d forgotten the food bag, we’d had nothing to eat besides a couple bars Katie had magnanimously offered to share. I started to come around and give up my hopes of sending the hardest route in the valley in record time — of gloriously laughing my way up this testpiece, despite the fact that 5.12d was at my very limit. But I still wanted to find it ...
“Yeah, but I really think this is the route...” I shouted to Katie. She didn’t reply.
Where the hell was that bolt? If I could locate it, I was sure she’d head up. Damnit! “OK, you guys head over to Insomnio, and I’ll catch up,” I hollered. Defeated. Then another voice spoke up: “Come again, rogue? You and the illustrious Katie Brown do a mere 5.11a?” It was my ego, which had oddly taken on the voice of Darrel Hammond’s SNL impersonation of Sean Connery. “The day will be lost, you putz!”
I looked down, spying the meadow and Refugio Cochamó, a former farm and since 2005 the basecamp for climbing in the valley. It shone, a smooth, green patch carved out of the primal forest and crowded by ominous cliffs — a small raft of civility in the primitive sea that surrounded. Hosted by the American Daniel Seeliger and his wife, the Argentinean Silvina Verdun, the refugio provides a welcome touch of comfort for visiting climbers and trekkers. I thought longingly of Silvina’s fresh-baked bread, my book . . . a Thermarest in the sun.
“Shake it off, ya pansy!” Connery growled. The tábanos buzzed angrily.
Right! I came here for adventure, not to enjoy myself! If I merely wanted to have fun, I would be in a seaside bar somewhere, hitting on Chilean chicks in pidgin Spanish. I assumed there would be plenty of time to reexamine the murky topo of Marisco and march back up for another try. After all, we had almost a month.
II.
“Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew.”
—Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now
Valle Cochamó has long been a rough but passable foot route through the mountains and into Argentina — even rumored to have been used by Butch Cassidy and Tom “Sundance Kid” McCarty during their short-lived stint as Argentinean cattlemen. Today, a fairly straightforward, three-hour walk up a well-used horse trail takes you to Refugio Cochamó.
Chilean climbers, apparently bolstered by reports from an American pilot who’d flown over the area in the mid-1990s, traded stories about the valley for a few years, but it took a foreign expedition to mount the first attack. In 1997, Crispin Waddy, of the UK, made a recon, supposedly spending three epic days fighting his way from the river to the base of Cerro Trinidad with a machete. Later that same year, the UK climbers Noel Craine, Tim Dolan, and Simon Nadin climbed Stirling Moss (5.9; 1,500 feet), a somewhat unremarkable route up the formation’s northern flank.
In 1998, the true assault began: British and American teams established three routes splitting the 2,500-foot west face (and El Pie). Two teams from the UK deployed, including the return of Nadin, Waddy, and Craine, and pushed long, mixed aid-and-free routes through the roofs capping El Pie. Meanwhile, intrepid American explorers Steve Quinlan and Nathan Martin added Magellanic Clods/Welcome to the Jungle. These grade VI routes, all weighing in at the vague 5.11 A3, revealed the glory and the consequences of new routing in Cochamó. From a distance, the granite looks deliciously Yosemite-like. But up close, the cracks tend to be bottoming grooves, initially heavily vegetated, and difficult to protect. The free climbing is mostly up slabby, desperately flared cracks, and much of the beyond-vertical terrain must be aided. Still, the rock itself is pristine and plentiful, with splitters occasionally appearing.
Over the next few seasons, as word spread of the “Chilean Yosemite,” various European and North American teams showed up pretty regularly, opening impressive routes on several other walls, including Cerro Capicua, El Monsturo, and Cerro La Junta, all more than 3,300 feet. In 1999, the colorful and prolific Jose Luis “Chiquiño” Hartman, from Brazil, began making annual pilgrimages; he opened several new walls by doggedly camping at their bases for weeks and established the only free route on Trinidad’s third buttress: the 12-pitch Alendalaca (5.12a).
Chris Kalous leans into P3 of the 12-pitch Vista del Condor (5.12b), La Gorilla.
The Puerto Montt climber and schoolteacher Michel Sanchez has been the most important Chilean local. In 2007, Sanchez forged two impressive lines in Valle La Palangana, which hangs above the main valley and boasts perhaps the area’s best rock and cleanest cracks: the 11-pitch Icaro y La Luna (5.10c), with Martin Waldhor; and Pulso (5.10c), nine pitches, with Luis Parez. Before the routes went in, Sanchez took several days to open what is now a technical, six-hour jungle slog.
Each season, more routes get added and more walls discovered, many by Verdun and Seeliger, from the refugio. A safe guess puts the current route count around 50, from sport pitches to big walls, with only about 10 percent of the potential tapped. Our mini-expedition had humbly decided to focus on repeating a few of the free-climbing gems and, hopefully, tasting the local culture.
III. “You have to have men ... who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling ...”
—Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
“I think Chico is in love with your friend,” said Martin, one of our four new Chilean friends, a quartet of college buddies from Santiago who’d come to Cochamó to screw around for a few days. I looked across the fire at Katie, assuming that one of the Chileans had snuggled up to our team chica. But she sat alone, cuddled in her downie, lost in her thoughts.
“¿A como?”
“Dan broke his heart today, but now I think Chico loves him,” Martin repeated. He waved his plastic cup of sloshing pisco (a sweet, hard Chilean alcohol made from grapes) to the outside of the firelight, where Chico and Dan crouched together like commandos. Chico held a BB air-pistol close to his chest, mimicking Dan’s stance.
“Never hold the pistol away from your body, because it makes it easier for your opponent to disarm you,” Dan counseled an awestruck and wild-eyed Chico, while manipulating the Chilean’s body like a mannequin.
The ever-up Matt Lloyd - on the ever-dry Pared Seca - is anything but Casi Desmotivado (5.12b).
Earlier that day, Dan had wandered upon the Chilean boys taking turns missing a beer can with the pistol. Dan politely asked for the weapon and proceeded to drill the can with nine out of 10 shots. He’d thanked the guys, and then walked on like the Outlaw Josey Wales. Dan’s odd knowledge of close-quarters combat did nothing to dispel the ubiquitous notion abroad that all Americans are gun-wielding nutjobs.
In the week after that first foray to Trinidad, we had managed some cragging on a couple smaller cliffs during the rains, and Katie and I had tiptoed up several pitches on Vista del Condor, a 12-pitch 5.12b on the featured slabs of La Gorilla. Still, we had not yet completed a big route. Early on, we lost a couple sunny days mucking about in the alluring waterfalls near the meadow — me and the boys ineptly chatting up the bikini-clad Chilean girls who’d materialized from the jungle. Then the rain returned more relentlessly than when we’d arrived.
The hikers who came to the valley provided a distraction from our growing despondency about the weather and our success rate. Late on this night, the fire was stoked to an inferno and the pistol prudently put away. The drunken college kids howled into the heavens, with Dan, Matt, and I trying to hold our own. (Katie wisely snuck away to her tent before the booze got out of control.) The next day, the Chilean boys waved from across the meadow and made chopping motions to their aching heads. We knew the feeling.
IV. “Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.”
—Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now
Halfway through the trip, our team sustained a casualty. When climbing in Patagonia proper —Fitzroy, Torres del Paine, etc. — climbers half-expect to fail. We’ve all heard of people going season after season only to get fat and lazy waiting for the weather. This is why I’ve never tried one of those towers. I’d come to Cochamó instead.
Still, this coastal valley can receive more than 100 inches of annual precipitation. But February is traditionally a “dry” month, and the two weeks prior to our visit had, in fact, been bluebird. Seeliger assured us the weather was just bad luck and it would clear up any day. He swore he’d never seen so much rain in February. After a while, his voice took on a tone of pity. Then he stopped charging us for beer.
Matt, meanwhile, tirelessly tried to maintain morale by goading the rest of us to join him at Pared Seca (“Dry Wall”), a sport crag boasting several steep granite routes doable in even the most persistent deluge. A Rifle aficionado, he naturally found a project: a six-bolt 5.13b slopefest ironically called Happy Hour.
Still, Katie, in particular, was feeling the creeping insanity imposed by the weather and its brooding gloom. And to add to her woes, she’d left some relationship wounds festering back in the States, wounds that, with all the downtime, were now beginning to pus over. Katie had yet to relax and enjoy the challenges of this otherworldly place and culture.
Finally, while we packed up to hike out for a resupply and overnight respite in town, Katie sheepishly announced, “I’m going home.” She’d left too many things on the burner back in the States, she said; the rain, no doubt, and lack of success were factors, too. I felt betrayed — Katie was more or less my partner. True, the pre-trip excitement we’d shared over the prospect of climbing together had never rematerialized, but I was still counting on her for our auspicious send of the hardest free line on Trinidad (a delusion not yet sunk into its soggy grave).
We split up on the walk out, leaving each of us more time to mope. Katie going AWOL just magnified the sting of coming all the way here without succeeding on anything big. Still, once we reached the trailhead, the thought of a night out of the jungle and rain buoyed our spirits. After two and a half hours standing on the bus (the long and lanky Matt also being forced to crouch), our crew piled out onto the streets of touristy Puerto Varas, stashed our gear, and proceeded to get our drink on. We stumbled back to the hostel around 3:00 a.m., the best of drunken friends.
Hiking back into the valley a day after sending Katie off with a hug, Dan, Matt, and I realized that her stress had been making us a little crazy, too. Despite the fact that we slogged up the trail in a torrential downpour, we all felt poised to send.
What a bunch of schmucks ...
Long story short: we attempted a recently established 5.12a on the remote Pared de Patiencia called The Path of Righteousness. After a five-hour jungle-bash approach with mud tunneling and vine climbing, I bailed off the first pitch — a soaking-wet 5.11 R slab. We spent the night camped precariously on a 50-degree wooded slope. We woke up to rain. We descended. Drank pisco. Played 20 games of Gin Rummy. Lathered, rinsed, repeated.
Waiting is not one of my strong suits. Matt’s wick is even shorter. And in the copious downtime, our mutual impatience rubbed each other’s nerves raw. Yet with Katie gone and Dan content to shoot pictures, Matt and I found common ground in the desire to get up at least one big route. As our remaining days dwindled, we focused on one thing: Bienvenidos a Mi Insomnio.
Put up by Seeliger and his two friends/employees, the Argentinean brothers Juan Pablo and Ezequiel Manoni, Bienvenidos is truly the area classic. Boasting 20 pitches, most of which are 5.10a or harder, the route is a magnificent journey up Cerro Trinidad. It is longer than Lotus Flower Tower, and bigger and more continuous than anything at the grade in Yosemite. For me, it had originally been on the back burner, but my crazed obsession with Nunca Mas Marisco had finally run headlong into reality. It was too hard; my will was too weak. Bienvenidos would be a fine alternative. But nearing the end of the trip, we started to lose sleep over the prospect of not even supping on this treat.
Just four days before departure, Matt and I headed up to bivy at the base of Cerro Trinidad in decent weather. The approach no longer daunted us, and we soon brewed up at the base as the sunset blazed the granite.
The next morning dawned brilliantly clear, and Matt and I set out just behind another team we’d befriended at the refugio: two Yanks and a Chilean. The first few pitches, which we’d reconned weeks before, slipped away in the dawn. Although the not-quite-crack groove climbing had originally sucker-punched us, on this final route, Matt and I made our peace with the flares and started to enjoy this uniquely Cochamó style. Matt, who has redpointed 5.13d in Rifle (not to mention his proj at Pared Seca), returned to climbing kindergarten as he made his way across smooth, exposed 5.10 slabs — a huge grin belying the trouble he was having. The exposure intoxicated him on his first really big climb. I just kept eyeballing the horizon for clouds and re-racking as quickly as possible.
On top, the sight of the surrounding Andes bathed in sunshine reminded us why we love to climb. The staggering potential also revealed itself. More enormous cliffs peeked from previously hidden valleys. We counted at least 10 separate walls that looked 1,600 feet or taller. My altimeter had recorded a 3,445-foot ascent, but just a few rappels off the north face put us on the hike back to our bivy. We arrived just after dark, punch-drunk with fatigue and satisfaction. Cochamó finally had smiled upon us, banishing the memories of boredom and discomfort of weeks past, if just for one day.
Dan, Matt, and I horse-packed out two days later. Although our suffering had been minimal compared to historic Patagonian epics, it had been a trying few weeks in Cochamó, and I finally admitted to the intimidation I’d felt. Yes, the climbing was difficult and heady. The weather was challenging. But more crucially, as Joseph Conrad put it in Heart of Darkness, we had been surrounded by “the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness.” Even so, like that spell that bound Kurtz to the jungle, the three of us decided that the walls we’d spied across the waves of forested hills from atop Bienvenidos deserved a closer look. Too many adventures lurked outside the boat for just one trip. And, as Cochamó taught us, if you get out of the boat, you’d better go all the way.
Despite all the Apocalypse Now quotes, Chris Kalous, these days living in Colorado, is more of a Ratatouille fan.
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