A German-Venezuelan team established a 20-pitch free route up the North Pillar of Acopan Tepui in Venezuela in December. After an approach by folding canoes and a trail hacked through the rainforest above the Gran Sabana, Kurt Albert, Ivan Calderón, Stefan Glowacz, and Holger Heuber (along with a photographer, cameraman, and doctor) climbed 20 pitches up the 2,300-foot buttress. In early January, shortly after the Germans paddled off toward an airstrip to be picked up, Americans Kyle Dempster and Mike Libecki arrived at Acopan Tepui, hoping to make the first ascent of the North Pillar. (Libecki had attempted the wall four years earlier, climbing about 700 feet.) After climbing the initial jungle pitches, they were disappointed to discover that someone had just been there and had removed the fixed ropes and portaledge that Libecki had left on the wall.