rav's blog

Duty Calls. And sometimes it calls you to England. Of all places. An Irish friend commented - why would you go to Plymouth, you can spell Pluto with the letters in Plymouth? Look on a map and you'll see what he means - it makes Wales look accessible.

It's winter break down here. I have a month off. That could be a month imposing upon friends in Boulder, back on glorious French limestone, right here skiing the 2 meters of fresh powder that just fell, or in vast unexplored boulder fields in the north of Chile where it never, ever rains.

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The rain last night brought snow to within forty feet of my house. Which means my local crags are covered. It's so cold down here in sunny South America that Argentina turned off their gas pipeline to Chile. Nice bit of international relations there. Already there's a sizable chunk taken out of the eight tons of wood I bought for heating.

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The boys are back, the data's in, and everyone who has ever laid claim to scaling the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere can breathe a sigh of relief. Turns out, after dragging high-tech GPS gear and a large marble plaque(!) up Ojos del Salado and Pisis volcanoes in Chile and Argentina, that Aconcagua is still the highest peak in the Americas. But not by much. Aconcagua is 6,950 meters and the newest reading for Ojos del Salado is 6,934. For you non-metric provincials get out your graphing calculator and multiply by 3.3.

Ojos del Salado is just 16 meters short of Aconcagua, but they did verify that it is the highest volcano in the world. You can read about it in civilized metric French here: http://www.lepetitjournal.com/content/view/14956/1221/

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Loco is back in town. Back from stomping up some of the highest peaks in the Andes – and therefore the highest peaks in the Americas. And he has some great stories – of hauling high-tech measuring instruments and marble plaques to distant summits. A Mexican sherpa, who was never really supposed to summit anything, bagging every peak. But this day we are mostly concerned with a 15 foot boulder problem in a nearby park. Probably somebody has climbed this thing. But everyone I talk to says – I bouldered up to the exit moves and then it got so thin it was just too scary. Only in Spanish.

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I was recently contacted by a climber living in the small (pop. 35,000) Norwegian city of Sandefjord. In the late 90's I was lucky enough to live in Sandefjord and open lots and lots of routes with a few other climbers in the area - most of them short and most of them right in the city. Maybe the first hundred were done from the ground up opening and cleaning on lead. Then we pitched in, bought a drill, and opened a ton of sport routes between the cracks.

This climber wanted to know if he could have permission to use our old online guide to make a printed guide of the area. He also mentioned that since we left - most of the climbers were foreigners - almost nobody climbs outdoors anymore. To the point that many of the great lines have become re-vegetated.

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Stepping into the Refugio Lo Valdes, I felt like I was transported from Chile back to Switzerland. The refugio is a massive stone hut with clean, warm rooms, hearty, tasty fare, streams running through the back garden, excellent selection of wines and fabulous vistas in 360 degrees. The refugio is owned and leased out by the Club Andino Aleman (German Climbing Club). They are also providing us with funds to equip some cliffs in the area. They give out free photocopied maps of hikes and climbs in the area to guests and encourage (or at least don't discourage) late night guitar sessions.

These pictures were all taken from the stone terrace where several Chileans of German descent were enjoying the view with copious portions of vino blanco.

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So, my French buddy, Jean, asks a German climbing federation in Chile for a bunch of money and...they give us some. How cool is that? Not all we asked for. But U.S $400. To bolt multi-pitch climbs on a cliff near their refuge. Pretty good since we would have spent our own hard earned pesos on the same project.

So, it's a weekend of hanging off ropes or cliffhangers and drilling and, hopefully, sending new lines. Up to 5 pitches.

Pictures to come soon, I hope...

A four day weekend is always good news. Reminds me that religion does serve a purpose - and living in a Catholic country does have its advantages.

But family and friends want to surf. The wee one has a new wetsuit and is chanting BEACHBEACHBEACH. A climbing trip is simply not in the cards. Best I can manage is a 180 degree change in direction. Instead of driving 5 hours south to a cool, chilled-out surf scene why not drive 5 hours north to a cool, chilled-out surf scene...with boulders?

I like getting into the water sometimes, too.

The coast just south of La Serena, Chile is literally rotten with boulders. The best known destination, Coquimbo, is unfortunately also rotten with trash. But just down the road where all the surfing happens there's some fine, fine bouldering with some soft, sand landings.

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