Adventure Magazine

SURVIVAL
Cochamó
the high and the wild &
how to keep it that way
Words and photos by Derek Cheng
Place your foot on the blank rock-face.
Ease your weight onto it as you hold
your breath and squeeze your insides.
Don’t think about how far you’d fall if
your foot slips.
This is slab climbing, moving up on
a featureless part of a less-thanvertical
wall. There are no holds,
nothing to grab and pull yourself
higher. It’s all balance and footwork.
It feels impossible, or, at best, highly
improbable.
Your heart hangs in your mouth as you
carefully weight your foot. This eases
the pressure on your other foot, which
may or may not upset the magical
formula that is, for the moment, keeping
you attached to the wall.
If done well, it feels like levitating,
but there’s a fine line between heartin-mouth
terror and levitation, a
line I became very familiar with in
Cochamó, Chile. The granite cliffs of
this mountain-filled valley in northern
Patagonia, sometimes called the
Yosemite of the south, are full of
discontinuous cracks and corners that
are linked via blank, steep slabs.
I had an early taste of this on one of
our first climbing days. We were on
the first pitch of a route called Surfing
For Stone, rated ‘R?’, indicating the
potential for an ugly fall due to sparse
gear protection. I had climbed through
the wet chimney at the bottom, and
was searching for somewhere to place
said protection. One moment, my foot
was smearing on the rock. The next, it
slipped and sent me tumbling down into
the chimney, my torso inverting after I
tripped on the rope behind my leg.
The rope eventually came tight,
arresting my fall several metres below.
I gathered myself, assessed the
damage. Mostly scot-free, aside from
a banged-up elbow. Up I continued,
beyond the place where I'd fallen,
and then up a hand-crack as the wall
steepened.
It started to drizzle as I started up
another featureless section, my feet
clinging to the blank wall, my heart in
my mouth. Wet rock and friction are not
natural bedfellows. My foot popped,
spinning me sideways into a 10m bum-
slide that ripped up my soft-shell
pants, underwear and butt-cheek.
With a bruised body and ego, my
will to continue dissipated as the
skies opened. Down I went, tail
between my legs, leaving behind
gear to be retrieved another day.
"My foot
popped,
spinning me
sideways
into a 10m
bum-slide
that ripped
up my softshell
pants,
underwear
and buttcheek."
Right: The climbing on the first pitch
of Der Grantler, in Cochamó's Trinidad
valley, is steep and demanding.
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