Lost in Venezuela
March 2008The line of Perdidos en Venezuela on the east face of Acopan Tepui. Courtesy of Asa Firestone.
Mountain Fellowship recipient Matt Othmer reports on two new routes and a frustrating failure in the jungles of South America.
When I walked over to Asa, he turned and said, “The first thing the guy with the bowl on his head did was ask me if I had any tobacco.” I turned around and saw that there was in fact a man with a bright-blue plastic bowl on his head, and that he was missing the massive wad of tobacco that many of the other people in the village had wedged in their lower lips.
At that moment, my climbing partners, Asa Firestone, Daniel Guimaraes, Eric Silvestrin, and I were standing in the center of the Yanomami village of Maraca on the Siapa River in Amazonas, Venezuela. We had arrived in Maraca after 10 days of river travel, en route to climb Cerro Aratitiyope, a beautiful granite spire in the middle of the jungle. We were finally within reach of the mountain, and were hoping that within a week we would be standing at its base, gearing up for the coolest climbing of our lives, a first ascent of the east face.
We’d arrived in Caracas in early December 2007, and met up with the friendliest climbing community in the world. They took us in like brothers and made sure we got all our expedition planning and organizing done safely. Our three Brazilian team members were late, postponing our departure date by two days. Sergio, the oldest and most experienced, had terrible back pains from a slipped disk, and had to return to Brazil. We were all very sad about losing him, but there was nothing we could do. Meanwhile, the remaining four of us jumped on a bus to Puerto Ayacucho, the gateway to the Venezuelan Amazon.
Cerro Aratitiyope
We got to Puerto Ayacucho in the morning, and by early afternoon we were on the boat. Finally! The boat, a 50- by 6-foot “bongo,” was to be our home and lifeline for the next month and a half. The first few days on the river were spectacular. The river, the animals, the forest—everything was beautiful. Best of all, there were mountains! Seeing some real topography was exactly what we needed to get us even more excited and convince us that Cerro Aratitiyope did exist, despite the fact that no one had been there for 15 years.
Traveling on the river, we slept in hammocks every night, fished for piranha when we could, and cooked on grills made of twigs over campfires. The jungle in the area is pristine, with no signs of deforestation or abuse. In all of Amazonas, the region in Venezuela is by far the best preserved.
After a week on the boat, we arrived in Tama-Tama, home to the last of the eight military posts we had to cross. To our dismay, our papers were rejected, and suddenly we found ourselves stuck in Tama-Tama with our expedition in jeopardy. To make things worse, the pori-pori (blood-sucking black flies) tormented us constantly. Four days later, new papers arrived by boat from Puerto Ayacucho, and we were finally on our way down the Casiquiare Canal.
The Casiquiare is the only naturally occurring canal in the world that takes water from one river system (the Orinoco) and gives it to a completely different river system (the Amazon). I had heard about the canal years ago while in Brazil, and to be on it finally was amazing. A couple of more days down river and we had entered Yanomami territory. The Yanomami were only contacted in the late 1960s and are some of the most remote indigenous tribes remaining in the world. They live by hunting and gathering, and are complete masters of the forest. Among many fascinating practices, one of the most interesting is their treatment of death. When a Yanomami dies, there is a two-week mourning process during which the survivors cremate the dead and make soup with the ashes. This soup is then shared among the community, and when the mourning process is over the name of the deceased may never be spoken by anyone again.
Upon our arrival in the village of Maraca, one curious Yanomami slipped on the edge of our boat and cut his leg, pouring blood everywhere. Instantly, the mood switched from curiosity to trauma. A woman sobbed uncontrollably, and we worried that the Yanomami would take this bad luck as an omen, skewing our relations with them from the first moment. Fortunately, Daniel, our Brazilian medical student, quickly cleaned up the cut and bandaged the wound, calming the villagers and preserving our good relations with the tribe.
We left Maraca with six Yanomami guides. We hired them to help us travel through the jungle safely, catch supplemental food, and carry some of our loads. Leaving the village, the rivers became more narrow, twisted, and difficult to navigate. Flaco, our indigenous boat driver, was unbelievably good at maneuvering his boat, but we knew that the river ahead would test his skill. Before leaving Caracas, we had marked a point on the map, about 10 kilometers from the peak, that we hoped to reach by boat. We decided that if we did not get within 15 kilometers of the peak, there would be no reason to try the overland approach—it would take too long to blaze a trail that far through the rainforest. The next day, the river narrowed and fallen trees crossed the river. We could go no farther. We were 25 kilometers from Aratitiyope, and the unclimbed east face was on the far side of the peak.
Despite this daunting realization, we did not give up. We established base camp, geared up, and set off, hacking through the jungle. After thousands of years of adapting to finding protein in the jungle, the Yanomami hunters were fascinating to watch. We were in awe as they caught birds with their six-foot-long arrows, killed a tortoise to make turtle soup, and sacked bee hives. After two days we had made comically slow progress—less than 5 kilometers per day. We had had extensive problems convincing our native porters of the importance of our objective, their role in achieving it, and even the direction of the peak. In addition to these misfortunes, the river housing our boat had dropped six feet in two days, terrifying Flaco with the thought of being stranded in the deepest sector of the Amazon. After much discussion, we agreed to abandon all hope of reaching the summit of Cerro Aratitiyope. It was a heartbreaking decision, but not a difficult one to make. After some very impressive piloting by Flaco, our lovable boat driver, we were back on sizable rivers.
Culimacare
To mend our badly broken hearts, we went in search of another granite dome that we had heard of in the area. As we approached Culimacare rock, we were able to see a beautiful crack on its south face. We spent New Year’s Eve in a small village nearby, as we prepared to welcome in 2008 with some great climbing. On New Year’s Day we made the first ascent of Coño Crack (5.10+ A2+), a fun mix of free and aid climbing on virgin granite.
The aid climbing on the lower part of the route was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The crack was so saturated and rotten that what looked like a perfect knifeblade placement would end accepting a No. 4 angle! After a while I got accustomed to this challenge, but not before one of the angles popped, making for a clean but exciting 30-foot fall. Higher up, Asa free-climbed a crack that seemed to be home to every bat in the Amazon, each squealing every time he jammed his hand in their faces. The crack was less rotten at this point, providing stellar climbing. Although it was not Cerro Aratitiyope, Coño Crack was a great start to 2008.
The next day we climbed up the north face of Culimacare and brought Flaco with us. He had been piloting boats in the area his whole life, and had passed the peak countless times, but had never been on top. He climbed with grace and confidence, saying that our climbing shoes made him feel “like a spider” on the rock. When he reached the top, he looked down at the twisting river and commented, “It’s not very straight, is it?” It was great to give Flaco a chance to see how beautiful the area looked from above, and to test his climbing abilities in a way he will likely never have the chance to do again.
Acopan Tepui
Another long week on the boat and we were back in Puerto Ayacucho. We spoiled ourselves with beer, chocolate, bread, and cheese while we organized the next phase of our adventure. Asa and I still had a strong climbing itch, so with the help of our Venezuelan climbing friends we made the necessary plans to get to Acopan Tepui, near Angel Falls, in the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela. Before we set off, Asa came down with a terrible fever that showed all of the symptoms of malaria. Luckily, the tests came up negative, and within a couple of days we were off on another epic 24-hour bus ride, this time to the Gran Sabana.
We arrived in Santa Elena de Uairen, a small town on the border of Venezuela and Brazil, and made the final preparations for the next phase of our expedition. A couple of days later, we were buzzing Acopan’s massive cliff faces in a little four-seat Cessna, on our way to Yunek, a small Pemon village at the base of Acopan Tepui. We made a bumpy but successful landing on the overgrown dirt runway and were greeted by the Pemon chief of the village. After very friendly negotiations with the chief, we set off with three porters for base camp. We reached the camp later that day. The next day we began hauling loads to the base of the wall. On one trip, Asa came within an inch of stepping on a fer-de-lance, the notorious pit viper that accounts for the vast majority of deadly snake bites in the Amazon. We spent a day scouting possible routes, and then began our climb. We chose a line that headed up a dihedral system on the pillar above our base camp, the southern of two huge pillars on the east face of the tepui.
The first three pitches of the route involved tricky aid and free climbing to get on top of a very small waterfall, around a roof, and reach the dihedral system we were aiming for. In the process of attaining this dihedral, we encountered scorpions in cracks and I took a 15-foot fall while Asa was being interviewed by satellite phone on National Geographic Radio. Because there was a waterfall a couple hundred feet up the route, we did not have to haul any water to that point. Instead, we used the convenient trickle of crystal-clear water to fill up our bottles as we passed.
We then started what turned out to be 1,000 feet of unbelievable free climbing. Each pitch was more fun than the one before it, and although we encountered some loose blocks and sharp edges, most of the rock was extremely clean and the gear was solid. We reached the top after five days of climbing and enjoyed the beautiful, unique, and mysterious world of the tepui summits. For me, having dreamed of the Gran Sabana my whole life, it was an indescribable moment. The climbing had been everything we could have hoped for—adventurous, aesthetic, beautiful, and, despite its being January, warm!
We named the route Perdidos en Venezuela (1,300 feet, V 5.11 C2+, 13 pitches), in reference to the month and a half we had been traveling through the country searching for a climb of this caliber. We placed two bolts at each anchor for rappels, and another five on the route itself. There are a couple of great bivy spots, on top of pitches four and six, and most belays are also fairly comfortable. Sixty-meter ropes are necessary, and having three is useful for fixing and descending.
Within a day and a half of rappelling off of Acopan, we were on another Cessna headed back to 21st-century civilization. To celebrate, we spent some time enjoying the Venezuelan beaches and some of the other climbing Venezuela has to offer. This included deep-water soloing near Puerto La Cruz and great limestone trad and sport climbing on some of the country’s best crags, the Puerta de Miraflores, the Sanctuary in Caripe, and La Guarita within the city of Caracas itself.
Despite being difficult and frustrating, the trip turned out to be more than we could have ever dreamed. We want to thank the American Alpine Club for its Mountain Fellowship and the National Geographic Society for its Young Explorers Grant, plus everyone else who helped us achieve such an amazing adventure.