In search of sunshine, again,
December 2007 - January 2008

(With too many pictures.)

This ring is the Potrero, and the climbing is where the river has cut a chico gap in the wall.

The rock is Limestone an ancient coral reef which a volcanic intrusion inflated into a dome (if the guidebook is to be believed).

This rock is mined for Hidalgo's cement factory. It took us a few days to figure out that that's what those explosions were!

(Enlarge)

The climbing starts right at the road level, as sport climbing should.

We started with some single-pitch routes to warm up...

... but the place is about long routes, so we got on this one:

Supernova, 5.11 c, 8 pitches.
(But only the first one is 11, the rest is a big 5.6 ramp.)

It's at the back of a dark cold canyon, and we not only did it on a cold windy day, but
started very early (to have no-one above us) and with too little clothing.

[Ben's picture]

The hard part was getting down again... first, we discovered why everyone recommends a 70m rope here.

And second, two or three other groups, less careful than us about the loose rock, were by now climbing above us. We were very thankful that the gully is a bit diagonal.

Another early start, on another climb with its hardest pitch first: just the thing for cold fingers! This is Snot Girlz,5.10+, 7 pitches.

On this one, the rock was good enough that being second wouldn't have mattered. But there was a queue to start by the time we got down.

[Devon's picture, of me!]

This climb is Yankee Clipper, 5.12a, 15 pitches, on the aptly named Jungle Wall.

On our last day we thought we'd see how far up it we could get, as a big slow group of four. 8 pitches was the answer, stopping well short of the 5.12 pitch at the top.

[Ben's picture]

[Devon's picture, with Maggie and me behind]

If we didn't have dinner that night at Checo's, then we should have. It was cool and cheap and the beer came in litre bottles.

And then a taxi took us back to the airport and next thing we were all home.