From climbing up mountains to jumping off them
You don’t know until you know. I recited this in my head as we walked in the rain and then later as we bivvy’d in the howling wind. At 7am Nick lead the first pitch and the conditions were the best we could have hoped for. The rock quality was superior. The conditions were not going to be an excuse to bail. I knew we were going to complete the route.
Light in the mountains provokes various thoughts and considerations. Natural lights, stars and the moon promise a settled night, ideal for an unplanned bivi halfway up a route, while the lights of a mountain refuge can give you assurance after several long days on a route. Sometimes the lights from bedrooms, street lamps and porches give me entirely different thoughts:
Deep water soloing makes me push myself harder than any of the other climbing disciplines. The fear of the fall motivates and gives me the appetite to finish the route. The cold British waters, jellyfish, wet shoes or a redraw back are enough to put me off falling at all. And these are always in the back of my mind, but once I’m focused on the rock and have set aside these fears, I can climb freely and in relative safety without ropes. Though this mindset can sometimes be hard to achieve. The water is a fine line between being a safety net that urges you to climb higher, and at the same time makes you dread falling, as you realize it could mean hitting the water uncontrollably onto your back from 10m. Winded underwater, then coming up spluttering and gasping for air.
Access
Traveling from Stanley to MPA at around mile 22 a prominent crag can be seen on the right.
Description
The quarzite rock is of good quality, lots of top anchors and mostly good protection, tho the routes will probably need cleaning. There is a lot more chance for development in the area the north side of Mount Harriet has some long slab crack climbs, and the south face has some steep climbs with small roofs that could make for some hard routes.
When we first had a chance to climb in the Falklands I did a lot of research and contacted people to see if there any any routes had been recorded, apparently a scrapbook of routes does exist in the Gyms office on the camp, though no-one knows of it now, so for that reason I believe that some of these climbs might have been climbed before, but here is the first record of it online:
Over the last 5 months climbing opportunities have been few and far between. The Falkland Islands aren’t a world known climbing destination and southern Chile seemed to have no climbing crags, and our three day visit meant we had time to walk to Torres del Paine but nothing more.
With my feet still feeling the effects of climbing the Eiger 3 weeks ago, I’m now in Italy looking up at a 1000m cliff face. The plan is to climb ‘Via Vertinge’ to the BASE jumping exit point over two days, where my cached Wingsuit and BASE rig will be waiting. Then take a quick flight back to the car-park and drive up to collect Gabo. This was the plan, reality was a bit different.
The 1000m climb was split into 2. The first half consisted of waves of limestone slab broken up by short bands of vertical rock. The second half was overhanging with multiple large roofs. The route, Via Vertinge, is graded 6+, A2.
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I had to head back to the Eiger; the weather window during the previous climb had not allowed me to jump it. After taking the first train up, we climbed the west flank and reached the Mushroom in under three hours. A Tyrolean traverse was anchored to the freestanding pillar named the Mushroom, a perfect platform for launching yourself off the North Face. This would be the first of the six mountains that I was to jump and my first at high altitude, I stood at the exit wondering how the altitude would effect the flight.
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Hard night in Vegas, onto a 10pm and then a 6am session at Red Rocks, onto a 8 hour drive to Yosemite. I park up at Bridalveil car park and within 20 minutes of arriving, I’ve cooked some noodles, thrown my kit in a haul bag, and we are off on the hour hike up the boulder field to the start. Sean (the nicest guy in big walling,) had spent the last 2 hours checking and re-checking his rack. Our plan is to climb the West Face of the Leaning Tower in a day.
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