Moskowitz Adventures 2015: Cojitambo

Sunday, November 22- Tuesday, November 24

Climbing in Cojitambo
By Eli

The other day we arrived in Cojitambo to go rock climbing with a man named Juan Gabriel. We arrived at his house on Sunday night and got settled in our room. It was a pretty big room with 4 bunk beds and one double. The room is so big because he usually has climbers from other cities come and stay at his house to climb. The next morning we got up and it was raining so we decided to wait and go climbing the next day. There are Inca ruins on the back side of the rock so we went on a walk (not a hike because Asa quit hiking again) to the ruins. At the top, we walked around in the ruins. The ruins were cool except there was trash and broken bottles all over the place, also people had written their names all over the rocks. After exploring the ruins, we walked back into town and decided we would go to the big city that was only 15 minutes away to try and get food other than chicken rice and french fries. When we got to the city Asa wanted to go to the first pizza place we found so we got him a pizza and then went out to look for a place to eat. After walking around for 30 minutes and only seeing pizzerias and burger places we finally went to a place to eat. I ended up having chicken and fries...

The next day we woke up and it was hot and sunny. We decided that Asa and I would climb a two pitch 5.8 with Juan Gabriel, and mom and dad would climb a long one pitch 5.8 with one 5.10 move. On the approach Juan Gabriel warned us to always wear our helmet when around the rock because the locals threw rocks and glass bottles off the edge above. After Asa and I had started the climb I was two moves in on the hardest part and I heard a crack and dad yell. Sure enough I saw a broken bottle flying down and the small pieces rained down on all of us while climbing. That was the scariest part of the climb. The rest of the way up was fun. The rock had really good friction and was covered in finger pockets making it pretty easy. After we got to the top, we hiked over to a single pitch zone called VIP. I started out on a 5.10 C and made it to the last move which was the hardest part and had to come down. Asa went up that route after me and at the same move I was at he cheated and grabbed a bolt with a quick draw and used that as a hold and made it up. Although he made it up, it does not count because he used the bolt as a hold. So we are even. Then I climbed a really fun 5.10 A that was pretty easy with a really fun over hang move at the top. Asa also climbed that route. We heard thunder and when I was at the top of one of the climbs I could see a wall of rain and lightning headed towards us, so we decided to abandon the climbing and head back to the house. Right when we got back to the house it started down pouring. I thought that the climbing was really fun. However the climbs were a lot easier than at Yosemite and Moab. For example, we climbed a 5.7 in Zion that was twice as hard as the 5.10 A that we climbed here.