February, 2010
Behold: Goosebumps, 5.11a, 150m on Pared Pata de Pato.
20 minutes up the talus field. Water with Tang, check. Rack, ropes, bolting kit, check, check and check. Josh, Vishal, clear skies, yups. Tabanos, dang. Looks like we got everything. Who wants to lead? I guess I will. Josh put it well: a rescue that humbled us all. I took lead, alright. What I didn’t expect was to be runout so far above my last piece, thinking it would pull anyways. Groundfall potential, ‘X’, makes me feel fuzzy, not warm.
Needless to say, we end up having discussions and putting in a few bolts. The climb varies a lot pitch to pitch. It has corners, walking a knife-edge rail, cracks, and slab, including a glorious slab traverse: the crux, of course.
Since this route was obviously one that others would like to climb, it became our philosophical duty to toss every last bruising block of loose rock off that route and to scrape every parasitic posse of glossy moss off. That meant loosing the curve on our nut tools, and the bristles on our brushes. What we didn’t expect was to want any of these things once they were gone.
Sitting on the ledge atop pitch 3, Josh was hammering in the bolt with a steady clink, clink. When all of a sudden, the hammerhead flies off the hammer. I thought it was a rock, watching it bounce off the wall and into the thick of the woods. We all laughed in disbelief. That is, until we saw that the bolt wasn’t completely in.
We had to look for loose rocks. But we had just finished watching them all bounce their way down the granite. I walked out on the ledge and near its edge I found one last decent-sized rock. Josh started pounding the rock, hoping that the bolt would be secure before the rock broke apart. It worked – and we’re off! We’re climbing for our lives now, running away from the thwards of angry, homeless ants, rampaging against us because we threw their rock roofs off!
The main tasks in front of us were not climbing this route, because it could be climbed quickly in a number of hours with one 70-meter rope. It was cleaning it and equipping it. I had purchased a cordless Hilti power drill with two batteries for this trip. However, because the refugio did not have electricity at the time, I couldn’t recharge it. So after the batteries were used up, which happened just as we were beginning this route, we had to bolt by hand.
Now, usually bolting by hand means that you have a bolt kit with a drill bit, and a handle that makes it comfortable to hold and turn while also hammering. Josh had just sold his. I never had one. I did, however, bring hockey tape, which we used to make a round, sticky bulge on the drill bit, simulating a handle. As you will see in a number of these pictures, we are all bolting by hand, caveman style! This is notably more time-consuming than having a hand-drill or a power drill. On the other hand, it makes the experience more memorable while making drilling with a power drill seem ever so luxurious!
And, appropriately so, Josh coined the name Goosebumps for the route that gave us all shivers and piel de gallina. It’s a double-entendre because I had previously named the feature the route lies on Pared Pata de Pato, or foot of the duck, for its striking resemblance thereto.
After cleaning and equipping the route, we went to conquer it. As a finishing touch of good tidings, Cornelius the Condor, who had once swooped by me, almost caressing my harness in Frey, Argentina, did so again. As he careened around the invisible corners of the sky, all three of us stopped climbing and belaying to pay our respects to the King of Patagonia!
As first ascensionists who put a lot of time and effort into this route, it was our pleasure to wake up one day to some visitors, a rare occurrence in the newly opened Valle Trinidad. They wanted to climb our freshly scrubbed and beleagueredly bolted route! Josh had a newly written topo replete with drawings and an animated goosebump that he was happy to share with our guests. The two soon struck off up the talus field that we had hiked so many times before. With our monocular, we shared their progress and saw them hesitate at the different cruxes. We shouted victorious congratulations from the Food Rock to our friends. That is, before it was time again for us to suit up and lay siege on our unfinished projects that lay all around us in waiting!
Behold: Goosebumps, 5.11a, 150m on Pared Pata de Pato.
20 minutes up the talus field. Water with Tang, check. Rack, ropes, bolting kit, check, check and check. Josh, Vishal, clear skies, yups. Tabanos, dang. Looks like we got everything. Who wants to lead? I guess I will. Josh put it well: a rescue that humbled us all. I took lead, alright. What I didn’t expect was to be runout so far above my last piece, thinking it would pull anyways. Groundfall potential, ‘X’, makes me feel fuzzy, not warm.
Needless to say, we end up having discussions and putting in a few bolts. The climb varies a lot pitch to pitch. It has corners, walking a knife-edge rail, cracks, and slab, including a glorious slab traverse: the crux, of course.
Since this route was obviously one that others would like to climb, it became our philosophical duty to toss every last bruising block of loose rock off that route and to scrape every parasitic posse of glossy moss off. That meant loosing the curve on our nut tools, and the bristles on our brushes. What we didn’t expect was to want any of these things once they were gone.
Sitting on the ledge atop pitch 3, Josh was hammering in the bolt with a steady clink, clink. When all of a sudden, the hammerhead flies off the hammer. I thought it was a rock, watching it bounce off the wall and into the thick of the woods. We all laughed in disbelief. That is, until we saw that the bolt wasn’t completely in.
We had to look for loose rocks. But we had just finished watching them all bounce their way down the granite. I walked out on the ledge and near its edge I found one last decent-sized rock. Josh started pounding the rock, hoping that the bolt would be secure before the rock broke apart. It worked – and we’re off! We’re climbing for our lives now, running away from the thwards of angry, homeless ants, rampaging against us because we threw their rock roofs off!
The main tasks in front of us were not climbing this route, because it could be climbed quickly in a number of hours with one 70-meter rope. It was cleaning it and equipping it. I had purchased a cordless Hilti power drill with two batteries for this trip. However, because the refugio did not have electricity at the time, I couldn’t recharge it. So after the batteries were used up, which happened just as we were beginning this route, we had to bolt by hand. 
Now, usually bolting by hand means that you have a bolt kit with a drill bit, and a handle that makes it comfortable to hold and turn while also hammering. Josh had just sold his. I never had one. I did, however, bring hockey tape, which we used to make a round, sticky bulge on the drill bit, simulating a handle. As you will see in a number of these pictures, we are all bolting by hand, caveman style! This is notably more time-consuming than having a hand-drill or a power drill. On the other hand, it makes the experience more memorable while making drilling with a power drill seem ever so luxurious!
And, appropriately so, Josh coined the name Goosebumps for the route that gave us all shivers and piel de gallina. It’s a double-entendre because I had previously named the feature the route lies on Pared Pata de Pato, or foot of the duck, for its striking resemblance thereto.
After cleaning and equipping the route, we went to conquer it. As a finishing touch of good tidings, Cornelius the Condor, who had once swooped by me, almost caressing my harness in Frey, Argentina, did so again. As he careened around the invisible corners of the sky, all three of us stopped climbing and belaying to pay our respects to the King of Patagonia!
As first ascensionists who put a lot of time and effort into this route, it was our pleasure to wake up one day to some visitors, a rare occurrence in the newly opened Valle Trinidad. They wanted to climb our freshly scrubbed and beleagueredly bolted route! Josh had a newly written topo replete with drawings and an animated goosebump that he was happy to share with our guests. The two soon struck off up the talus field that we had hiked so many times before. With our monocular, we shared their progress and saw them hesitate at the different cruxes. We shouted victorious congratulations from the Food Rock to our friends. That is, before it was time again for us to suit up and lay siege on our unfinished projects that lay all around us in waiting!
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