Project: Riding the Whale

January 21, 2010.Tate Shepherd and myself have gone up this trail many times. But only recently has it been blazed by fiery sabers the entire way. It’s like unwrapping your own present, hiking up. I smile at every turn, remembering how many obstructions grew there before. I also smile because, while it’s been nice opening the new trail, this time our hike from the refugio to the upper valley our focus is on opening new routes instead.We bring a laminate that says Conservación Cochamó to spread the good word of conserving the treasures of this place via pictures. We get started right away, as Tate hangs upside down from a cart on a wire, his curly head of hair teasing the waves in the river rushing by below. His expression permanently grinning as he holds the sign towards the camera I hold on the beach, his face starts turning rojo. Tate is the kind of person who would make an excellent ambassador for friendliness. Tate is on the Commission to find a Jolly Green Giant Replacement’s speed dial. One of the few things Tate brought with him to Cochamó was a guitar that he played like a renaissance minstrel, dutifully, jestingly. That’s Tate. Working as the trekking guide for Campa Aventura, he sometimes woke me up with his clients, knocking on my tent flap in the early a.m.! I would poke my frazzled head out the window and, like a bearded hermit in a freakshow, say hello in my groggy morning voice to people I didn’t know, then wave goodbye to Tate for the day!I remember when we first spotted the route. We tried imagining what it would be like to climb it, peering from a distant boulder that we dubbed the picnic rock. Later, after finding a better, flatter picnicking boulder that’d comfortably sit 30, we redubbed the boulder that stretched itself stubbornly in the path of the trail as clothesline boulder. From here, Tate lay down and unknowingly gazed, resting, at the line we would climb weeks later. Kismet. We saw the face of a dog on the wall, resting on its paw. Huge flappy ears outlined by cracks and dikes. Cerro Perro we called it, but really it was part of Pared Gorila already.Time, the sun, passes over us as we chatter about Indians, Thai, Chinese, Italians, and even South Americans, or at least the cuisines they offer, but not where we are. Before we know it, we’ve decided to open up an ice cream shack of imagination in the upper valley, but our eyes aren’t scouting the foundation, but looking skyward. We’re both stuck, looking up at the same twin cracks that soar. Upwards. Mingling. Beautiful, flaring, dirty, cracks. Right beside us are waterfalls, pooling and spilling into streams. Starstruck, we rack up. With salami, ropes, drill and bolts, unnecessary double rack, and eager smiles, we start putting meters between us and the cracks that lead to the cut out ballena and the big floppy oreja del perro.What makes this climb different than any other? Tate and I have climbed together before. We did a few pitches on the climb Todos la Tocamos. I guess we were the first ones on the route for the year: we pushed two fallen trees off the route and watched as they scratched their way down the route with their long, kitty claw limbs, accelerating until they crashed to the ground. That was different, too, but this climb in front of us was even more unfamiliar:No one had climbed it before.At least that’s what made it seem different looking up at it. But climbing it, looking down after each subsequent new pitch, checking out the views with farmer Tate, and eating salami with the taste of granite powder on my lips, revealed that there was more than mere virginity distinguishing this climbing experience from others. Riding the Whale, as its name suggests, is a unique climb accentuated by runouts, poor gear, great views, and a stemming, bearhugging, vertical groveling technique that is best described as, well, riding the whale!Moreover, it marked the first of a good number of shared first-ascent endeavors with the world’s pal, Tate Shepherd. And, seeing the valley below, the picnic and clothesline boulders, the marsh, tracing the trail we had just finished hacking and opening from a different perspective for the first time, we were bound with it. This was bigger than a mere first ascent: this was the beginning of a connection we would both share with the valley and its development for the rest of the season of our lives.