(28.11.2007)
Venezuela. Five Pitches Sent. Relief Is Terrible
Valera Rozov:
Five pitches were sent. Not so quickly as we've planned. The wall is overhanging slippery, relief is terrible, none of cracks, wet moss, heat, dampness, etc
27.11.07. Two pitches have been climbed.
The total darkness came and that means all the bloodsuckers – gad- and sand- fles, wasps, mosquitos, gnats and other insects in immense quantity here flew away and I can sit still for some time without sudden movements! and to write about our jungle life. (Damn! It's seems I've been too hasty: some horseleeches are stinging me!)
In spite of tactics of delay and deliberateness of local porters we finally got under the wall and set the camp at the altitude of 300 meters in a comfortable place. Everything is OK now. Within minutes of walking distance there is a creak where we can have a shower from a small bottle exercising some ingenuity.
To tell the truth the place is rather curst – it's wet, hot, but suddenly without prior warning it starts raining, insects attack and our clothes do not want to dry...
The wall is located in 50 minutes of climbing. Altitude gain by doing so is 320 meters. We paved a rather good path, but sometimes have to take a machete in hands again. It is running wild and the blazes are paling. It is very easy to get lost.
The jungle does not make an lively impression with its grey-green colors.Thelight of the sun does not reach the bottom of it. The trees, bushes, bearded and no, lianas and a piece of the sky somewhere above, murmuring beasts, snakes, rummy speedy black with greenback frogs and shaggy spiders of the size of a Raumer's axe.
At every evening party Valery Rosov titles The Best Scout of the day the most doing guy.
The most part of team's members spend the nights in hammocks wrapping up the mosquito nets. Only weak in spirit Shaferov, Rosov and Provalov, the same old way, smother in tents. Thje Doctor and Odintsov are sleeping in tents too but due to their self-preservative instinct: they fell out of their hammocks and don't want to relive old memories.
The Doctor is a dearest t man. He treats patients gratuitously and gives valuable help.
About the route: the mountain is big and hanging. There are not many suitable spots where to set belay stations and not much cracks and edges.
Minimum up about halfway via the wall is covered with green plants, snags and lianas that just break loose in bad faith when you snatch at it. That grass I adapted to pad under the rope to appear as some kind of a protector.
The wall is wet and greasy in places, but in the afternoon the sun grill us and sometimes stones collapse from above.
Yesterday during afternoon we started climbing. Today have already done the second pitch. Not so fast. Íå áûñòðî. Well, we'll see how the things move on. Tomorrow we will lift the first 50 liters of water that we have to take from BC. Sergey Krasko plans to look for a land-site and make a fire in our turn we will direct him from the wall.
Valery Rozov's first words about future jump: "Well, the things is rather bad just as people told me.
And the bad news: just at the first working day the punch broke down. We have to repair it. |