Sierra La Vigilancia – Day 6
Yesterday, I found my clothes wet from my camelback leaking on it, so I hung a few clothes up and laid the rest out on the dorm bunk, thinking that no one would show up in the middle of the night.
I awoke at 5am to what seemed to be an invasion of headlights. Fuck, about 15 people showed up. I hopped out of my sleeping bag in the frigid 45 degree dorm only in a tank top and leggings, quickly moved my stuff over. It was such a mess. Jesus, what are these people doing, showing up at 5am!!! Not a pleasant way to wake up…went back to bed for a few more hours.
When we were up and about, we saw tents pitched behind the refugio as well. The number of newcomers was around 20 something, all who showed up at 5am. Our tranquility was gone, just like that.
The group that came was from BsAs, and climbed at Realization — ironically, the gym I would have gone to had I made it out in BsAs.
Today was a sunny day – finally! Not one cloud in the sky. It seemed that all that rain the night before pushed a storm system out of the area. We were not sure if the rock would be wet or climbable, but decided to take our gear anyways.
We hiked up to Centro C to find the group of climbers climbing. We looked at the routes they were climbing, and they didn´t look difficult. And watching them climb — it seemed to be a gym outing with novices. I asked one girl which wall and route it was. She pointed me to ask a guy. He asked if I had the topos, so I told Sean, ¨Can you get them out for me¨(in English, of course). The guy told us we were in the bosque in Centro C. It seemed that the topos were old, and there were many new, easier routes.
One girl heard us speak English to each other, and asked where we were from. Her name is Marisa, too, a blonde girl from Michigan studying abroad in Argentina and dating one of the owners of the Realization gym.
We hiked on through a little trodden and overgrown path to the Baticueva wall to look for one route in particular to climb, looked to be about a 5.7 or 5.8. We finally found the route, only to discover it was the only wet route on Baticueva! The water dripped right down it, so we hiked back to Centro C.
The Realization group was hogging many of the routes, so we hopped on a few empty ones. Two of them were about a 5.8. The first one only had 1 bolt at the top. I was pretty worried about it, but the bolt held. The next one, the two bolts at the top were uneven (one was a few inches higher than the other). And the last route we did seemed to be about a 5.9. It was a technical and very fun route.
We wanted to head back to the refugio before the big group, so that we wouldn´t be crowded out of the kitchen. The group ended up having a huge asado outdoors. We talked to Marisa, then kept to ourselves and talked with Fernanda, a girl who works there on the weekends. Fernanda is really sweet and cute. She is the ping pong queen of the refugio. Sean played a few ping pong matches with her.
When it was bedtime, the earplugs came out…
Tags: Escalada/Climbing, Sierra La Vigilancia, Travel
Marisa