From the outside we were quite the unconvincing route development team. We arrived in Cochamo with utterly too many horses, a lack of food, one hand drill, and one brush. Our team slowly trickled into La Junta campground throughout January and after some bearing gathering missions and multiple preliminary pant pooings from Timfoil, we were ready for virgin rock.

As we chatted at the Fogón about our big plans for our route we kept getting asked about “aid climbing” and doodads such as “beaks” and “hooks”. Having no idea what any of this meant and reassuring everyone that we didn’t need that stuff because we were planning on putting up a “free-climbing” route we carried on with our plan. We heard that Valle Paloma had a lot of potential and made a recon mission to scout possible lines. All of our eyes settled on a series of features, corners, and cracks that lead up the middle of La Pared de Paz… this was our line.

We managed to procure some of these so-called “requisite” beaks and headed up to the valley. Halfway up the first pitch, the cracks ran out. We came to a dilemma: do we add a bolt to make semi-safe upward progress or do we rap into our route and take the more surefire approach to not risk wasting time and gear. Gung-hoe and ready for adventure we decided the only way forward was up. We sent up our seasoned bolting and route development expert, Timfoil and watched from the ground as our very first bolt was placed (after about 45 min of vigorous tapping). We quivered in awe as Ethan took the sharp end and did some beak protected free climbing to a stance and the top of our first pitch. We slowly settled in to a beautiful blue-collar daily routine. The two person team taking on the valiant rope pushing duties would rise first, pack their lunchbox, and head up to where the rope got pushed the day before.

The rest of the team would slowly make their way up the fixed lines to various points to bust their knuckles and file down their nut tools into perilous shanks. Despite having almost negligible aid experience as a team we took to it like a piss in the wind. As our route had many sections of small seams that took no gear we grew adept to the art of “beak bumping”

This entailed standing on either the small or big beak, stepping as high in our little ladder as we dared, finding a spot for the other beak, engaging in a stressful bounce test, cleaning the beak you were just on and rinse and repeat.

Long sections of beak bumping became exponentially slower going as the run out increased. Belays became quite boring so we took to getting in a few chapters while the leader shivered in their pants high above. After ending my first beak-bumping saga with a 45 ft aid whipper and a loss of 2 hrs of beaking progress, the team became more attuned to the perils of minimalist aid and began adding progress bolts every so often to minimize double beak whippers. Progress bolts were nocream puff in the sun and entailed 30+ minutes of hand drilling a bolt from your aid ladders while trying not to loose your balance and rip the beaks.

One evening as a surprise storm came rolling in, Timfoil and Jess pushed the rope a el cumbre and drilled the final anchor bolts as the rain came down. The first accent had been gathered and now it was time to free it before H Dizz and FreeSnakeWilly nabbed it from us clown-style after our departure. With almost two weeks left in the valley we felt good about our chances to take down our rig.

Suddenly a summer snow storm bestowed itself onto Cochamo. We watched frightfully from the Fogón as the high valleys became snowcapped and the waterfalls busted down the slabs. As we waited for the walls to dry, the end of our stay grew nigh. We scrubbed what we could, pounded in our final bolts and filled up our poop pit and finally the time came. With only three days left in our trip before another rain storm and not a single pitch led on our route, we unclipped our micros, tied in, and tried to remember how to lead belay. I headed up the route with JonnyDoughBoy on the belay and Calum on the camera.

As I let out a shriek and clipped the chains of the crux pitch we knew we were headed to the summit. We were followed shortly behind by Bruh, Arlo and Timfoil. Jess climbed the lines to join us on the summit and at the last light of the day we rejoiced as our route had been freed not once, but three times that day. As we rapped in the night and drank our wine we revelled in our accomplishment. Two days later, on the very last day before the final storm, Timfoil managed to free to the summit in a valiant effort with utterly overly resouled shoes. We cleaned our lines and filled in the poop pit and made a final trek down from Paloma in the depths of the night and with a precariously open bag of Mostaza leaving our final traces in the valley before the rain washed the yellow sauce away.

Against all the odds, the seven of us, two beaks, two hand drills, a buttload of shitty wire brushes, and an exceptionally large amount of support from the little La Junta community established and freed a route ground up in La Paloma.

Written by “Froth Dawg” aka Racheltakeshard

Con Todo el Mundo (5.13)- First Ascent

Ethan Morf, Calum Tustin-Mayes, Arlo Kast, Rachel Ball, Jess Anaruk, Tim Greenwood, John Holt