Two days before the start of this weather window, my partner bailed on me to climb with someone else, leaving me outraged and in a panic to find a replacement. Shira Biner, who I had met a couple weeks earlier was also partnerless for the upcoming window and agreed to be my backup in case I couldn’t find another partner. Shira claimed to be slow, weak, and high maintenance but I suspected she was a bit better than advertised. We finally agreed to link up and made plans to climb Aguja Saint Exupery via Chiaro de Luna on day 1 of the window and Aguja Rafael Juarez on day 3 after Chris and Billy kindly agreed to let me join them on Aguja Poincenot on day 2 while Shira rested. After rolling into base camp at Polacos in under 6 hours, we went to bed with alarms set for 5am. At 3am, we woke up to one of the loudest noises of our lives as massive rock fall rained down adjacent to camp. Our tent was hit multiple times from smaller stones as we ran outside and huddled behind a large boulder for shelter. We were shook up and I was fairly certain we would not be climbing that day. The assumption at camp was that the rock came from the gully between Poincenot and Rafael Juarez so Chris and Billy opted to forgo their attempt on Raf. Our approach to Saint Exupery only crosses the gully briefly so we decided to wait till it was light to scope it out. We arrived at the edge of the rockfall zone in the light and made the call to book it across the gully which took about 10 minutes going as fast as possible. Once we were across, we could see that the approach to Poincenot and Rafael Juarez was actually not any further in the fresh rockfall zone and therefore a similar risk.
Shira and I made it to the base of Chiaro de Luna just after 8am and roped up in cold and wet conditions. Checking in at 5.11a and 2400 feet, Chiaro is a moderate classic with incredible free climbing. The first vertical pitch of the route is also the crux pitch and was dripping with water. My hands completely numbed out but I managed to free it. Shira got the screaming barfies on the approach pitches and I was almost certain the pitch would be a disaster for her but she managed to second it faster than I led it with no complaints of cold. I was pleasantly surprised. We quickly fell into a grove, simulclimbing up to 5.10-, with Shira zooming up behind me. We made it to the headwall pitches in two and half hours and I hadn’t even eaten a bar or taken a sip of water. We raged up the head wall, had a little hiccup on the traverse and made it up the chimneys just in time to run into Thomas Huber and Pedro Odell on the summit. Our time from base to summit was just over 6 hours. I led every pitch, carrying the tag line in a pack and felt completely in the zone… Stoke was high. We chilled on the summit in perfect weather and zoomed down the rappels in 2 hours. After never ending talus and a run through the rockfall zone, we made it back to camp with day light to spare.
15 мар 2022
