No mad gecko: Los Arenales

Arrival in Los Arenales....getting cold...brrr

My tent.... too near from the noisy river

Los Arenales, view on Cajon del Maipo I think

That's it...last crag with Hot Rock :(
But maybe the best !!!! And on top of that we spent Christmas over there. This is definitely my highest Christmas ever our camp being at 2.500m :) Christmas means food and even with mostly English people (might have some troubles saying that...) our cook Master Alys and the group managed an awesome meal. Steak (obviously cooked by our South-African driver), cheesy potatoes and yummie veggie mix with this time good wine not in carton.
One interesting stuff that we don't do in France is that in England they party and get pissed with friends on the 24th and have the Christmas dinner on the 25th with the family. So we did that of course and had a briliant truck party since a long time !

Happy christmas Tom !!!

Huw loves his present :)

Chris fears the hangover and keep-up on drinking after the party !! Nice job.

This has nothing to do here....but here's the driver seat...

Our dinner, briliant.

Xmas dinner

Chris and chief cook Alys

Xmas dinner again

Christmas done we had to get back to climbing...and for traditional climbing Los Arenales is THE place. For people who don't know in traditional climbing there are no fixed bolts in the rock and mechanical pieces of gear are used to stop a fall. This is typically used in rock which allow this kind of protection to be used and granit which as a lots of cracks is perfect for that. This adds a new challenge as while climbing you have to think where to protect you, find the good size of protection and place it in the rock. It was one of my goal to train in this kind of climbing especially with people from UK who are used to it.

After doing some easy routes we decided with Huw to a more solid piece of climbing. A 220m route in Aguja Charles Weibber(~3500m) called "Fugas de Cabras" 5 pitches 6b, 5+, 6a+, 6a, 6a all trad except most of the anchors as the line was the abseiling of the peak. After 2h30 of steep...steep...walk we reach the base of the climb completely soaked. I lead the first pitch which was my hardest trad lead, a very steep corner-crack to protect on micro-friends...I reached the first anchor mentally rinsed but happy :) The rest of the climb went very smoothly with my very confident partner, Huw.