The rock is this smooth quartzite, with amazing beautiful orange, white, and black patterns reminiscent of Arapiles (a world class climbing destination on the mainland). This is certainly the little brother of these two geologic counterparts, as the amount of good climbable rock here is far less than for its mainland brethren. Still, its not to be scoffed at. There is potential for a good number of climbs, probably around 50 I'd guess if you wanted to started squeezing, maybe even more. Unfortunately for me however, they are mostly relatively easy and I personally don't intend to spend the time and money cleaning/equipping too many proverbial hikes. That can be for someone else interested in getting a bunch of grade 12-24, not great but not bad, first ascents. At least I presume they would be first ascents. I haven't heard about the place from anyone or seen it mentioned in any guide, but the amount of untapped dirty traditionally protected lines makes me suspicious. From what I've seen this stuff strikes a real chord with a large subset of the local climbing population. These guys will drive and hike for hours to find some dirty unclimbed cliff faces so they can clang and clatter their 20 lbs worth of aluminium widgets and carabiners slowly to the top. Indeed, this cliff's current anonymity is probably because the access wasn't sufficiently heinous to make the climbing justifiable. But I digress.
From what I've seen, I have now currently climbed the best of the best from what is to be had, or at least mostly. This has culminated in six really good routes, three climbs of standard fair, a couple more good looking lines that I haven't finished (or in some cases even started) equipping/cleaning yet, and a 'exiting' trad line I did this past weekend. The grade range is pretty spread out: a couple 6b+ warmups, three somewhat moderate routes from 7a - 7b+, and two harder routes at 7c+ and 8b. the one trad line I did was probably 7a, and if I were to translate the danger to a movie rating, it'd be R for sure. A couple of the 6b+'s are good, the 7b+ is probably one the best for the grade I've done on the island as far as quality of moves is concerned, but the absolute best route in my opinion was the hardest one, which I figured to be about 8b although probably on the lower end. I haven't climbed on a hard route recently to compare so it's hard to tell. What I can say for certain is that it's got a combination of difficulty, fluid unique movement, and interesting hand-holds that makes for one of those really fun climbs to be on. It was a real pleasure for me, and has rekindled some of the enjoyment for climbing that I've lost over the time I've been living here. My friend Alec was able to take some photos and video with my camera on a couple days when I was trying it. Enjoy-
Your better off watching the clip on Youtube, for whatever reason I can't seem to increase the size when it's embedded here.
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