On our first night in San Pedro de Atacama, on the valuable advice of a local climber met at the tourist information, we had had the best meal since we were in Chile. At the “Estrella Negra”, a small vegetarian restaurant, we had been served a colourful and tasty menu (I do not remember what exactly) accompanied with home-made bread and lemon/ginger juice. As we had left the three half new age half rasta young people running the place, we were made up with Chilean cooking. In the next two weeks we passed by the “Estrella Negra” every time that we were back in San Pedro de Atacama hoping for a good supper and a stock of home-made bread but we always found the door closed. Looking back it seems that in our memory the repeated disappointments got the better of the delightful experience on the first night.
The saving edge
Promising rock features near Susques
However we overcame it and the day after returning from Socaire we took a bus to Salta (Argentina). We got off at mid-way in Susques, the first town on the Argentinean side of the Jama pass and the starting point to Tuzgle, a crown of red tuff cliffs overlooking a “quebrada” at the foot of the “Cerro Tuzgle” volcano. The climbing potential in Tuzgle was publicized some years ago by a Petzl team in this movie.
The Tuzgle volcano and the entrance to the quebrada
Offwidth pleasures
In the bus we came across Julia and Egon, a couple of climbers (and route setters) from Ticino who we had shortly met on our first day in Socaire. After talking with us about the access to Tuzgle, they decided to join us without passing by Salta as they had initially planed.
Our kitchen in the shade of the never ceasing wind
A sport route with nice structures
In Susques we were dropped in front of the modest tourist office whose only and squinting employee turned out to be exceptionally helpful, efficient and honest. He organized a car and driver for the next day to transport us to the 75 km away canyon and answered very professionally to the dozen of practical questions that we asked (in South America you almost always get an answer to a question but it is often either incomplete or false since people prefer to invent answers than not to give any). He also proposed to look after our luggage during our time in Tuzgle and to personally check that the driver would pick us up five days later. We spent the evening in Susques trying to make unfriendly grocers smile, drinking warm beer and discussing average speed and road gradient with a lonely french biker linking up Tierra del Fuego to Alaska. The next five days we were cut off from the human world (except for three or four cars or motorbikes per day passing on the road) climbing in the shade, burning up in the sun, freezing at night, looking at blazing stars, cooking sheltered by boulders, taping, jamming, panting for air, stumbling into chinchilla tunnels, listening to the slamming of our tents in the desert wind.
Every technique is allowed…
Egon in one of the sport routes
Athletic crack
Without any topo, the grade is estimated onsight
Dulfer in extermis
Since the water of the small river flowing down from the volcano was not drinkable, we had taken all our water with us. We drank or cooked our 18.5 l to the last straw whereas Julia and Egon survived with 16 l.
Our base camp, next to the diamonds
Egon showed a big interest in creating a topo of the discovered routes and with our common effort we ended up with this proposition:
More pictures can be found here.
Rock 'n' Ice in the Andes 