Suesca Rock Climbing

We recently spent two days rock climbing at Suesca, the most developed and popular climbing area in Colombia.  We stayed in a room at our very interesting guide´s house.  Hugo has been climbing at Suesca for more than 15 years and he´s well know in the area.  Just dont get in the way of his loco dog named Chico who ran as fast a Hugo drove his motorcycle and almost completely tore apart another dog in a fight one of the days.

Our goal was to learn how to trad climb (placing equipment in crack systems in the rock to protect a fall).  The climbing at Suesca is very much oriented for trad climbing and it´s hard to find single-pitch sport route (20-30 meters) protected with bolts, the style of climbing we do at home.  The routes we climbed there were around 200-300 meters high, much longer than the ropes we climbed with.  Our guide would climb first and place the gear to protect himself and set up an anchor at the top of the pitch so we could climb up after him, removing the gear he placed.  One thing I should mention when climbing in Suesca is that it is common to run-out protection, our guide would go 60-100 feet without placing any gear, a fall would almost mean certain death.  "It`s Suesca style" he would say, we didn`t partake.  The highlight of our time in Suesca was a four pitch climb we did on our last day that was much more difficult than the climbs we did the previous day. 

An example of a multi-pitch at Suesca.  The guy on the bottom is at a belay station high off the ground.