Sierra Nevada de Mérida. This note is contributed to encourage North Americans visiting on business to pack their climbing boots. Access to this range from Mérida, by the world’s highest cable-car system, is now so rapid as to put a premium upon acclimatization. In February, an international group led by Sir Douglas Busk, presently British Ambassador to Venezuela, spent a week encamped below the highest summit, Pico Bolívar (16,124 feet). In addition to climbing the Pico and several other mountains, two new peaks were climbed and a third ascended by two new routes. As well as Sir Douglas, the party consisted of Englishmen David Nott and me, Nat Davis of the U.S. Embassy, Italian Franco Anzil, and Venezuelan José Uzcategui. Anzil of the Casa del Turista in Mérida, an excellent photographer, will be happy to assist future visitors. He engaged two porters, Cupertino Serpa and Desidario Castillo, from the hamlet of Los Nevados. The former, in keeping with his rank as village prefect, was by far the best dressed climber, wearing a double-breasted blue suit throughout the expedition.

To illustrate the rapid approach, I was able to leave Lagunillas, beside Lake Maracaibo, at 2:30 a.m., drive seven hours to Mérida and by cable-car join my friends in camp in time for lunch and then climb the Pico Bolívar the next day. The recently completed, four-stage cable-car system operating on weekends lifts you 10,250 feet in an hour from the attractive Andean city of Mérida to the Pico Espejo at 15,629 feet. The ride itself is an experience. Tropical forest gives way to the páramo zone, the realm of dashing brooks, trout-filled lakes and the velvety frailejón plant. Gradually the crags and ice slopes throw off their foreshortening and reveal the magnificence of the summits above. If you are still able to walk, an hour’s stroll takes you to our convenient campsite at the snout of the Timoncito Glacier. From there the Pico Bolívar is a 2 or 3-hour grade-II climb. Tourists now often make this ascent but many new routes on subsidiary summits still await first ascents. We made the first ascents of Vértigo (V), a prominent gendarme on the southwest ridge of Pico Bolívar, visible on the skyline from Mérida, and another gendarme (III), to be named Pico Jahn, on the east ridge of the Pico Bolívar, climbed from the Col Bourgoin. The most delightful climb was a first ascent of the south face of Pico Abanico, which looks impressive from the top of the cable-lift. Although the route takes a more or less direct line up the 600-foot face, skirting the overhangs, it is surprisingly not more than class III. Finally Nat Davis was able to indulge his peak-bagging instincts to gain the Award of the Five White Eagles. This is presented by the Venezuelan Alpine Club to climbers of the five peaks formerly clad with eternal snow, Bolivar, Humboldt, Bonpland, Toro and León. Apparently a white eagle used to live on each summit, and the woodland sprite, Carabay, coveted their white feathers for her breast plate. But as she reached out for them, the birds flew away scattering snow on the peaks below. Today, only three remain snow-covered, but the winds howling across their summits are the mournful lament of Carabay lying frozen without her feather breast plate.

George Band