Cochamó, Pared de Profetas, Prophecy
South America, Argentina and Chile, Northern Patagonia
Stefan Brunner and I, spent three weeks together in the Cochamó Valley at the end of January and beginning of February We found a great line on the far right side of the Profetas Wall, which is on the opposite side of the valley from Mt. Trinidad. Initially, we aided the 420m wall. The first half of the route was mostly thin cracks, so we used a lot of peckers and bird beaks. The upper part widened to better cracks and then widened further to off-widths and a two-pitch dihedral system. The last pitches to the top are on slabs. After aiding the first ascent, we rappelled in, adding bolts where necessary to make it a free climb. Because it rained almost every day, the route took six days to complete. It’s called The Prophecy and has grades up to French 7b. It’s a beautiful crack system to free climb, with only one part of aid, on a slab, where we did a five-meter leftward pendulum. But even the slab is probably possible to climb free.