In January 2015, Billy Brown, José Ramón Torre Zea, Alfredo Zubillaga, and I climbed a new route on the right side of the Acopán Tepui. This part of the wall is approximately 2,000’ tall. Our first trip up the wall—using a mix of free and aid—took nine days. After summiting we descended the wall and returned to the village of Yunek for a break from the jungle. Alfredo and José returned home at this point. After a few days rest, Billy and I returned and attempted to free the route over an additional six days.

To begin our climb, we staged a convenient base camp below the wall, close to a spring and the start of our route. The first 150m of our route circumvent massive 20’ roofs by trending left for five pitches. The climbing in this initial section starts on potato chip–like patina down low but is mostly vertical 5.11 on solid, dark red, marbled quartzite. We reached our first wall bivy atop pitch five, where there is a nice ledge.

The next pitches dodge the neighboring route Purgatory (VI 5.12+, Albert-Calderón-Glowacz-Heuber, 2007), taking an independent line; however, we did utilize a few of Purgatory’s bolted belay anchors. Pitch seven sews a straight line up a dripping, water-colored face comprised of yellow, orange, and purple rock. Small cams in horizontal cracks protect technical climbing up clean crimps (5.12b). Atop pitch eight, a cave in the wall provided a perfect roost for our second camp. By this point, we’d placed three bolts and bent one drill bit in the bulletproof rock.

Above our eighth pitch, we continued up ever-steepening rock. (The route Purgatory travels hard left at this point.) The quality of the rock pinnacled on our 10th pitch (5.12c/d) and then plummeted into choss—it appeared to be a mixture of salt and sand. Our first venture up pitch 11 was terrifying—the potentially leg-breaking aid pitch combined thin nailing and hooking on sheets of exfoliating rock, with high-consequence ledges. The entire route would have been a bust if we couldn’t find a way through this band of choss. After two days of elaborate top-roping, we found the line we were looking for. The free climbing on pitches 11 and 12 orbits rightward and up adventurous but quality 5.11 corners. The top of pitch 12 trends back left toward the headwall, where we made our third wall bivy.

When we first landed in the fields outside Yunek we could see a smooth shield high on the wall from miles away. Pitches 13 through 16 tackle this sustained, gently overhanging headwall in short pitches totaling 80m. Here, the rock is hard and granite-like, with the texture of fine sugar and cheetah-skin patterns. We used up our last eight bolts on this section and spent multiple days figuring out the inspiring climbing.

A whiteout-like mist engulfed Billy and me as we sussed out the moves on the crux pitch. In jungle-stained shirts and with malnourished muscles, we laughed at the ridiculousness of redpoint attempts thousands of miles from home and 1,500’ above the Gran Sabana. Unfortunately, an 8’ span between horizontal cracks eventually shut us down (5.13b A0). We climbed one more bouldery pitch above this (5.12c), and, having barely survived the upper 400’ of vertical jungle pulling to the summit our first time up the wall, we happily descended from here to begin the long journey home to California.

We called our route Time is the Master (20 pitches, 5.13b A0).

– Eric Bissell, USA