In February 2017, Trevor Boley, Kyle Kent, Rhane Pfeiffer, Cooper Varney, and I established a new route on Trinidad Sur. I first spotted this line while climbing the neighboring route Alendalaca (450m, 5.12b) on Trinidad Sur on December 23, 2016. From that vantage, I became enthralled by an upper headwall splitter to the left and finding a way to reach it.

My original plan was to climb the flat, forward-facing buttress of Trinidad Sur and traverse leftward onto the upper headwall. However, Rhane suggested we explore the inner gully between Trinidad Sur and Trinidad Central. On a recon trip in January, we accessed the gully via a quality 5.10 corner. We knew that we had found the start of our route: Above us stood a stupendous, steep, leaning, 60m 5.12 splitter.

We started the route on January 17, climbing ground-up and siege-style, fixing lines as we pushed the high point. Some days we spent cleaning and bolting the pitches we had fixed to prepare them to be free climbed, and other days we spent pushing the route higher via aid.

We surmounted many challenges—including some harrowing aid, a 5.11 R/X pitch led by Cooper, as well as multiple core shots in our fixed lines. In the end, that final splitter turned out to be an incredibly pleasant 60m 5.10b thin hands to hands crack that leads right to the top of Trinidad Sur.

We topped out on February 17. With an impending storm and the season ending, we did not manage to redpoint the entire route. We called our route Arrayán (8 pitches, 400m, 5.11 A2+); it’s an open project with a proposed grade of 5.12+. [Editor's Note: In January 2020, Leung and Drew Marshall returned to the wall and freed the remaining aid on the route at 5.12d; see the 2021 Canadian Alpine Journal.]

– Clinton Leung, Canada