Cerro Capicua is a 1,000m wall whose name derives from a Catalan phrase meaning “head and tail.” In early 2017, during my first trip to Cochamó, a new aid route on Capicua called Picaflor (Spanish for “hummingbird”) caught hold of my imagination and wouldn’t let go for seven years.

The route was put up by Tom Ireson, Martin Håskjold Larsen, Clare Mains, Barry Smith, and Fernando Virot (AAJ 2017). Although they had hoped to create a free route, they found the relentless sealed cracks and blank slabs too difficult. After abandoning those ambitions, they continued to equip the route so it might be freed by another party in the future. (The 24-pitch route initially went at around 5.10+ A1.) During stints of rain, when the Picaflor team would return to the valley floor, Tom would talk about what a gem the route was and that it would “certainly go free.”

Fast-forward to January 1, 2022. Bronwyn Hodgins, Danford Jooste, Tyler Karow, and I were heading to Chile to give our best effort at freeing this spectacular wall. We spent approximately 21 days living on the wall, with Plaza Catalunya (a huge ledge ten pitches up) acting as our wall camp. With Tyler as our big-wall ace, we first aided the pitches, added supplementary bolts where it felt necessary, cleaned the pitches, top-roped them, and eventually led them in a team- free style. By the end of our 2022 trip, our team had freed all of the 1,050m route—with difficulties up to 5.13+—except for one desperate slab move on pitch 20.

I had invested around ten days of work into pitch 20 and deemed it possible, but just barely. I had spent that time learning to connect an incipient line of features to create what would surely be the most difficult piece of granite slab climbing that I had ever touched. We came away unsuccessful in our mission to free climb the route, but we all left with the understanding of how fortunate we had been to lay hands on such a magnificent rock climb.

I knew that I’d need to improve my climbing level if I wanted to stand a chance at freeing Picaflor, so for the next two years I trained with that specific intention. I returned to Cochamó in early 2024 with a new team: Bronwyn’s husband, Jacob Cook, and budding Yosemite master Will Sharp. For five weeks, we dedicated ourselves to Picaflor. We spent many nights sleeping on the midway ledge and used fixed ropes to ease access to the most difficult pitches, which are around 800m up the face.

While swinging around on our ropes, Will spotted an unlikely variation I had failed to explore on the previous expedition. It climbs more directly into the original line out a featured roof, using knee bars and granite wizardry. We spent several days cleaning the variation and hand-drilling five protection bolts. This variation allowed us to skip the slab traverse that had shut me down before. Despite being “easier,” this pitch still clocked in at around 5.13+, and we gave it the tongue-in-cheek name “The Strenuous V4.” Above was a second 5.13+ pitch, featuring the sort of wild slab climbing one might find in a bouldering competition—we dubbed it “The World Cup Pitch.”

After about a month of work on the route, we started a continuous push as a team on February 23. Over seven days, Will, Jacob, and I free climbed every pitch from Plaza Catalunya up, with each of us leading the two 5.13+ crux pitches; we split the rest of the leads evenly. We topped out on February 29.

Over my two trips, I spent around 45 nights camped on Plaza Catalunya, working on Picaflor. For me, that time shared on the wall represents the duality of the climbing experience. The heavy workloads and exhausting days, when paired with the endless laughter and joy of discovery, came together to create an experience that only climbing can provide. Capicua, true to its name, helped us to see and appreciate both sides of the coin: head and tail, dark and light.

—Hayden Jamieson, USA