Sebastian Muñoz, Directa al Cosmos 7c

(EL CONCAVO PEAK, SIERRA NEVADA DEL COCUY, COLOBIA)

104269 At the beginning of this year (2014), my friends Orlando Lopez and his nephew Julian and I traveled half of the Colombian Territory from Medellin to the most vertical range of our country - to El Cocuy. Our main objective was to managed free climb of "8 amaneceres" located on the vertical east face (800 meters) of Ritacuba Blanco (5 300 msnm), opened a year ago by a team of Spain climbers, Dani Moreno, Edu Marin and Marko Jubes. This route is perhaps the most challenging unsolved free climb in our tropical mountains. A good adventure – sport project to be done with time and motivation, the precise combo we had plenty of…

Once we arrived to the range we were sadly informed that the complete east side trails of the range, from north to south, were completely closed and restricted for trekkers and climbers. That determination was taken by local indian comunities as well as the Cocuy Natural Park Administration as a way how to preserve a very fragile and sacred high land of that part of Colombia… Nothing to do… And still no answer when this amazing master piece of rock could be touched again…

As a salsa singer says, “if it rains lemons we have to learn how to make lemonade”… learn to be flexible, the mantra of our trip…

With a small disappointment, and a bitter “lemon taste” on our finger tips, we decided to give a try to climb an existing route called "Conspiración Cósmica" (7b) on Concavo Peak (5 200 msnm), opened and highly recomended by our Argentinean – Colombian friend Hernan Wilke. This one was located on the west side of the range, without any restriction to approach and with a big potential for new free climbing lines… Good thing after all personal bitter mental dealing……

104271 We were finaly on the base of the wall after 3 exhausting approaching days carrying all our stuff. In our mind we already left "8 amaneceres" on Ritakuba Blanco, our dream route. El Cóncavo was showing us an other side and a bunch of new vertical challenges... For sure, it was an inspiring place to be based, with a good balcony and good amount of sun during the day to keep finger tips warm and try the potential of our free climbing skills...

We climbed the complete Cospiración Cósmica (Cosmic Conspiracy) free, linking up the 2nd and 3rd pitch (7b), and we also spent 2 days in our “upper balcony” climbing free a new direct variation on the head wall of Concavo that we callled “Directa al Cosmos” (Cosmos Direct) (7c/7c+). Not that bad after so much “Lemon Frutiño” taste on our trip…

We kindly thank our friend Hernan for this awesome advise, and also we kindly thank SINGING ROCK (climbing equipment), TILAK (outdoor clothing) and ROCK POINT store Plzen for their support of this vertical dream.

..We share Motivation and Love!!..
..Good climbs!..