Climbing Ecuador

So what's the point of hitchhiking all the way to South America if you aren't going to climb anything? The same as doing anything else in life without climbing: pointless!

So hitchhiking companion Dan Petty and I have hitchhiked over 5000 miles in persuit of our final destination, Patagonia, Argentina. So far we have seen lots and lots of crazy shit. Too much to cover here, but one thing that we hadn't done until last week was climb. So we got a line on a little sport climbing crag in Columbia. There we stayed with a couple of locals for three days until it started raining, at which point they gave us some information on a little supposed climbing in Ecuador. What we found once we got there was this:

Potero Chico, the Mexican climbing mecca that is partially known for the overgrowth on some of the routes has nothing on this. People say that Squamish gets vegetated during their rainy season? Ha, eat shit Squamish.

Keep in mind that this route is rated 5.7. Here is a partial list of the crazy ass stuff that we had to do to climb it.

Go 20+ feet without touching actual rock.

Tear away cactus just to clip the bolts. 

Several mantels onto pure dirt. 

Trust footholds that crumbled underbodyweight.

Finally mantel right over a the most prickily cactus on the planet just to finish the route. 

Well I'm glad that we took a day off our trip to Patagonia in order to climb this! Actually all and all everything is worth it, mostly because of the chicks. Chicks man!