In the Valley of the Beast

Felipe overlooking the Valley of the Beast.

Names can hold a lot of power. It’s incredible how sometimes a proper name can pull you in, entrance you, inspire you without knowing anything else at all about the place to which they’re assigned. A simple read of a trip report provides me with a smorgasboard.

El Paso Querido del Caso Perdido. The Vertical Forest. El Valle de La Bestia. All checkpoints on the journey to El Monstruo. I’m sold.

Felipe getting inverted with the wall of El Monstruo behind. Doesn’t look too big from here!

The trail up from the Cochamo Valley ends at Paso Querido. South of there, the map gets a little lower resolution - and so begins the Valley of the Beast, a truly wild, temperate rainforest tributary of the iconic Rio Puelo. No road nor trail will guide you through this valley, it remains one of those rare low-elevation bastions of mystery so precious in the modern Americas. Standing on a granite outcrop overlooking the valley, you can feel it. It permeates the chest and the soul. I’m greeted with and immediately reminded of one of my favorite things: the sound of a river rushing far, far below me in a steep and narrow valley, a very specific reverberating roar that too permeates the soul. Inhale.

Exhale. Three-thirty in the morning comes quickly. By headlamp we find the entrance to the Vertical Forest, which is exactly what it sounds like, a class-five jungle descending into the Valley of the Beast. Finding the route in the dark feels a lot like walking off of a cliff, and we’re careful not to. Once we’ve entered the forest, however, it’s about the most fun bushwacking I can imagine (growing up in the Cascades taught me to love a good jungle bash), complete with monkey-barring down tree branches. It’s too dark to know how exposed the position actually is. I’m glad we don’t have to come back up this thing. We have no choice but to not: we only brought a light single rope for the 1600 meter granite wall, El Monstruo, and as such bailing will not be a viable option. 60 meters at a time, no bivy, we have to cover that ground.

The going gets tougher while crossing the valley floor: the sturdy hardwoods that enabled the fun descent into the valley have given way to bamboo, marshlands and all variety of sharp plants eager to grab clothing and gear. There’s enough broken or cut bamboo to create an impalement hazard, so I tread carefully. All I really see is branches and shoots directly in front of my face, illuminated by my headlamp, with the occasional moth or insect buzzing the light. There’s some point where I notice more insects in my tiny illuminated bubble than usual, which I briefly take note of and move on until -

- sharp pains all over my body, I yell and scream and sprint through the bamboo, desperate to get away with a cadence that is surely comical - is this the beast the valley warns about? - literally, what is happening? until the pain stops - I realize I had been swarmed by wasps, stung all over after I had presumably stepped on a nest in the dark. I’m okay, though have definitely caused a scene. Felipe gets a good chuckle out of it. I can’t really imagine a worse place to have an anaphylactic response. I don’t, fortunately, though if I was my dad I would’ve. We carry on.

We arrive at the base of the wall - El Monstruo, the biggest wall in Chile - right as the sun comes up, the light accenting the top of the wall over 1000 meters above us. A round of rock, paper, scissors decides the fate of the first lead and Felipe blasts ahead. The first 10 pitches go fast, maybe a little over an hour total. The next 10 go slower. The wall gets hot. My feet swell. The rand of my climbing shoes digs at my Achilles tendon. We push the rope higher.

Photos of me at various points on the route, taken by Felipe. In the second photo, the Vertical Forest is visible as the furthest left line of trees stretching up the cliffside.

The climbing is generally moderate but sustained - there’s enough smearing on coarse granite to start to wear a significant hole in one of my shoes (they were already on their last legs anyway). All the moderate climbing adds up, nearly every pitch a 60+ meter rope stretcher and even the 5.10s don’t feel that easy but we keep climbing higher and the sense of awe and wonder and wild that I felt upon cresting Paso Querido persists, even through the fatigue. I don’t take any photos while on the route. Too fatigued, too dehydrated, too focused.

The crux lead - pitch 26, maybe? - goes to Felipe. We were given some beta for this by a friend who lives and works at La Junta, back down in the Cochamo Valley -

“Alright, Juan said to go right - ”

“I thought he said left?”

“No - wait, maybe it was - nah, definitely right - ”

“Left looks easier?” “He probably said left!”

And so it’s left we go. Felipe tiptoes up barely-sub-vertical moss (a real Index technique, perhaps it should’ve been my lead…), a long run out to a lone bolt before moving up a chossy left facing corner capped by a roof. The roof is wet, the pro not as close as one would want and placed behind hollow flakes. From down at the belay I can tell Felipe’s a little gripped. For the next thirty minutes I hold the rope while Felipe climbs up and back down, fishing for gear, cursing our decision, smearing on moss. This is the one point on the climb where our decision to not bring a tag line suddenly feels very acute. Felipe fixes a tiny brass nut once he commits to the upper corner, and holds a tenuous stance while contemplating what lies above. I know he’s scared, he tells me as much, and I write as much now out of respect for his tenacity.

For future reference for anyone seeking out El Monstruo - this is ‘the hard way’.

Felipe commits, disappearing out of sight. I’m halfway falling asleep, with the other half wide awake in fear of the rope suddenly going tight. Slow meter by slow meter, I keep paying slack out. It’s dark now, feels like ages have passed. Finally: “off belay!”.

I fall while top roping the pitch and decide to pull on the fixed brassie and keep moving upwards. The climbing would be runout and insecure even if it wasn’t wet and mossy. I arrive at the marginal belay and mumble out some holy-shit-dude-nice-lead-I’m-gripped yadayada, grateful that Felipe pulled through and happy to take the rest of the leads to the summit. A couple days later, back down at La Junta, Juan’s eyes go wide as he hears our recount of the adventure - “ohh, you guys went the hard way!”

More runout slab and characteristic sealed-off dihedrals and a long stretch of snow and easy ice bring us to the summit, 18 hours after roping up. The view, illuminated by moonlight, is spectacular. It reminds me of the North Cascades - Tronador does not look so different from Dakobed, and Osorno resembles Wy'east from this angle. There are about a dozen different El Cap-sized walls in the valleys surrounding us. We sleep for a couple hours and awake to one of the more beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen. It’s been a while since I’ve climbed this much in a day. We’ve already forgotten the moment of fear a few hours before. The descent back to Paso Querido is fortunately, mellow.

Sunrise.

We gorge ourselves on the food left at camp - mostly a lot of gummy candies - we stare back at the wall, back down into the valley - I wonder whether or not we encountered the beast? - I lie on my back and stare up at the clouds and hear a roar that might as well be a jet engine and a condor barely clears the pass, flying over my head nearly close enough to touch with a wingspan wider than I am tall, maybe giving me a passing glance as it glides down into the Valley of the Beast and I lay back down, content that so much mystery still remains.

All is quiet and drizzly back at La Junta (still a long ways from the road).