Time to adventure with our friends! The plan was to meet up with Pía and Nacho in the morning and start hiking up to the Anfiteatro Valley with all of our climbing and camping stuff. Unsurprisingly, Will and I got a little extra reading time in the morning while waiting for the Chileans to be ready. But they were honestly pretty close to being on time and we are in Chile so I’ll give it a pass.

We hiked up for about two hours before reaching our first turnoff towards a climbing route named Onomatopeya. It’s a short 4-pitch climb, but it’s close to the path and the route description is beautifully drawn so we figured we’d give it a run. We also had a big climb planned for the following day, so we wanted to get some practice climbing and rappelling as a group of four.

Overall, climbing Onomatopeya was exceedingly pleasant. The route headed up a super cool finger crack in a corner and then wandered onto the face with some fun and somewhat spicy crimps (tiny holds). The weather was lovely, the PBJ sandwiches for lunch were tasty, and I didn’t get scared on the wall. As a bonus, there was barely any faff as all four of us rappelled down the route. All the marks of a great climbing day! Plus I actually have more pictures to share since Pía and Nacho are much better about documenting their adventures.

After our climb, we hiked another hour up to the valley proper. Since the weather was so nice and predicted to be good for a couple of days, there were a lot of climbers with the same idea and not a lot of flat space left to sleep. We ultimately hiked up a talus field and found two flat-ish spots to set up sleeping bags, and Will and Nacho had way too much fun digging the spots out like kids in a sandbox to remove the bigger rocks and make them more comfortable.

Pía and Nacho generously made a tasty dinner of veggie burritos and quinoa while Will and I prepped the climbing stuff for the next day, and then we all went to bed early. The climbing earlier in the day was very fun, but the best part of the day was falling asleep under a clear sky full of stars. Especially since I wasn’t sleeping on the ground this time. Pía is an absolute legend for bringing me a new sleeping pad!

Day 8 Modified Perfect Ratio

27 pitches : 22 hours

The full list of Cochamó posts can be found here.