Will and I only got medium-wet when it rained overnight, which is better than soaked through but still isn’t particularly comfortable. The tarp was helpful but still had some holes in it, and our feet were poking out the bottom. Not a great recipe for a good night’s sleep. But it was still probably worth it to spend the night up in the Valle Anfiteatro in the hope we’d have one more day of climbing before more bad weather arrived.

Slowly it turned into a wonderfully sunny day. We laid out our sleeping bags and bivy sacks and wet clothes and ourselves in the sun and everything dried out nicely. Plus we have learned to bring our kindles everywhere and my book was really ramping up at this point so I was stoked to have an uninterrupted morning of reading.

Panorama of the Valle Anfiteatro (blocked by a few trees)

We had thought about doing some climbing in the afternoon when the rock was mostly dry, but never quite managed to get enough motivation. So, instead, we packed up our climbing stuff and hiked to the base of the route we plan to do tomorrow to stash our gear. It was a pretty long hike, about an hour to get all the way up a rocky gulley similar to the one we descended yesterday. It will definitely be nice to do that hike without any weight in our packs early tomorrow morning.

On the way down we took a couple of selfies in different directions so you can see (in order of the photos below) the Cochamó Valley in the distance, the walls of the Anfiteatro Valley from two different angles, and finally the gulley that we scrambled up to stash gear. The views are incredible but I was clearly done with photos by the end of the series.

When we got back down to camp in the late afternoon, we chatted with some fellow climbers and got cozy with kindles before dinner. We’ve been eating Huel for dinner every day in varying flavors, and today’s pasta bolognese was super tasty (though it looks like they may have recently discontinued that flavor, huge bummer). In the upper valleys (Anfiteatro and Trinidad) we can drink water directly from the streams, so carrying dehydrated food up makes a lot of sense. I love having a hot meal at the end of the day with very little effort, although it does feel a bit bougie at times when we’re eating dinner with other climbers who are chopping veggies and cooking pasta while we just pour boiling water into a foil bag. But it’s hard to beat the convenience and taste, and then of course we have more time to read before bed. Have I mentioned that I’ve already blown through three full books in the last ten days?!

We also realized that today, Day 10, is Friday, January 31st. It’s almost February and we’re more than halfway through the trip. We had also originally planned to only spend ten days total in Cochamó and now we are very grateful for the weeklong extension that we added last minute. It’s such an incredible place. But it’s also very possible that my good mood can be attributed to finishing my book in the sun earlier today, and now looking forward to a night in a cozy bivy spot with a warm, dry sleeping bag, a stark contrast to the previous night. It’s the little things.

Day 10 Modified Perfect Ratio

More hiking with no climbing means we’re trending downwards now. Sad.

37 pitches : 29 hours

The full list of Cochamó posts can be found here.