The team arrives - Blogabond

From there on I climbed mostly with Kristie, having placed fourth at Ouray, she was super experienced, and had a cool head. Being an English trad climber myself, I was not a great advocate of cams, prefering my tripple rack of wires as my arsenal. I soon learnt! Having 'taken', fallen and 'down-led' several times over the next few days, I was still in one piece, and I had only had a couple of pieces blow on me!

Alternative entertainment

Gabe, the photographer, had the worst experiences of the trip. He pulled off a fridge-sized plate (OK, a small fridge) on the second day. At least he was on the second, but it certainly put the wind up him a little. He was ready to bail at that point, and head for the more interesting option of the off-road motorbike tour! We kept him focussed for long enough that he had another near death experience when a cam blew from an anchor as he was repelling. Luckily there were three more to stop the fall, but it nearly stopped his heart too!

Can you see me mother?

Kristie and I found arguably the best pitch of the trip, three pitches up on Gerhalta, just outside Hawzen. It was the only solid rock found all trip; fittingly named 'The Jewell in the Sand', it was a perfect finger to hand-sized crack. Ironically it was found by accident, while aiming for a differnt pitch altogether.

Stellae and Church

Our second climbing destination was around the town of the anchient civilisation at Aksum. This is where the Arc of the Covenant is said to have come to rest in one of the churches. It is also the location of the BC obelisks, the pagan stellae, not 100yds from the church. We found the cliff from which the obelisks had been hewn, thousands of years ago, and went climbing. I led a very slippy granite crack on the left hand side of the face. It turned out to be tricky climbing and insecure gear placement, but that was nothing compared to the face-full of dried faeces that I got from disturbing an old bird's nest!

Team talk

Altogether, the four of us climbed 7 routes, 4 single pitch, and 3 multi-pitch, one of which topped out on a pillar. This may not seem a lot for ten days climbing amongst four people, but considering the fact that the rock quality was so poor, the cliffs were so large, and the approaches so exhausing, we were really quite proud of ourselves :-)

We went to climb, but we came away with so much more experience than just that of the rock.

Peace be with you, rock church, Abuna Yemata

We explored a rock hewn church,

Come on up, Abuna Yemata

This way, Abuna Yemata

Stay for lunch

we ate with the priest in his mud-hut home,

The priest's children

dying the hard way

Dough-ball delicacies

we sampled the local dough-ball delicacies, and the coffee ceremonies

another coffee ceremony

Audience at Theodros

we talked to children who had never seen white faces before. There was one time when a group of children surrounded the car, waving and cheering. When I took off my sunglasses to smile at them, they fell silent and just stared. It was almost as if they were mesmirised by my blue eyes.

I feel honoured to have climbed with such stong and experienced female climbers, and to have met such a fun photographer. The main memories of the trip, however, will be the people of Ethiopia. The faces of the children, and the open smiles, were with us constantly. All were interested in these crazy 'faranges', and all were only too keen to help (well almost all, but that's another story).

Driving north

African sun set

Pack rats

written by

Chickadee on March 25, 2007 from Hawzen, Ethiopia

from the travel blog: Ethiopian Rock Stars

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