Ecuador: Gringo Loco
After a day climbing a few of the amazing mixed trad/sport routes and "must do" classics of Cojitambo (Capac Nan 5.10d, Vamo’ a Acele 5.10 c and Que chucha me Vez 5.10c), I was in the mid spot in pitch 2 of Que chucha me vez. Juan Gabriel (the owner of the climbing Hostel) told me that there is a line that goes right at the 2nd to last bolt. Being intrested in the super dirty line, we decided we would head up tomorrow and start working on it.
Next day I woke up early, got some tools from Juan, and he drove me up to the top. We rapped down to check out the line clearly. After deciding we liked the line, Juan had to head back home and I got started on hand drilling the anchors. Called crazy for hand drilling , I got a song stuck in my head while drilling with a rythm, “GRINGO LOCO, GRINGO LOCO, GRINGO GRINGO GRINGO LOCO”. When Sofi and Juan returned, he brought me a power drill to speed up the proccess but was suprised that I was already finished. I proceded up to the top to meet them and say Hi. I told them about my drilling song and we decided that Gringo Loco would be a good name for the route.
After eating a little food, Sofi and I set a new fixed line and rapped down to the chains to get started on some serious cleaning, and a lot of cleaning we needed! We started at the top where we thought two routes would meet up and started working our way down With Sofi working on climbers right and me working on the line that I had my eye on, we worked our way down, getting dirtyer and dirtyer! Hours later and sore from hangin in our harnesses with tools hanging from us, we decided to call it a day and head out. We broke down everything and walked to a gully, where we rapping down to the ground and to the main trail that leads us right to a store where we could enjoy and some cold 22oz beers for a buck! We laughed about how dirty we were and how bad we wanted a shower. After a few beers, we felt mighty good and walked on down to Juan's. It was a good day and we were excited to climb and work on “Gringo Loco”.
