Go back to South America.

El Gran Techo.

Suesca.

It seems that during the last couple of winters the previously reliable go-to desert climbing destinations (Moab, 13 hours away; Red Rocks, 17 hours away; or Cochise, 22 hours away) have gotten wetter and colder. There have been a few instances of cancelling extended weekend road trips due to shitty forecasts: Turkey Day ‘19, Presidents Day ’18, etc. With that in mind, we started looking a little further afield for something dryer and newer. The obvious one was Mexico but we’ve climbed enough in Potrero not to be super psyched about going back quite yet and a couple other options had relatively pricey airfares. After some surfing around the interwebs, Suesca in central Colombia caught our attention (12 hours and 2 flights away). Information on mountainproject showed fun, low stress, multi-pitch, trad climbing options and the crag seemed ideal for a 2-3 day climbing fix. More importantly, the airfares and connections were decent and we quickly found a local “fixer” who’d smooth out the logistics for us and allow us to maximize the short amount of time we had available for climbing. And thus a trip to Suesca over a 4 day weekend was born.

Details

La Nariz.

Suesca.

Beta

L.P.

The beauty of Suesca.

Suesca is a rural town of some 15K people located about an hour’s drive from Bogota’s airport (triple that with traffic). The climbing takes place on a ~3km wide and up to 125+ meter tall sandstone escarpment. There’s a 2007 climbing guidebook, Guia de Escalada Suesca – Rutas y Caminos by Grace Andrea Montoya, which can be purchased in the local climbing shop during weekends. We went based solely on what we had read on mountainproject and that is also how we found Sebastian Mejia, our local “enabler”. We highly recommend him either to help with logistics (what we did) or as a full on guide. He’s very knowledgeable about the area and is a ton of fun to hang out with. In fact, spending our post-climb time with him, his wonderful wife Sandra, and Daniel (hostel owner) were the highlights of our trip. Sebastian can be reached on his cell/via WhatsApp at 57 (310) 786-3024.

Video

Pretty (Feb. 2020).

The performance.

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Go to Suesca Day 1.
Go back to South America.