Africa, you dangerous!

The Pass seems to be the area with the most concentrated climbing. There are problems here that you may have heard of or seen like Nutsa or Caroline. I figured that there pretty much wasn’t anything high in the Rocklands until we came here. Its true, there are massive proud lines just sitting side by side each other. One line specifically called Scwupp (V6) is soooo cool. Its about 25 feet high and has a nice (depending on how tall you are) dyno about half way up. It has more of the quartzite qualities of the Rocklands stone than sandstone qualities it typically shares. Another sweet ass highball is Creaking Heights (V4). Totally mega cool lieback crimp line with a very, very committing rock over move up high. Aside from those “easy” lines I’ve just mentioned, everything is about V10 or so. Upon standing in front of something amazing looking that first believe to be about V7 or V8, you inquire about the grade to the nearest climber. The response is generally something like, “Ummmm, I think V10 ish. Nalle what’s-his-name did it the that one video.”


In addition to being the most concentrated of the areas so far, it had the most people. This can be good and bad. At first I was wondering if we were the only climbers in Africa this season, but The Pass did have its fair share of people. Not like Happies during spring break packed, but in the middle of African wilderness packed. Ya know?


American television does a lot to you as far making you believe things about a place before even being there. I’ve essentially come to believe that anything alive in Africa will try to rip my face off or sink its fangs into my neck and then proceed to inject a lethal dose of venom into my blood stream. We keep on hearing these stories about baboons the size of a grown man in certain bouldering areas. Apparently when you get close to them, they hoot and holler and make hostile gestures probably suggesting their intolerance of human presence. Not cool. Then of course there’s the crazy amounts of deadly snakes and supposed gnarliest of the gnarly scorpions. About every morning so far I’ve woken up with an unpleasant number of bug bites, which I’m hoping are mosquito bites. I imagine the East Bay is more danger than most people would be comfortable experiencing, but this is a whole different story.