VISUAL ACCOUNT
The following links are to the folders with the pictures of the expedition. Folders are organized on a cronologic order. However, pictures are not organized within the folders.
Before: pictures before getting to the start of the approach (bridge at the San Francisco de Yuruani river).
Base camp (BC): pictures at the base of the choosen route.
Climbing: few pictures during the climb.
Bailing: says it all...
ARTICLE
The following article was published on the 2003 American Alpine Journal (AAJ). You can download it here on .pdf format (vieving requires Adobe Reader.)
West Face Matawi Tepui ( a.k.a Kukenan Tepui), attempt and exploration . In the first week of February 2003, climbers Federico Pizani, Luis Cisneros, Chris Garner, Maikey Lopera and trekkers Dan Kopperud and Lindsey, as support crew, left from Caracas towards the southern part of Venezuela to attempt to climb and explore the west face of Matawi Tepui, located northeast of the Roraima Tepui. Our interest in climbing this Tepui was because the west side is completely unexplored. We thought it would be a great opportunity to explore and climb this untouched face. Matawi Tepui (in local Pemon language, it means “The Place to Die”) has always been a mystery to us because of the legends that surround its name.
After two days of traveling by bus, we were dropped off at the bridge on the Yuruani River. Our first leg of the approach was through savanna with the occasional jungle patch. We spent the first night at an abandoned Indian house from where we “borrowed” a typical canoe to transport us across the Yuruani. We continued from there to a small tribe of Indians who were screaming at us, trying to keep us from continuing our route. Two more days of walking put us at the edge of the jungle.
After four days of battling thick jungle, fighting off swarms of mosquitoes, and avoiding poisonous snakes, we reached the base of the wall. The next day, Luis and I started to carry loads to the base of our intended route, while Federico and Chris were leading the first three pitches. Chris had the honor of leading the two first pitches of “exciting” jungle climbing in wet weather conditions. By the second day, we finally committed to the wall, hauling our gear and adding two more pitches, led mostly free by Federico. At the end of the fifth pitch the nice crack and corner system vanished into a sea of small and delicate features on the red sandstone rock. There we found a ledge where we set up camp. To our surprise, the rock was bulletproof making our drill bits and PETZL spits worthless. Our only resource, at that point, was to drill quarter-inch holes for rivets that we could use as anchors. Thankfully, at that ledge, we found a shallow crack that we could back up anchors with LA's. From this ledge, Luis and I added two more pitches until we finally decided to bail due to the impossibility of building safe anchors. Our last belay station consisted of only two ¼ inch and one 5/8 inch rivets. The rock was so hard, that in some instances, drilling a simple ¼ inch hole took as much as 45 to 60 minutes to drill. In addition, when we tried to set the rivets into the hole, they would deform and not penetrate the whole depth of the hole drilled making the situation more dangerous than need be. Being part of the legend was not part of our plan!
We rapped from the top of the 7th pitch down to the ledge from where we started our way down. In four raps, we were on the ground. In some cases, some of the rap anchors consisted only of two rivets. Of the seven pitches, the first two were considered “jungle climbing” and were done in really wet conditions due to the intense rain. Pitches 3, 4 and 5 consisted of crack climbing up to 5.12. We encountered a lot of loose rock on these pitches. Pitch 6 was easy climbing from the ledge (5.6). The 7 th pitch consisted of aid climbing on fragile features and rotten rock.
From the base of the wall, two days of jungle traveling got us to Paraitepui, the nearest town.
Maikey Lopera
TOPO
