1 am. What is that noise? Rain! Heavy rain! Lots and lots of
heavy rain!
3 am. Still raining cats and dogs.
6 am. Time to get up. It continues raining, our waterfall is
back, and from the ledge we can see that puddles have turned into small lakes,
and trickles have turned into steadily flowing streams. The good news is that
my neck kink seems to have finally disappeared, so I have a little more of
upper torso flexibility. The bad news is that we have ahead of us a steep,
rocky descent, and that we will have to do it under heavy rain. I am very
concerned about slipping and further hurting my left ankle, and have chosen
boots over sandals to have additional support. I have an excellent pair of
boots that I bought at Grocery Outlet for US$ 15; they are surplus of Desert
Storm and are really tough. I am sure they will stand getting soaking wet. I
also had the good sense to bring my river backpack, which is water tight. I am
ready to tackle this mountain.
OK, here we go. The first stage was to descend to the base
of the cliff, at La Pared, doing the
lady Bug dosey-do in reverse. On the way we had to walk through waterfalls that
had turned themselves into vertical rivers. Looking up the wall we had just
descended, rising to disappear among the clouds, was bot sobering and
exhilarating.
I started with 100% battery, and by the time we made La Pared I was down to 75%. Then started
the tough segment, with very steep slopes and very slippery soils all the way
to Base Camp. I had to turn my face toward the rocks, and descend in that way, carefully
placing each step. It was then that I noticed that the slippery slopes were
residual soils, and that the underlying rock was my faintly layered hypersthene
gabbro. Since I had been favoring my left leg, my right leg answered back with
a painfully strained upper leg muscle. By the time I reached Base Camp my
battery was down to 40%.
In Base Camp we met all sorts of people. A Japanese team,
loaded like donkeys and swaddled in their rain ponchos were starting on their
way up. Four other teams had decided to wait the storm out in Base Camp, and
would be attempting the climb tomorrow. One of the groups included three
Venezuelan young women, who looked like they had come out of the shopping mall.
I hope they have a good time.
The rest of the trip, down to Kamaiwakén camp, was pure hell
for me. My ankles were hurting, my knees were aching, and my muscles seemed to
be made of wood. I was quite literally caressing the rocks, attempting to
reduce the stress of each step as much as possible. I did, however, noticed a
thick sequence of basaltic scoria layers, resting horizontally. I could not see
the relation between the gabbro and the scoria, but by the fact that the latter
is not deformed or baked I am going to guess they accumulated on the weathered
top of the gabbro. My grand interpretation was that in the Lower Proterozoic (2,500
to 2,000 million years ago) an intrusive complex was exposed by erosion, and
was intensely weathered. At some point in the Middle Proterozoic (2,000 to
1,500 million years ago) basaltic eruptions laid tuffs on the erosional surface
to form a lithologic unconformity. Deep weathering continued. Finally, in the Upper
Proterozoic (1,500 to 600 million years ago) a prolonged period of erosion in
faraway mountains fed sediment to rivers that transported fluvial sand all over
the paleo-sabana to form the Roraima Formation. I must be delirious. How could
all that happen so long ago, and be still undeformed and forming a table
mountain of the dimensions of Roraima?
Finally I limped into Kamaiwakén camp, two hours after
everybody else. “We need to cross the rivers; if we don’t do it now we will be
stuck here overnight.” This to me sounded like what my Mom would say to us kids
“This banana is going bad. You must eat it before I have to throw it away.” My
batteries were at a low 2%, and all non-vital functions had already been turned
off, so without a protest I followed my friends as Simón looked for the best
place to cross. Antonio almost got covered by the rushing water, because he is
not a very tall guy, and I got in it down to my chest. The only trick about
crossing a flooding river is to make sure that one of your feet is firmly
planted in a stable cobble while you move the other foot. The fact that a
current is pushing against you with the force of a man is immaterial if your
feet are firmly planted.
At the end we crossed both rivers, and five minutes later I
collapsed inside a hastily built tent. Overall this has been one of the most
exciting expeditions I have undertaken, but it is also one of the most
exhausting. Next time I come up with another crazy idea, someone please whisper
“Roraima” in my ear.
No comments:
Post a Comment