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Chile

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About Chile:

*NEW* GOOGLE EARTH COORDINATES AVAILABLE

PLEASE NOTE: Now becoming progressively available for the Chile page, I have entered the coordinates of the most popular climbing areas, much of chile has been updated to very crisp detail making approaches very easy to figure out. You may use them in GOOGLE EARTH in order to find the areas and view them for yourself. You can thus build a visual map of chile and plan your trips accordingly. You must have a 3-D capable video card in order to run this program. To use this feature simply copy the text after the bold heading Google Earth exact location into the search window in the program.

Chile has some of the most diverse geography in the world, there is everything except flatlands which makes it a great place for climbing. Hills and rock are everywhere, a rocky coastline provides for infite bouldering experiences and the Andes mountains give an excellent chance for alpine or ice climbing, rock climbing is mostly sport with some trad routes to be had.

Due to it's extreme length chile is divided into 12 regions, if you are visiting and have a lot of free time you could conceivably visit all the climbing sites but since it requires a lot of traveling you may want to plan ahead if you ever decide to visit.

However, many of the best climbing areas are very close to Santiago which is the only major international air destination. Aside from climbing, Chile is a major tourist destination for it's natural beauty and is known for it's superb wines.

Chile uses mostly the Yosemite Decimal System to rate it's climbs
Chile's regions are ordered from north to south and have been listed in that order here so you can plan a trip easily.

As an innovation, many outdoor climbing areas in Chile have been color coded to help you plan which areas to travel to.

Areas marked in RED, are areas that are unexplored, unclimbed and whose rock quality is usually doubtful but gives you a good chance of first ascents.

Areas marked in ORANGE, are areas that have been explored but remain relatively unvisited because of remoteness, dificulty of the routes, access issues and/or because they must be trad climbed. You should inquire as to whether or not it's worth it to travel to these areas on the forums before going there.

Areas marked in GREEN, are areas that are throuroghly explored and have a relatively large number of routes, for sport climbing this means that the areas have bolts set up and you need not carry protection to climb most routes. It also includes well known and climbed places that aren't sport climbing.

when entering new areas please be sure to add an extra part in the General information area called "area resources" if you know them, read the las chilcas area information to get an idea of what goes in this section.

Forum Discussions (8 posts)

  Subject Author Replies Last Post
No Replies Coquimbo, Chile - Boulding Nov 25, 2014 zquoc 0 Nov 23 2014, 11:15 PM
With Replies Climbing in Chile Nov to Jan zquoc 5 Sep 27 2014, 2:30 PM
No Replies I'm in Santiago until September av8r0023 0 Aug 13 2013, 8:24 PM
With Replies Climbing around Santiago, Chile last week of July 2011 narcocat 1 Jul 18 2011, 2:49 AM
With Replies Climbing partner and climbing around Santiago, Chile godfather2 30 Jul 18 2011, 3:00 AM
With Replies Santiago Gmburns2000 6 Dec 25 2010, 3:21 PM
With Replies Climbing in Vallaparaiso dbenton 1 Apr 28 2008, 9:16 AM
With Replies Alpine and Trad in the Central Chilean Andes mrcamalot 1 Mar 13 2008, 11:14 PM