I know I bitched a lot about the heat and humidity and the mosquitoes. Yes, the conditions could have a been a bit more comfortable, but I have to say that the landscape was about as beautiful as it gets. I couldn't imagine a more serene a and picturesque place. During the dry season, the falls are but a ribbon that flows rather uneventfully. This time of year it was a thundering monstrosity. By the time the water hit the deck 2,700 feet below, it had crashed and bashed against the rock face enough to turn most of it to mist, which would blow sometimes for miles downwind. Below the main falls, the water that hadn't been atomized into mist flowed over several smaller falls, and sometimes into a small lagoon.
After we finished setting up the base camp, I jogged down the trail to the first lagoon, my clothes came off and I dove in. The cool clear water felt so incredible! The sweat melted off me, my mosquito bites faded from memory, the chafing between my legs cooled, and the rest of my skin stopped itching. Whatever bugs that had set up shop in my hair (yes, I used to have hair) floated away, and for the first time in a day I felt clean. For one brief moment, I was free of everything and swimming in paradise.
I swam toward the cascading water up stream and then rolled over onto my back and let the mist wash over me. I looked a short way up river to the base of the main falls and then up all those impossible feet. I strained my neck and looked straight up to the top of the main falls. Way, way, up there, to the right of the thundering cascade - the distance of more than two Empire State buildings, straight up off the deck, was a tiny outcrop where Long and Bachar were getting ready to throw a rope into the abyss, and descend all that death-defying distance on nothing more than an 11 millimeter rope.
Now, you just don't saddle up one day, land on top of the world's tallest waterfall, throw a rope over the edge and lower off. Long had made more than one scouting trip out to the falls and mapped the face. A year or two after our adventure in Venezuela, Long and his then girlfriend Lynn Hill would set the world's record for longest rappel-- 3,000 feet. While it was a longer distance than the rapp off Angel Falls, it was done out of a helicopter off a single rope. A 3,000 foot climbing rope would weigh too much and be too unmanageable for two people to handle atop a teaming waterfall. So, the journey down would have to be divided into "pitches."
Rather than rappel of an anchor suspended from the rock face, they determined that one custom made 600 foot rope would be enough to get them to a solid ledge every pitch. This would save a tremendous amount of time in not having to rig an anchor stapled to the rock face a couple of thousand feet off the ground.
However, having 600 feet of rope didn't mean you would rappel down 600 feet. Because they were only using one rope, and had do take it with them all the way down. That being the case, each pitch could only be 300 feet. What they had to do is set up an anchor at the top. Then, one guy would tie himself into the anchor. Then they would throw 300 feet of rope over the edge. At the 300 foot mark, they would clip the rope into three or four carabineers that were clipped into the anchor (with their gates opposed), and then through the belay device of the guy tied into the anchor. The other 300 feet of rope would stay coiled up next to him. His job would be to lock the rope off in the belay device that was clipped to his harness and thus anchor the rope. The guy rappelling would clip the rope into his belay device (also clipped to his harness) from the other side of the anchor, back up to the edge, walk off backward, and rappel down to the ledge at the end of the rope. There he would establish an anchor and tie the end of the rope to it. With that end secure, the guy at the top would throw the other 300 feet off the edge and rappel down it. Once he joins his partner on the ledge they would simply pull the rope through the carabineers at the top and 300 feet of rope would rain down on top of them.
A normal climbing rope is 150 feet long. I've fiddled with enough of them to know that proper rope management during a climb with two people is paramount, lest you not convert your precious rope to an impossible bird's nest. It's not tremendously difficult, yet it's important to manage your rope well, especially during rappels. A rope four times longer than normal is exponentially more difficult to keep straight and 4x as heavy. Add to that the difficulty in having to manage all this rope on a small ledge hundreds of feet off the ground. Now, Bachar was not much of a rope guy. In fact, when he climbed solo, he climbed free (no rope), so managing such a monstrous coil was probably going to be challenging. To say the least.
I knew I only had a minute to cool off. I swam back to the rock where I had stashed my clothes and put them back on. I walked quickly back to base camp expecting a lot of action. But there wasn't; everyone was just sitting around. "What's going on?" I asked a production assistant who was stretched out in the shade.
"The chopper went to refuel," He said. "Should be back in about half an hour."
Although I couldn't talk to him, I knew this wasn't sitting well with Largo ("Long" in Spanish is largo. John wasn't Latin, but he spoke Spanish really well, so we called him Largo). He hated the way people who didn't understand his craft would dismiss the details of what he was doing. I knew he was up there on top of that gigantic cliff and looking at the clouds starting to gather and cursing the idea to go refuel the chopper. He was probably also cursing the idea of rappelling down the falls, if not the entire trip.
Another 20 minutes passed and the skies grew more gray. Way off in the distance we could hear the helicopter returning and we scurried to get set to start. The chopper swung past the base camp and up in front of the falls. I could hear the radios crackling and soon I heard the word, "Action!" With that, a rope flew off the top of the cliff and a little dot started down it. Soon, the other half of the rope went over the edge and another dot descended. Then all action ceased. Except for the clouds. Those were gathering and darkening and starting to rumble.
Bachar had descended first. When Largo joined him on the six-foot by two-foot ledge and pulled the rope down, the two climbers ran out of room and soon found themselves standing in the middle of a 600 foot snarl. The two men feverishly began untangling the rope to the music of an impatient helicopter hovering in front of them and the roiling skies above them.
An hour passed and the rope was finally ready for the next pitch. Then the skies let loose and the rain started to fall. Fist-sized drops splattered on the rocks around me. I'd never seen rain so big before. It was crashing down in huge buckets. Then it got worse. We were standing in a rain forest under a full blown monsoon! Long and Bachar were no strangers to getting wet while up on the high lonesome, however, their problem wasn't the rain. Their problem was the problem the rain was causing. The deluge caused the attitude of the falls to swell three times its size in no time flat. Luckily there was a strong blowing wind that kind of "pushed" the falls away from the guys and allowed them to keep coming down.
Pitch after pitch they soldiered down the falls with the torrent growing perilously close. At one point it looked from below like they were in fact behind the falls. This was dangerous with a capitol D, but they had no choice but to continue down. As they got closer, the production assistance and I gathered and packed all the gear that wasn't being used, and hauled it like mad men to the landing zone. All we needed to gather up next was Long and Bachar and we could get the hell out of there.
Six hours after they were deposited on top of the falls, Long and Bachar touched down in the base camp. The last of the gear and equipment was hastily packed up and we nearly threw it at each other getting it down the trail to the landing zone. The rain was driving so hard that I couldn't see. I could only look straight down and hope I was going in the right direction. I caught up to Largo and I shouted over the rain, "Are you okay?"
"Never better," he replied. "I didn't think we were going to make it!"
"You weren't the only one," I shouted back. "You're out of your fucking mind!"
Long smiled wide and we both dove into the chopper just as it was taking off.
The ride back to Bolivar nearly cost us our lives.... at least a half a dozen times. The rain and the wind was from another planet. The chopper pitched and yawed and shook so violently that people threw up, screamed, and prayed out loud. Largo was just sitting there with a kind of vacant malaise plastered on his mug. "Are you high?" I asked him.
"No higher than you," he said looking down out the open door.
"How come everyone in this bucket of bolts is convinced we're all going to die?"
"They don't know we're lucky."
"Are you chewing beetle nut again?"
Largo laughed. "No... I went to see a Pamon shaman yesterday and asked him if we would be okay with the rappel (Pamons are the native tribesman indigenous to the jungle near Canaima). He snorted some white dust, went into a trance and threw some sticks on the ground a few times. He read the sticks and told me that we would be lucky."
"And that's good enough for you?"
"Why not?" Largo said. "It's their place, their falls and their gods. I'd say he was right."
A medicine man, gacked out of his mind, reading some sticks strewn on the ground is not exactly my idea of transcendental science, but I guess I had to agree. Five minutes later the chopper touched down-- I still maintain it crashed-- and we rolled out of it and onto the wet grass of the airfield. The rain had stopped and the setting sun lit up the clouds in a glorious sunset that made us all stop and stare. We were lucky alright. Pretty damn lucky. And in another three hours we'd all be pretty damn drunk. We deserved it.
Subscribe to RxMuscle on Youtube
