The Sanetti plateau has a section called Rafu which is a big lava flow that has swept over the Sanetti plateau and this was also the area were we stayed for 12 days and climbed and brushed boulders non stop.
The area is at least a 2x3 square kilometer ocean of blocks between 1-30m high. And alot of the taller blocks has the potential to house some very spectacular sport climbing pitches :).
Adam
was the initiative holder of this trip in the first place since he
had been to Ethiopia many times before. Three years prior to our
expedition, Adam made his first trip to Bale mountains to trek in the
Harrena forests. During this trek he stubbled upon a boulder and as
all climbers know you can't just wlk by a boulder without making sure
that there is no potential way up. It's not a hindrance for a true
climbing pioneer even though the boulder might be small and the
potential line so contrived that you need to dig a big hole in the
ground only to find a defined low sit start. Of course you need to
dig this hole because establishing a pure mantle problem is an evil
invention of the devil and those who advocates those typs of boulders
are non reliable and minions of the evil powers.
However,
In Adams head the seed was planted and he went home with the
optimistic thought that "if there is one boulder there must
be more". He started
searching on the internet and on google earth and soon found pictures
on big lava flows that swept along the Sanetti plateu that seemd to
be housing boulders in unimaginable quantities.
In the autumn of 2012 Adam showed me some pictures of
the area and it didn't take me long time to decide to tag along. Emil
had already decided to come and soon my brother also jumped on the
train.The result after the trip was about 60 new boulders between 5a and 7c, and considering the trad climbing we are still very optimistic even though we didn't anything stunning. The main reason for this was that the rock quality tended too differ quite a bit. Our scouting with binoculars kept us with an optimistic felling for trad climbing on som big walls in the distans, but all those FAs are still up or grabs :).
