I had the dream again last night. The dream is always the same-some details change here and there, different faces emerge and fade, lines of travel crisscross and follow different plans or lack thereof-but the dream is always of the same place. More nights than is probably sound, I dream of Cochamó.

This year will mark my fourth consecutive season in the granite paradise of Cochamó, located in Southern Chile’s Lake District. Cochamó is a climber’s dream - a seeming endless barrage of granite domes and 1,000 meter peaks whose scale and grandeur rival that of Yosemite Valley. Beneath the towering walls of white stone lie dense groves of Valdivian rainforest and crystal streams with water that can be drank straight from the source. There are pink and magenta flowers, bright green moss-covered boulders, and ancient Alerce trees in abundance.

While the majority of visitors to Cochamó come to enjoy the backpacking, hiking trails, local Gaucho culture, and biodiversity, a small but growing contingent of visitors from all over the world come to experience the world-class rock-climbing. But it is a special breed of climbers who come. While one can spend a lifetime in a place like Yosemite repeating the well-documented routes established by climbers over the last half a century or more of climbing, climbers in Cochamo often come to experience the adventure of establishing their own new routes, or repeating lines that have only recently been established.

I am of this latter breed. Even upon my first visit to the area in January of 2011-the Austral summer in the Southern Hemisphere-I couldn’t help but dream of “new-routing," . . .

- See more at: http://switchbacktravel.com/cochamo-journals-part-1-chris-kalman#sthash.BRJBMrB1.dpuf