Pão de Açúcar

I spent the last couple weeks in Brazil. The main purpose of the trip was to introduce my new niece, Rowan Scarlett Vassoler, to her grandparents who live in Vila Veilla, in Espirito Santo. I had some miles saved up, so I took a free flight to Rio, and decided to spend a few days there and climb Pão de Açúcar, which means loaf of sugar and is pronounced "pow jay soo kar". It is a pretty common thing to visit, and there is a cable car to the top for those who are only in it for the view.

I knew I might not be able to find a climbing partner in Rio during my five day stay, so I contacted a mountain guide named Gustavo, and we arranged to meet at the cable car entrance at 7am on my second to last day there. That is an alpine start by Rio standards, most of the city seems to sleep until noon, and many stores don't open until 4pm. Like the whole city has a wicked hangover, every day. I contact Gustavo a day after I arrive in Rio, and a day later I read his response. My heart drops into my stomach, which twists into a knot and climbs up into my throat to block my airway. Rained out. NO! We are tentatively rescheduling for the next day, my last day in Rio. Fear of not climbing wells up in me like one of the massive tumbling waves on Ipanema beach, and drags me around town in a relentless turmoil - might as well have as much fun as possible while I'm here, right? We get back in touch when a good weather forecast comes through for Wednesday. Gustavo texts me just before I fall asleep to delay our trip by one hour, so the rock can dry out.

Due to unfathomable stokedness, I show up nearly 1 hour early. I spend half of it getting a crochette de carne and a coffee at a little place around the corner, and the other half applying sunblock and pacing back and forth. Gustavo rolls up on a bike - I know it's him because his pack is big enough for rope and quickdraws. We head for the approach, a beautiful set of steps and short scrambles in jungle forest, and in almost no time at all we are at the base of Dos Italianos, the most classic route in Rio for sure, and probably all of Brazil.

We wind up standing behind two other climbers, one already on the wall, but Gustavo isn't concerned. After a brief conversation with them in Portuguese, he informs me that we have been cleared to pass. We get ready, and he ties in. He then starts climbing, suggesting that I put him on belay at my earliest convenience. I do so quickly, but he doesn't bother clipping any pro until he is about 50 feet up, after informing me that he is at the first crux. Then he's out of sight. I follow as quickly as I can, but I am a little surprised by the difficulty of some of these moves. I'll chalk it up to too many empanadas. When we reach the fourth set of anchors, at the end of Dos Italianos, I hand him my camera. I had taken about two photos so far, in 4 days, and Gustavo snaps about 30 shots right there. He clearly enjoys photography. Sorry my camera is an old iphone.

Here is a view of Dos Italianos from above.

This is Gustavo and Myself, hanging at the top anchor of Italianos.

Perfect weather.

It was an amazingly beautiful day. No camera can capture the experience of that much exposure in such perfect weather in such a beautiful situation.

After a spicy 50 meter traverse through some spiney cacti and curvy slabs, we took the "sea of holds" route most of the way up, then traversed back toward an interesting looking corner that was unfortunately too wet to climb, so we crossed to the via ferratta, a set of steel cables that can be clipped into with a climbing harness, and we popped up outside the fenced in tourist pen.

I bought a beer and we enjoyed the view for a bit, then headed down via cable car.

Now we had a view of what we had just climbed, and a couple of climbers still working their way up. What a perfect day!

Interesting side note - it was such a long slab (involves a lot of balancing on toes) that I lost feeling in the bottoms of my big toes after a while, and it still hasn't come back. Oops, nerve damage!

It is easy to be cheesy.

I recently had the opportunity to cook for a large group in a cabin with no running water, a slow to turn on heating system, and a dubious stove-top. It is a good thing I have a few good camp-stove recipes. It is a great thing that cheesy rice is among them. I had a piping hot pot of cheesy rice ready while the air in the cabin was still cold, so beside being almost camping food*, it was hot food on a cold day. Those are two HUGE advantages, and it is always a good idea to give your food an unfair advantage when you can. One person hiked 30 minutes through knee deep snow to go down to his car to get lactase so he could have some. Vegetarians broke from their diets in order to partake. It is just that good. It might not have been had I made it at home, but we'll never know, will we?

Camping recipes have two phases: Prep and assembly. When you prepare, you should be certain that everything is watertight, and that you have everything you need for the assembly, because you aren't going to find a spatula or a chef's knife growing in the wild.

Ingredients/Prep:
2 leeks (chopped, placed in a small bag)
4 - 6 Tomatoes (chopped, salted, placed in watertight bag with some extra virgin olive oil)
1 lb MINIMUM cheddar cheese (grated, in a bag)(probably 1.5 lbs is as much as you should consider using, but who am I to judge)
1/3 lb pecorino romano (grated, in bag with cheddar)
1 lb chicken sausage (bagged)
1 lb pork sausage (bagged with chicken) (I don't always include this)
maybe some flavor greens like arugula, spinach, or basil, in a bag.
small jar of peanut or olive oil for the bottom of the pan (maybe 3 or 4 tablespoons)
salt/pepper/garlic (in jar with olive oil)
3 cups cooked rice (in Tupperware (useful for storing leftovers in case you want to use the pot for something else. if you expect to eat all of it, you can use a bag instead to save a few ounces..))
large deep pot (fill with other ingredients to save room in pack. Most of them should fit, if they don't, it might be an indication that your pot is too small)
spatula
hot-pad/rag
eating tools (bowls are also nice, if you don't want to all just eat straight from the pot)
camp-stove or an assurance that there will be a stove-top where you are going. It would be really hard to cook this over a fire, don't try that.

Assembly:
This is the easy part. get everything out. dump the oil jar in the bottom of the pot. Throw in the sausage and let it cook through, until you can easily cut it up with the end of the spatula. Dump the leeks in once the sausages start draining grease into the bottom of the pan. From now until finished, you will need to stir fairly constantly to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the leeks are starting to brown around the edges, start adding the rice. Fend off the hungry campers with the spatula. Throw the tomatoes in. Now the cheese. Yeah, right now! Let it all melt, and make sure everything is mixed up all good. Oh wait, did you have some greens? You picked arugula? Good choice. Add that before you forget. Mix it up again so there are not clumps of arugula. Oh DAMN it smells so GOOD! Okay eat it.

Serves everybody. If you have less than 8 people, it probably will serve everybody twice. Seriously, you just made like 5 or 6 pounds of serious business.

Variations: You can omit the sausage entirely and go with mushrooms and eggs, for vegetarians. Eggs are not recommended for winter camping, and if you are backpacking be sure to open them beforehand and put them in a watertight container (1 empty peanut butter jar holds exactly a dozen cracked eggs). Add the eggs and mushrooms simultaneously, immediately after the leeks start to brown. You can also throw in some jalapenos.

*camping food tastes great no matter what. we were "almost camping" so it still had a significant advantage.