“Tuolumne in the Jungle on Steroids”: A New Big Wall Goes Free in Brazil

A massive, sheer face looms 2,500 feet above the jungle floor of eastern Brazil. Decades ago, this granite monolith, known as Pedra de Fortaleza (“fortress stone” in Portuguese), almost became fodder for countertops. Many mountains nearby have already met that fate. But when mining interests came for Pedra de Fortaleza in the 1980s, the local coffee farmers and cattle ranchers caused a raucous. And—as the story often doesn’t go—they won. The government halted the mines and protected Pedra de Fortaleza.

Four decades after the monolith was spared, four Brazilians came to climb the only viable line on it. In 2019, Ed Padilha, Willian Lacerda, Vladesir Machado, and Thomas Kampf made it about halfway up the wall when one of them learned that his wife was going into labor. So they drilled a haphazard bolt ladder to the top and bailed. They named the route La Resistencia after the farmer protests that saved the rock.

A year later, a 17-year-old Ben Sotero returned to try to free La Resistencia. Between Sotero and his partner Alex Mendes, they had no big wall or even multi-pitch experience. Needless to say, it turned into an epic and they bailed, too.

Then last month, Sotero returned with five years more experience, several big walls under his belt, and his go-to adventure climbing partner, Chris Deuto. The pair of self-described “Boulder bros” started climbing together shortly after Sotero’s retreat from the monolith in 2020. As a team, they’ve climbed El Capitan, Cerro Chaltén, and five years’ worth of multi-pitch climbs. Sotero, who grew up in Brazil, wanted to bring along another local, so he invited his longtime friend, Brazilian cowboy Andre “Zoio” Junior. Photographer Daniel Teitelbaum rounded out the crew.

On September 23, the team of four completed the first free ascent of La Resistencia (VI, 2,500 ft., 5.13c). After 20 long pitches and seven days on the wall, they’re calling it a “king line.” We caught up with Sotero and Deuto from São Paolo after the ascent to hear their stories from one of Brazil’s hardest big walls, from the death curtain of wasps to the “mystery pitch.” We also discuss the burgeoning Brazilian climbing scene and where these adventure buddies are headed next.

A conversation with Ben Sotero and Chris Deuto

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity. 

Climbing: Tell us more about the original Brazilian developers of this route (Ed Padilha, Willian Lacerda, Vladesir Machado, and Thomas Kampf)? Did you reach out to them before trying to free their climb?

Ben Sotero: Before I went up in 2020, I talked to all of them. But I ended up epic-ing and not doing it. Then we climbed Fitz Roy (Cerro Chaltén) with Willian and Ed and got way closer to them. They were really stoked that we did this.

Chris Deuto: I first heard about the route through Ben. The first day I ever went climbing with Ben was in 2020 in Eldo [Canyon], and he said, “I climbed a big wall before in Brazil and it was crazy.” I didn’t really think much of it. After spending time with Ben in Yosemite, he thought it would be cool to go back and try to free it now that we have more experience.

Climbing: How did Andre “Zoio” Junior become involved in the project?

Sotero: I’ve known Andre since I was super young. He’s from the interior of Brazil, a very different lifestyle than I had. We got along really well, and I was the city kid, he was the farm cowboy. He’s seven years older than I am. We climbed for the first time in Patagonia two years ago and got closer there.

When the idea of climbing the wall came up, we thought it would be interesting to have someone who’s local and another Brazilian on the wall. Three people popped up: Alex [Mendes], who I tried the wall with in 2020. The next one was a mentor of ours: Chiago. The third guy was this rasta Brazilian cowboy. I texted him, “Hey, want to go on a climbing adventure?” He didn’t know which wall it was until a week prior. He had never been on a big wall. I taught him how to jug at the base.

Climbing: How did Zoio do on his first big wall?

Sotero: He was sandbagged, but he wasn’t hating it. He kept it together more than all of us emotionally. Zoio was definitely stoked on free climbing, more than jugging. He doesn’t like hanging off the rope. He free climbed all the way up to pitch 13. It was pretty badass. Dan (Teitelbaum) led some of the first pitches on the wall, too.

Climbing: Tell us about the timeline of your ground-up ascent.

Deuto: On the first day, we fixed ropes and climbed to pitch six, and hauled bags to pitch four. I free climbed all the way up to pitch six, and Ben free climbed to pitch four. We went down, took a rest day. When we went for our push, I free climbed to pitch six again, as did Ben. Then we both free climbed from pitch six to pitch 14 with difficulty up to 5.13a. Pitch 14 is the start of where the climbing had not been freed. We both freed to Pitch 14, and then I freed to the top.

Sotero: We were climbing in two separate parties. Sometimes I would climb on a micro, sometimes I would lead. We climbed the traversing pitches together. It was really freestyle. We didn’t really care who was leading or following or brushing holds as long as we both were free climbing. I stopped freeing after pitch 14.

Climbing: Chris, would you consider this climb a flash or a redpoint for you?

Deuto: I flashed to pitch 14 and redpointed the rest to the top. But I did every pitch in order from the ground.

Climbing: Where did you bivy on the wall?

Deuto: At pitch 6, we slept on a bushy, heinous ledge. The next day we woke up and climbed and hauled to pitch 9. If you look at the wall and the main feature, it’s this beautiful pillar. It ends at pitch 9 with an awesome five foot by 10 foot ledge. We hung two portaledges there, and that was basecamp.

The next few days, we climbed and fixed the next four pitches, which were almost directly horizontal traversing, so it’s logistically challenging. Then there were a couple days of bad weather. After the storm, Ben freed 12 and 13. I sent pitch 14, The day after that, we all went to the summit. That day, I was the only one free climbing non-pitches up to the summit.

Climbing: Tell us about the crux pitch.

Deuto: We called the crux the mystery pitch. We didn’t know if it went. When Ben and Alex climbed it, they thought it might need bolts and a variation to go free. We brought a bolt gun and I aided up that pitch and thought it would go without bolts. So I went up and redpointed it.

It’s long—40 meters. Most of the pitches are pretty long. The first half is fairly easy. There’s some 5.12 slab climbing. You get into this corner, and the first crux is pulling this vertical bulge. This is where they started drilling the bolt ladder. The upper two cruxes are run-out. You’re climbing well above your last bolt. It’s safe, just airy. There are three cruxes in the final 20 meters—each kind of reachy slab boulders. They’re neat though! And good rest between them. It’s mostly a “keep it together” slab pitch rather than an endurance sport pitch.

Climbing: How chossy was it up there?

Deuto: The four 5.13 pitches are all quite good. Cruxes are solid, holds are there. It’s dirty. There are bushes on the wall. Holds crumble, but it’s all there. The granite is pretty impeccable. On the easier pitches down low and on the finger up top, there are definitely some death flakes and choss. But never on the level of the Black Canyon, where you’re placing gear in said choss.

Sotero: It’s more macro. Some mega flakes.

Deuto: You gotta pull on them, but the bolts are there. Pitch five we thought could be 5.12 R because it’s choss, but no other pitch exceeds PG13.

Climbing: What was your favorite pitch and what were some of the best sections of climbing on Le Resistencia?

Sotero: The corner is super sick. Then there’s this finger in the middle of the wall. You slab climb to the finger and do pretty good crack climbing on the finger—laybacking and jamming. Then you’re fully back to slab. I really like how it changes from micro-precision crimping and slabbery, to full-on power laybacks on slopers.

Deuto: It’s a king line—extremely elegant. The face we climbed is completely blank. It starts as a slab, but turns vertical at the top. The whole wall’s a slab. There’s not a pitch steeper than vertical. A lot of rests, a lot of cacti ledges. You get this crack climbing, then the finger just ends, and the traverse pitches beeline straight for the only other system on the wall, which conveniently starts halfway up and goes to the top. It’s this giant open runnel where all the other pitches are. There are still cracks here and there.

Climbing: What makes it a king line?

Deuto: It literally looks like the Nose of El Cap. Climbing the finger is like climbing to Dolt Tower. The climbing on the wall is the most unique I’ve done on a wall. It’s really hard-grain granite, really coarse. Totally destroys your stuff. You don’t full crimp a lot. Everything is an open-handed drag, a lot of three-finger pockets and crazy pinches.

Sotero: Or it’s some crystal. It’s like Vedauwoo rock, but on a big wall and in the jungle.

Deuto: If Vedauwoo was combined with Wild Iris.

Climbing: How does this stack up among the hardest big wall climbs in Brazil?

Deuto: It was lauded as one of the hardest wall climbs in Brazil, period, because of the commitment and size. It’s the hardest big wall free climb in Brazil now.

Sotero: It’s a thin line. Felipe Camargo has some harder grade walls in the country. But in terms of big walls you have to sleep on the wall and haul, it is the hardest. Felipe has a nine-pitch route that’s considerably harder, 5.14b or something. He and Sasha [DiGiulian] also put up a free climb, which I believe in 5.13c, but the breakdown is easier than the breakdown of this route. We’re not really claiming we just did the hardest route, it’s more the people I’ve asked and Ed, one of the first ascensionists, says it’s the hardest wall in the country, and he’s climbed every single big wall in the country.

Climbing: What’s the protection like? Is the wall fully bolted with anchor stations?

Sotero: The first nine pitches are mixed: bolted and trad. Pitch three, pitch five, and pitches six, seven, eight, and nine are all mixed trad and bolts. The rest is pretty well bolted. They bolted the route up to pitch 14 to be a free climb, but then one guy in the FA party, his wife went into labor. They had to get to the summit and get out of there, so they bolted a straight line of bolts to the top.

It’s not well protected, especially the upper pitches. The upper pitches also suck in terms of the climbing. You have to zig-zag around between the bolts to find holds. We found a lot of bat hook holes, especially on the top pitches. It’s runout, but from pitch nine to the top, you don’t need a single cam. But it’s not Yosemite. The bolts and rappel anchors are kind of heinous.

Deuto: Realistically, for it to be nice for free climbing, there needs to be one anchor added on pitch 18. Pitch 17, I broke into two pitches for free climbing. The original pitch was one 50m pitch. Both of these pitches are 5.13, and the crux of each is right off the belay. I thought it would be dumb to climb 25 meters to a ledge out of sight from your belayer and have to do another 5.13 boulder problem. So there needs to be another anchor there.

Climbing: What’s the approach like to get to the wall? How remote is Pedra Da Fortaleza?

Sotero: It’s in a beach state, but you drive four hours into the interior. You’re passing big walls, all monoliths. It’s a really interesting region.

Deuto: Picture Tuolumne in the jungle on steroids. It has the same Fairview Dome vibe, where every single thing is a slabby monolith.

Climbing: Is there more climbing in the area—or potential for more climbing?

Sotero: There’s a lot of climbing in the area, but most of the developing was by the same people. They all climb the feature, put up the easiest route, and then no one else climbs it—ever. There’s a local developer and the people who have FA’d the wall. And that’s basically it. But the region is known for wall climbing, and it’s gained some popularity. There’s another rock that looks like the one we climbed that has 10 routes on it that’s way more famous. The one we tried is underground, sandbagged, dirty, and hard.

Deuto: In terms of Pedra de Fortaleza, it’s a standalone rock 30 minutes from the nearest town, which is Aguia Branca. It’s on this farmland, total coffee bean farmland foothills. The FA party stayed with the farmer who lives closest to the route—and we stayed with him, too. His dad was also a farmer and he’s seen all the traffic that the wall receives. From his house, you hike up the farm road for 30 minutes and thrash through the jungle for another 30 minutes. It probably took us four hours to find the way the first time. But once we knew the trail, it was a short approach.

Climbing: What was the descent like?

Deuto: We rapped; it took us two days. It was very epic. We fixed all the traverse pitches. Ben and Zoio went down first, then Dan and I went down. It was all smooth. Of course, our ropes got stuck on the pitches getting to the finger, rapping pitch 10. It was super late; we were super dehydrated. So we gave up and left the rope. Ben went up the next morning and got it in the rain.

Climbing: What other conditions did you deal with in this rainforest environment? Any scary bug encounters?

Sotero: We got rained on for almost two days.

Deuto: Very rainy, very windy. Just wall conditions. It’s Brazil, so you’re climbing in the sun in the 90 degree heat—you’re dying. Then it’s humid, so nothing dries. I felt wet the whole time.

Sotero: Our portaledge leaked, so our sleeping bags got wet. Then when I was belaying Chris on the traverse, we heard this tzoooo. We look down, and there’s this curtain of millions of wasps.

Deuto: Like a black curtain, 200 feet by 200 feet, that you couldn’t see through.

Sotero: They flew straight behind us, like five feet behind us. They were migrating or something.

Deuto: It sounds like a fan. Ben just looked at me like, shhhh. A whole curtain, the most wasps I’ve ever seen, flew right by us, straight up this monolith. They went to the top, and we never heard them again. It was a full population. It’s enough wasps that if one comes over, you’re going to die.

Sotero: That was the sketchiest part of the whole thing.

Climbing: Tell us more about the meaning behind the route’s name. What’s the situation with granite mining in this region?

Sotero: The name of the route is La Resistencia to honor the people who wanted to protect it from the mining business. Across the whole region, they get granite tabletops out of the mountains. It’s super explored by external investors—American mines, Chinese mines, Brazilian mines. When you’re climbing, you hear these explosions. They’re mining the mountains all day, every day.

Deuto: And they’re loud. It’s like thwooo.

Sotero: You look back and see this mountain that just exploded. They wanted to cut back Fortaleza back in the day in the 1980s. But the dad of the guy we stayed with and all of the local population came together and said, “No, we’re not going to let you guys do this.” It’s like Avatar. It was mega. It was this huge movement. Then the government got involved and understood the weight that that rock had for the local community. It’s super well protected now. The farms can’t go up to the base of the wall. You need to leave a stretch of wilderness up to the wall.

And the size of the wall is literally us counting our rope lengths and FA parties counting rope lengths. Locals have a different number. There’s not much info on the rock itself.

Watch a short film about the Brazilian first ascensionists. (Hint: This film is in Portuguese, but you can turn on English closed captioning.)

Climbing: Aside from Pedra de Fortaleza and neighboring big wall monoliths, tell us more about the climbing you’ve done in Brazil.

Deuto: In addition to climbing Fortaleza, we spent a month on the road. From the traveler’s point of view, the climbing is some of the most amazing I’ve seen in the world. Nine hours from one another, you have something like Fortaleza, an untapped big wall landscape, then you drive nine hours for the best limestone I’ve ever climbed, and world-class bouldering, where Mellow Night Moves took place.

Sotero: The potential is completely there. What makes it not world-class is the weather. It’s not like climbing in Colorado, where it’s dry and sunny 300 days a year. But the quality of the climbing and the amount of climbing—it’s crazy. You have El Cap sized walls—there’s like 10 El Caps in the one region we went to. In my opinion, they are cooler looking because they aren’t cliffsides—they’re monoliths.

Climbing: What’s the Brazilian climbing community like?

Sotero: It’s a small community. There are two big wall developers—one guy and this other group of guys. Imagine if it was like Warren Harding and Royal Robbins, and that’s it.

Deuto: The community is incredible—it’s different than the States. Something that stands out is there isn’t a lot of ego or super personal climbing. You don’t see the weird vibe in gyms like you do in the States: ”I’ve got my earbuds in, don’t talk to me.” Everyone is so stoked. There’s so much genuine love and motivation. It doesn’t matter what grade you climb. If someone is trying their 5.12 project at the crag, everyone is cheering for them and celebrating that. If someone is trying their 5.14 project, it’s the exact same. It’s special.

Climbing: How long are you sticking around in Brazil? Any other objectives ahead?

Deuto: We’re going to Patagonia in a week for four months.

Sotero: It’s hard to pre-spray and create expectations for Patagonia. Dude, if we get a good weather window, we’re gonna go for something big. And if we don’t, we’ll be partying and bouldering.

About the photographer: Daniel Teitelbaum is a documentary, editorial, and commercial photographer exploring the intersection of adventure, culture, and the human condition. Follow along @dantbaum

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