Northern Colombia has mas ou menos 2 seasons, Dry and Wet, which they call Summer and Winter. There is still a daily cloud cycle, at least from the south, but Winter seems to last from March or so to December, although I have also heard it described as September to December. Colombia has a funny immunity to Hurricanes, as they rarely ever turn south as they move across the Caribbean, the trade winds I guess always taking them north until they link up with the Northern Jet Stream and dissipate. I guess nothing is impossible, but thereis no discussion of any large storms hitting the country in anything I have seen, despite it being relatively close to the bowling alley that is Central America.
I arrived in Cartegena after Thanksgiving in the US, late November, and there were a few days of overcast and rain. as I moved west from Cartagena to Brranquilla, the first place where I might have been able to catch a glimpse of the sierra, sometime in early to mid December, the thing was clouded over ever time I tried to look, but someone told me in pasing I had to wake up early, but either it was my decadent lifestyle or the mountain playing shy due to season because I never caught a glimpse. The Endof the Magdellena River Valley, the Mississippi or Nile of Colombia, never shwoed me a horizon. By the time I got to Santa Masta as Christmas approached, there was no doubt there was a mountain there because from the time you hit Cianaga by the Grand Marsh you are driving along it’s flanks like some of the highways of Hawaii, and there was no avoiding the notion that it was there but the diurial variations seemed to prefer morning for a clear view.
From Santa Marta I don’t think the peak was visible, but there were clear days there on the coast that didn’t necessarily translate every day to clarity in the mountains, but you seemed to be able to see pretty high, if not to the snows. while in Palomino just before christmas there was a lot of change from cloudy to clear, both daily and I think front wise, and once a storm came through with some pretty tremendous power. My first incursion into the sierra, three days that had me go from Palomino up the Trail that parallels but does not completely follow the Rio Palomino to a Kogui town known as La Culebra but also a Kogui name of _____, over the river to an Arawaku town called Messetta, and down the Don Diego, I was moving along at what must have been 8am towards Messetta over some neighborhood trails indicated to me by a local Klan head, when I caught my first clear in all it’s glory sight of the Sierra,with not a cloud to encumber from the north. Around Christmas Day in Riohacha I waited every day to catch a glimpse, waking early on occasion, from a beach front hotel with a dominant view,but it still played shy, and more rain came, but finally, at some point, the haze and clouds seemed to lift,andit decided to come out and stay out almost every day. It became windy,and as I moved to valledupar, this kind of held up, dry windy, and clear, to the point where I started to feel like I was in the Valley around Bishop California looking up at Mount Whitney from the back side. There seem to be a palce or two where the Mountain was visible between Maicao and Valledupar, but for the most part the lower peaks, all 3-4000m obscure it, but from essentially Christmas on I had visibility with a daily clouding up around noon then dissipating. It is possible that the high peaks region remains above this daily clouding. the ceiling I observed once to be around 8000 ft, and it never dropped down to 6000 was I was sitting near San Jose, jsut lifted and broke up around nightfall.
It would be my speculation that Early January would be the sweet spot for climbing, in a normal season. Global Climate Change has turned absurd the notion of “As Regular as the Weather”. Research would indicate what effect El Niño and La Niña might have on the Sierra, but I haven’t stumbled onto anything akin to a Colombian NOAA (although I shouldn’t rule it out). Another Benefit to January is that the sun is close to being at it’s furthest away. The sun moves back and fourth across the globe at a speed I once calclated to be about 15 Miles per Day, 25 kilometers, which is about 1/4 of a latitude line a day. It’s roasting northern Chile about this time, which is as far away as it will ever get. This keeps the back side of the mountain actually in shadows until I would have to guess until about may, at which point the shadows, if any as the sun would be almost directly overhead, would be on the south side until maybe late july when it would pass directly overhead again, but I would ahve to imagine that is a rough time to be up there. Also, the snow would likely be freshest and firmest at this time for both water use and climbing, as well as the ice.Asnothing is certain at this time, the mountains of the Sierra Oriental near Buccaramanga are predicted to loose their snow in 15 years.. might be time to bottle up whats left on the Santa Marta, mightbe worth something!
It’s Mid January 2013 now, and forest fires are becoming an issue. The newspapers are indicating this is an unusually dry year, and the rio Magdalena is running as low as ever (as is the Mississippi back home just to add). As if to remind me, as I have been typing this in the lengthening sunset, I noticed one on one of the foothills just north of Valledupar as I write near my hotel room window. It adds an exotic touch, as from what must be three miles away I can clearly see a line of flame. I watched one from Nagusimake as well in early January and that night it had an impact on my throat as I slept,and another above Guatepuri my first night there. It made me feel as if I was on the edge of the Heart of Darkness, in the night as I discussed battles that had taken place where I was standing between the FARQ, the paramilitaries and the Ejercisios in the dark with my accidental host, a local guy with a young family who had lived through it. I was told it had been set by Koguis for slash and burn. In the high peaks area I would imagine this to not be an issue. On my last excursion, the aformentioned to Guatepuri, I was at about 6000 ft above San Jose and I realized the air was as clean as I had noticed in Colombia, and clear of the ever present wood smoke of the indigenous villages as well. It would have to be one hell of a fire to cloud up the whole sierra, but anything is possible these days.
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