Bogatenos are the most likely to be involved in climbing and mountaineering in Colombia due to what I will describe as facts associated with Sociology, not solely wealth, but Bogota is the Intellectual city. There is money in Medellin and in pockets around the country, but the type of counter-culture it takes to create a kind of climbing fervor seems to exist only in Bogota. To put it in perspective, people want their kids, including Botero when he was a kid, to be bullfighters in Medellin. Obviously Sir Edmund Hillary wasn’t exactly a counter-culture figure, he was just a dude who liked to climb, but in Colombia, a culture like this, both conservative and a bit risk averse, climbing is the kind of thing that comes from an upper class rebellious youth to some degree.
All the developed climbing is from what I can tell north from Bogota to Bucaramanga along the Cordillera Oriental, the Eastern Mountain Range that hovers over the Amazon. Bucaramanga is kind of the capital of all this, with an active paragliding scene there as well from what I can tell. There are also a set of snow-capped mountains in El Cocuy National Park within a few hours of there, unfortunately melting fast. Climbing Magazine profiled a scene in Suesca, about an hour north of Bogota it appears, which is alleged to be the best developed location in the country, with very hard sandstone.
climbing.com/route/ghosts-the-rock-gods-and-colombian-climbing/
this article also mentions an underground salt mine nearby with a Cathedral carved out of salt.. that’s pretty cool.
The Cordillera Central from what I have seen is stunningly beautiful, with waterfalls and rivers like one dreams of seeing, but it is mostly jungle and dirt,and well, perhaps there are lots of illegal activities going on in it’s hills. I have yet to see the Sierra Occidental except if you might describe the mountains west of Medellin as part, but they do look stunning, but again might not be climber country. To the South I know that there is a lot of FARC activity amongst the ranges closer to Cali, and as the ranges come together towards the Ecuadorian Border. As footnotes, there are places in the Amazon with exposed Limestone that look stunning, but I have no idea about security or climb-ability, and there is a small range of mountains in Sur de Bolivar that I glimpsed from the Magdalena, but this area is surely a no go zone, some hostages were taken just recently, as, to quote a boat mate, “That place makes some pretty high quality Coca!” and the FARC have conveniently chosen it as a good spot for the continuation of the people’s rebellion that COMINTERN even forgot about 23 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serran%C3%ADa_de_San_Lucas
The up side is that they have kept it from becoming another of the vast cattle ranches that is Northern Colombia, and that are even creeping into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Which brings us here.. There is plenty of climbing and mountaineering from what I can see in the Sierra, and if it was developed much, it has been years since anyone enjoyed it much, at high altitudes fortunately or unfortunately, but the weather can be crisp and dry even if the sun might bear down, but this brings us back to the subject of this blog.