Tsaranoro Valley Climbing – Our Guide

Here is a collection of things we wished it was easier to find out before we arrived to climb in Madagascar. We’ll start with a section on logistics – getting there, things you should bring etc. – then will share some useful climbing and approach/descent beta.
Hopefully it helps in planning your trip!  – Julia and Jono.

View from our hotel in Antananarivo

City Centre Antananarivo

Driving through Amblavao

 

Logistics

Getting there

We flew Air France, and found it was cheaper to fly return from Berlin (via Paris), than return from Paris – so shop around. We also hear that it is not uncommon for your bag to get lost in Paris if you do connect there, so consider taking your harness and shoes in your carry on.

Our flight arrived around midnight, and the airport is pretty full on. You will need euros to buy your Madagascan visa – it will be difficult to pay with credit card, and you cannot get Ariary until you arrive in the country. It is also worth bringing some small change in euros to tip the guy who will inevitably manage to get your bag before you and ‘helpfully’ carry it to your taxi. Once you have cleared customs there is an ATM in the airport from which you can withdraw cash from a credit card.

Because of the late arrival we decided to spend two nights in Antananarivo(Tana) to orientate ourselves and figure things out. If you are just staying one night then the best accomodation we found near the airport (but a long way from the centre of Tana) was the Manor Rouge. They have nice rooms, and a restaurant on site so you don’t have to venture out in the dark to find food. In fact we were warned not to be out in the dark in Tana, and some friends of ours who did go out were harassed by police and forced to pay a bribe.

To get to the Tsaranoro valley

I know of three options:

1: Taxi-brousse (bush taxi) to Fianarantsoa (day 1), then private car to the Tsaranoro, or taxi-brousse to Ambalavo then private car (day 2). This is the cheapest option and what we did. Be aware that the southern taxi-brousse station in Tana is crazy, you will be accosted by helpful people who will try to overcharge you, so if you can, make your way to an office where the prices should be written on the wall. We arrived at the station just before 7am. The drivers find passengers, and the minivan leaves when it is full, which for us was about an hour and half later. The ride is bumpy, somewhat terrifying depending on your driver, and very cramped. We arrived in Fianarantsoa at around 4.30pm and stayed at a hotel in the centre of town. The taxi-brousse station in Fianarantsoa is less chaotic, but as it is a shorter ride to Ambalavo – about 2 hours – they squash you in. There were 39 people in our minivan!
To get to the valley, a private car is (almost) the only option. Our private car from Ambalavo to Tsarasoa was organised for us by Tsarasoa, and cost 250,000Ar. We initially thought we would be able to travel all the way from Tana to Tsarasoa in one day, but it is apparently unsafe to drive at night, so the latest our driver was willing to pick us up was 3pm.

2. ‘Fancy’ taxi-brousse – probably your best options and what I would do next time. The company that other people used was Cortisse. With this company you book your seat in advance and it leaves at scheduled times. Then, like above, you will need a night in Fianarantsoa and private car to the Tsaranoro.

3. Private car from Tana to the Tsaranoro – quoted for us at €300.

Accomodation

There are a few options in the valley. What we recommend hands down is Tsarasoa. It is where almost all the climbers stay, has a range of options for accomodation, all the climbing topos, beautiful views from every building, and most importantly it is where you find Gilles Gautier. Gilles has lived in the Tsaranoro valley for a long time, and is a climber. He first built Camp Catta with his friend, and then (he loves building things) built Tsarasoa. He knows everything there is to know about the climbs, descent routes etc, and has lots of incredible and crazy stories to tell you about life in the valley.

Camp Catta is another good option for accomodation located near to Lemur wall. But food is more expensive here, the views are not as good, and you dont get to hang out with Gilles.

Tsara camp looks comfortable and has good management, but is the furthest from the climbing, I don’t think many climbers stay there.

Meva camp no longer exists

Food

By far the easiest option is to buy breakfast and dinner at Tsarasoa, their prices are on the website. Of course you can also come armed with a cooker and lots of food and cook for yourself. You will need to do your shopping in Fianarantsoa before you arrive in the valley. There is a small shop in the village, but the owner does not speak French or English, and there is only a very small selection of items. If you do run out of climbing snacks, Gilles goes to town about once a week. So for a small fee (probably about 10,000Ar) he can employ someone to do your shopping for you and replenish your supply.

There is a bar at Tsarasoa where we enjoyed many beers and rhum arrangés (local drink, where interesting things are left to steep in rum). But, stay away from Malagasy wine! it might look like wine, smell like wine, feel like wine… but the one glass I tried at Camp Catta did not taste like wine. If you are a wine drinker you can easily get South African wine.

Other travel tips

Electronics

Everything at Tsarasoa is solar powered. So bring a battery with you that you can give to the staff during the day while you are climbing, and then you can charge everything at night.
The cell service in Madagascar is surprisingly good, and the one with the best service (and only service at Tsarasoa) is Telma. We bought our sim card in Tana for 500Ar, you can get 2GB of data for 25,000Ar, and you will perhaps also need a little more to buy credit for calls, which can be purchased in tiny amounts almost anywhere.

Language

In Madagascar the locals speak Malagasy. My understanding is that at primary school French is taught, and secondary school is all taught in French, but not everyone has been to school. English is also taught and is becoming more common. At most hotels and bus stations people were able to talk to us in English, but knowing some French was very helpful. It was also reasonably easy to find guides who spoke both English and French.

Money

As mentioned, in the airport the ATM lets you withdraw from a credit card account – I used VISA. I found that the only bank which would let me withdraw from a debit account was BFV. The largest common note available is 10,000Ar, although some banks will dispense 20,000. 10,000Ar was worth €2.50 when we were there, so embrace the travel wallet look, and be aware that you will be dealing with stacks and stacks of bills. We needed about 3 million Ar. for our stay at Tsarasoa, and the nearest ATM was in Ambalavo. The other point to consider is that there is a limit to how many notes you can withdraw – ATMs will only give out 400,000Ar per transaction, but you can usually make more than one transaction.
A lot of hotels will allow you to pay in euros so it is worth taking some with you. I did not find anywhere I could pay with VISA.
It is illegal in Madagascar for a company to use paypal or accept credit card payments on line. The only way you can pay Tsarasoa in advance is by using Western Union.

Weather

You will want to climb in the Tsaranoro valley during the dry season (May to October). In general the weather is very settled, and according to Gilles ‘the weather forecast is that it never rains’. It did rain while we were there for about two days, but apparently this was very unusual.

My hut in rural Africa!

 

The Climbing

Before heading to Tsaranoro, we were a little worried about what we’d actually be able to climb. There’s no guidebook (for the moment), scant online information in English, and the place has a reputation for being serious and runout. So, here’s a brief guide to navigating your way around the climbing, including descent beta and some descriptions of routes we did.

First off, the climbing is spectacular, some of the best we’ve ever encountered. Enormous unbroken walls, beautiful rock, very little grunginess, and some of the most sustained climbing you’ll ever do. There are also lots of routes that are not that serious — quite safe in fact — and despite generally being pretty shoddy at coping with runout terrain, we had tons of great routes to do, and tons more that we wanted to do had we stayed longer. That said, there are fewer routes below around 6b (French), so you might struggle on a longer stay if this is your limit (although this has been changing very recently, with a number of easier, well-protected routes being added, and older routes rebolted). While there’s no guidebook per se, there is a large collection of original and copied topos at Tsarasoa (and Camp Catta). These have recently been well organised online by a good samaritan at ailedescimes.com. Most of these topos are pretty accurate, although some routes can be tricky to find. Another useful resource, which we discovered only after arriving unfortunately, is the book “Rock around the World.” This has great colour topos and descriptions of a selection of the best climbs, as well as useful logistics beta also (so far as we know, this is the only printed guidebook with the Tsaranoro included).

Climbing logistics

Most of the climbing centres around the peaks shown in the picture here. The scale is hard to come by, but these are enormous! Tsaranoro is ~800m tall in the middle (called Tsaranoro Be, or “big Tsaranoro”), while Vatavorindry, Mitsonjoarivo, Chameleon, and Lemur wall are all around 300m high. The approaches from Tsarasoa camp are all pretty reasonable — usually an hour or two. All routes have long pitches — usually 40-50m — because there are so few large features, which means that rappelling is not possible with one single rope. While most people here climb on doubles and rap to descend, we opted for a single rope with a light tag line, and walked off every route (aside from getting rained off). This mostly worked pretty well, and I would say a 60m rope with a 6mm tagline is a good way to go (we had an 80m rope, which wasn’t particularly useful compared to a 60m). The rappelling is notoriously annoying: there are lots of small flakes and the rock is particularly sticky/grippy, causing an abundance of stuck ropes.

Here’s a map of the area (link for high-res version), drawn from the very useful Gaia map app. It shows the various trails in dashed lines, climbers routes (which are sometimes cairned) in dotted lines, and a couple of routes that seem like they might be a good idea but were not (for us at least…) in red. This is just drawn from memory, so don’t trust the details too much, and there might be better trails out there! All of the marked descents are reasonable and preferable (for us) to rappelling, except probably the one from Tsaranoro Atsimo, which was very long and quite complicated (detailed description below) — probably easier just to rap the route here.

 

Some climbs

To give you some ideas, here’s a selection of the climbs we did, along with brief thoughts about each. These were either recommended to us by others at Tsarasoa (particularly Gilles, who’s a mine of information about Tsaranoro climbing), or randomly chosen by searching through the topos.

Vatovarindry
Lower angle climbs that are generally moderate difficulty. Beautiful rock!

La Croix du Sud, 6b+ 8P (Pitches) – A classic, and a great introduction to Tsaranoro climbing at a moderate grade. Lots of beautiful friction and face climbing, with bolts that are always right where you need them, without being excessive. Pitch 4 especially is a real treat, with steep, unlikely climbing on deep runnels and pinches.
Baile, 7a+ 6P – Unfortunately, we only got up 2/3 of this before it started raining, missing most of the crux pitch, but it was beautiful up to then. Highly recommended! (Note that some of the yellow “Camp Catta” topos are wrong for the routes beside this, look for the 3 steps to find the start.)
40s and 2 batteries, 6a+ 5P – A new route put up by our Spanish friends while we were there! We haven’t done it, but it looks like a good introduction to the area!

 

Mitsinjoarivo
Steeper than Vatovarindry, with mostly harder climbs.

Tsara airlines, 7a+/7b 8P – A new addition from May 2018 (hence no online topo yet). Very nice climbing for 6 pitches until the angle lowers for the top section. Friendly bolting, but watch the rope drag on the long (50m) crux pitch.

 

Tsaranoro
The big guy — 800m of unbroken rock in the middle! Traditionally split into Tsaranoro Atsimo (south Tsaranoro), Tsaranoro Be (big Tsaranoro), and Tsaranoro Kely (little Tsaranoro), which you need a rope to get between. We didn’t climb anything up Tsaranoro Be, as it’s all pretty hard. See below for descent beta.

Varavaran Tontolo 7b 11P – Up the left side of Tsaranoro Atsimo, this new route is destined to become a classic and was probably my favorite in all of Tsaranoro (better, even, than Out of Africa). Amazing line with only a tiny section of aid, the route has eons of sustained friction climbing, split by an insane ~20 degree overhang covered in jugs! The bolting is very well thought out and friendly throughout.
Out of Africa 7a 14P – Ultra classic, and a destination climb for the Tsaranoro. As tall as half dome, with continuous 5.10 face climbing on beautiful rock the entire way up! Most pitches have easier climbing to a crux, and there are two very short 7a sections. Although some bolts are spaced on easier terrain, it always seemed reasonable except for one or two sections. One of the best climbs you’ll ever do.

 

Karambony/Lemur Wall
A large massive covering lots of different sections and climbing styles. One the far right of Karambony is School Wall and Lemur Wall, which have a variety of very nice moderate routes.

Cas Nullard 6a 10P – An easy slab climb up the left skyline of Karambony, this has recently had 25 bolts added (by a Google-sponsored team), so is now quite friendly. Mostly very easy climbing up cool runnels (the name is a pun of canule, meaning nozzle or runnel in French), interspersed with a couple of 6a moves.
Pectorine, 6b 7P – Classic, up the tallest section of Lemur wall, with a completely different style to most other faces here — steep, with large positive holds, interpersed with a few thinner cruxes. A lot of the route reminded me of Figures of a Landscape (often called the “best route in Joshua Tree”), but it’s twice as long! Some moderate runouts, but always with an abundance of nice, positive holds.
Tsarandonga, 6c+/7a 6P – Similar to Pectorine and right next door. We thought it was even better!

 

Chameleon
Right behind camp, the rock is somewhat more friable and vegetated than the others massifs. Still fun though, and the approach and descent are very straightforward and short.

Scolothomb 7a 6P – Interesting juggy face climbing, although the rock is sometimes poorer quality. Recently had some bolts added in crucial sections, so all reasonably protected.
Vasamateurs 6c 8P – A new route, put up by a French team a few days before we arrived. Good fun, with some steep cruxes, although there are some loose flakes and vegetation (we were only the second party on it though, and it should clean up nicely). Very well bolted and friendly.

 

Hope you enjoy! Let us know if you have any questions – either comment here, or email juliaofftoseetheworld@gmail.com