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Watch Sasha DiGiulian as she sends “One Inch Punch,” for decades Cuba’s hardest climb. Available on YouTube. Compare her style to the incomparable description of route originator, Tim Emmett in 2002: “Shut your eyes, think of Bruce Lee and dispatch it. Two finger pockets lead the way to the top with the desperate ‘one inch punch move’ off a poor left-hand side pull. I fell of this move at least 12 times before finally hanging the two finger pocket that leads the way to the lower off.” Neil Gresham added that it is was as good if not better than “The Rose and the Vampire” (Boux) and “Punks in the Gym” (Australia)..

Cuba Climbing, the only guidebook to climbing in Cuba, is out-of-print as of April 2018. Published a decade ago, the guidebook still covers 90 percent of the routes in the Valley of Viñales. A new guidebook is in the works, but will take some years before publication. Quickdraw Publications (link), still sells the guidebook as a pdf. For a limited time, some distributors still have copies. The last copies are available in Viñales. Each one has been autographed by both authors. These can only be purchased at Raúl Reyes’ farm-restaurant

As of 2018, Cuba reached an important milestone. All of the bolts on the island available for replacement and new routes are titanium glue-ins. The numbers aren’t huge, around 220 titanium bolts, but the last stainless steel glue-ins and expansion bolts are gone. In 2015, CubaClimbing asked climbers to bring only titanium bolts, In 2016 Bolts4Cuba started buying only glue-in bolts, almost all titanium. This winter season, 2017-18, Bolts4Cuba announced it will buy and bring only titanium bolts. Most gratifying is that almost all bolt donations by climbers are titanium.

Henry Barber and his wife Sara visited Viñales December, 2017.  Hot Henry as he was known was in the 1970s, can claim many firsts, including first ascents, first free solos, first to travel widely to rock climb, and among the first professional climber. Henry climbed of course, declaring it a “fantastic time.” Henry added, “I wish we had a few more days and that I was in better shape.” That’s usually a good measure of a climbing venue. Henry and Sara brought gifts of bendryl, Alka Seltzer, bandaids, and climbing gear. Petzl’s director of sales, John Pieper, sent new Petzl quick draws, grigri’s, and 20 glue-in bolts and drill bits. The Petzl bolts have been used to set routes for the Cubans annual Festival-Comp on 23-25 February 2018.

True, Trump took away the category of legal travel to Cuba that created a travel surge for Americans in 2016 and 17. Barely noticed, however, Trump redefined another category of legal travel, to provide Support for the Cuban People, that should make legal travel to Cuba even easier than before, at least for climbers. Cuba remains open for direct, convenient flights from a dozen U.S. cities. DO: stay, eat, and interact with ordinary Cubans, and take climbing gear and provide donations to sustain the Cuban climbers. DON’T DO: stay in expensive government hotels or go on tours run by Cuban Army or its enterprises. It’s that easy. Check out Rock & Ice.

In May, 2017, Meredith Caccese McConvill and her climbing partners traveled to Cuba. As Meredith tells it, “somewhere over the state of Texas, 30,000 feet up, I decided a blog post about our journey was in order. . . because it’s not very often that we can rally our best outdoor adventure buddies for the trip of a lifetime.” Now we can share obvious skills as a writer and a thorough researcher. Her blog post, on Top Rope Media, covers flights, booking, visas, wifi, phones, meals and, yes, cigars and rock climbing. Those of us who thought we had the total beta on Cuba learned something we had only suspected: You can’t bring a drone.

Two months after Trump announced changes to travel to Cuba, the window for going to Cuba legally remains open. That is, you can travel legally under the old rule allowing individual, self-directed people-to-people travel. That opportunity, however, will shut tight as soon as new regulations are issued by the U.S. Treasury Department. And no one knows when that could be. It could be today or tomorrow — or never. Predicting Trump’s action is iffy.
The Treasury Department has twice issued FAQs stating that the “announced changes do not take effect until the new regulations are issued.“ And once new regs issued, you can still travel legally if you have “completed at least one travel-related transaction (such as purchasing a flight or reserving accommodation).” (Treasury FAQs June 16, 2016 and July 25, 2017)
If you want to go to Cuba this winter, book flights immediately. Once bought, you can change always change the dates of travel.
Get on it fast.