UKC

A long shot maybe, but is anyone on here able to help me get in contact with climbers currently active in Juba, South Sudan? There's a Facebook group I've asked to join, which seems not too old, but I had to create a new account just for the purpose and I refuse to give Zuckerberg even as much as my real name, so it's possible my request has been ignored.

Any leads gratefully received.

I can't help, it's been ten years since i used to climb there, all my climbing contacts have long moved on (people don't stay too long in South Sudan!) I reckon the Juba Rock Climbing Club fb group is your best to make contact (it used to be the Juba Climbing Friends group, but that appears to have died now). 

There will likely be weekly meets, security allowing. They used to be on Sundays.

Best of luck!

Thank you Juan. UKC is really good for stuff like this. Within a few hours of posting I've already received 2 direct messages with useful contacts to try. Still not made contact with folk currently here but it's looking promising. And of course, any further ideas people might have are still enormously welcome.

I was there in 2014 and it was very easy to join the Sunday meets - I heard about them thanks to a colleague from a different agency discussing her weekend plans after a meeting. Climbing and hiking on the Jbel seemed to be quite a well known activity amongst the international staff. It would be great to hear what’s been done out there since and what you get up to. There was a guy from Lancashire who was bolting the very steep side of the big dome but it was clearly hard and I have no idea whether he eventually did it… 

Thank you Sean.

I climbed around Kassala on the Sudan/Eritrea border about 5 years ago. I know that's not where you were asking for but in the course of that Tony Howard of Jordan/Troll fame was a great source of information. Might be worth asking if he knows anyone. I have his email address if that's going to be useful.

Thank you Frank.

If you do ever get to Kassala, you might find some pretty cool adventures. This link gives a flavour of what you will find. The picture of the Taka mountains from the town footy pitch is mouthwatering. We were the Brits they refer to in their article who did some shorter routes and bouldering on the four Taka monoliths. We were aiming for free/aid routes on the main massif but the heat (45C and the rest) in the afternoon was impossible. Even with 4am starts we struggled and this was in early Feb. We didn't have enough bolts to hand drill five pitch sport routes so we were slightly limited. It's a beautiful place.

https://www.planetmountain.com/en/news/climbing-sudan-new-routes-taka-mount...

That looks fun!

Pretty sure I'll not have chance to get away from Juba this trip, but definitely noted!

I think I'm all sorted now. Thanks for all your help.