Chilean Climbers Need Help

Hi Everyone,

 

Our names are Cristobal Señoret and Canela Astorga, we are Mountain guides and a  Narutal Medicine Teraphyst from Chile. We have been traveling and climbing in the US for almost two months. We started our journey in Washington, DC, where our friend Sebastian graciously lent us his/her minivan which we drove all the way across the country to Yosemite, CA. The purpose of our trip was to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, visit our friends, and see Canela's little - American brother Orion, who has been living all his life in the United States.

 

Everything was amazing the first month. - We got to travel through beautiful places and climb some big walls in Yosemite like the nose of El Cap, Sentinel, and in Tuolumne. We were heading out of Yosemite to go see Orion, but on our way out of the park, another vehicle crossed into our lane, hitting us head-on and totaling our minivan.

 

 

The other car was 100% responsible for the accident. Apparently, they crossed into our lane because they were trying to park on the opposite side of the road. They didn't check before switching lanes and crashed straight into us, destroying our car. Luckily, everyone is okay, but we have a bill of $1,000 of deductibles plus a few other fees that the insurance is refusing to pay, even though - they were responsible for the accident.

This month has been series of bad events for us. Another goal we had while in the USA was to buy a portaledge to do a big wall project on the east face in Torres del Paine this summer. A couple of weeks ago, we got a recommendation from a friend to check out a portaledge that someone was selling on Mountain Project. They were selling an A5 Double Portaledge with Fly for $500 USD. The email on Mountain Project was [email redacted] and [email redacted], and they gave us a phone number to reach them at: (406)-229-3417. We talked to the "owner" multiple times and felt that they were being honest and would send the portaledge once we completed the payment. We Venmoed the account for his "wife" Rianne Gaskin. He was supposed to send the portaledge to the post office in Yosemite Valley, but he never sent it and stop replying a few days after we sent the money on Venmo. We contacted Mountain Project and they told us that it was a scam and that they couldn’t help us. It was the same story with Venmo and our bank.

 

 

We are stuck in Yosemite at the YOSAR where a good friend has given us a place to stay here since we had been living in the minivan. But with the car accident, we are no longer able to drive back to Washington DC and we need to buy new flight tickets in order to make our flight home to Chile in early July. Between the car accident and portaledge scam, we have lost about $4,000 USD.

 

 

We are writing this because we need some help. This amount of money is a lot for us; we don't know - how to make it. We are - hoping to get some help to fly back to Chile to see our families. I hope this never happens to anyone in a foreign country. It has been a nightmare but we still positive that they are good people out there.

 

Thanks for the support and help! We really appreciate every single person that helps us to make our way back to Chile.

 

Muchas Gracias,

Tola and Canela