Poisonous snakes, scorpions and tarantulas are just some of the terrifying problems faced by two Cumbrian climbers as they took on a mammoth challenge.

Leo Houlding and Anna Taylor teamed up to successfully complete a new free-climbed route on a towering wall of rock in the Amazon rainforest.

Staveley’s Leo, 39, a veteran of many trips, was joined by Anna, 21, of Windermere, experiencing her first big wall expedition, sponsored by Berghaus.

He led a team of six, plus two local guides, to climb a new route on the 600m, continually overhanging Prow of Roraima in Guyana.

Mount Roraima is a 2,810m high flat top mountain that sits on the border between Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana. It inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic work of fiction The Lost World and more recently the Pixar animated movie Up.

The team completed a 53km trek through pristine, untracked jungle and just getting to the base of the prow involved “vertical tree wrestling” and crossing a swamp, while also avoiding some dangerous local wildlife.

Once on the wall, climbers had to live on portaledges hanging hundreds of metres above the jungle, and contend with deluges of heavy rain.

The route up the overhanging wall was extremely challenging, to forge the free route. But the team finally completed it and helped two local guides become the first Amerindians to stand on the summit of Roraima.

Anna said: “It’s been a wild month with highs and lows – crazy storms, spiders, snakes, scorpions, waterfalls, endless ascents, vertical mud slides, swamps, slime forests, river crossings, countless cuts and bruises, plenty of suffering, bags of exposure, and some pretty amazing pitches of rock climbing.

“All in all, it’s been the most incredible experience of my life.”