This summer I went to Peru on a 6 week climbing trip with a friend of mine named Page. We were planning on climbing a few routes in the Cordillera Blanca, and then maybe do something
in the Cordillera Huayhuash.
Page and I went to college together in NH where we both got into rock and ice climbing (I think Page led his first trad route at the Gunks with me). Page has since moved to Utah
while I moved back home to NYC. Back in 2003 Page had spent 3 weeks in the Cordillera Blanca, that plus his 3 months of college Spanish made him a Peruvian local as far as I was
concerned. In late June off we went.
This trip was planned after 1.5 other trips fell through. First we thinking about Kyrgyzstan, and then they had a revolution. Then we were headed for Peru and Bolivia, and
tires were burnt in the streets of La Paz. Finally we were down to just Peru and hoping for political stability.
It was awesome.
I’m on the left, Page on the right
Total Tally:
- 6 weeks
- 6 summits, 5 mountains
- 1 “Second most beautiful trek in the world”
- 1 bent trekking pole
- 1 badly bruised toe
- 2 pairs of underwear and one set of “city” clothes
- 1 massively overpriced 1am taxi ride from the Lima airport
- 3 cases of general bowel malaise
- A lot of chicken (crummy beer too)
- Several destroyed socks
- 1 trashed pair of sneakers
- 4 different Hostels (apparently, 4’s the charm)
- Big packs
- No burros
- Not enough calories
- 1 amazing conversation with the most unassuming former mountain guide (middle aged Peruvian with a McDonalds hat) who had climbed every peak in the Huayhuash
and in his garage had built a nearly scale model of the Cordillera Blanca and Huayhuash.
I'd like to apologize for the occasionally shitty photo quality. My digital requires recharging for its special battery and I didn't want to deal with the hassle. I was
also worried about the camera being dropped/stolen/broken/etc... So I brought a bunch of disposables instead. Sometimes they did the job, often
they didn't. Page brought a digital camera, which was not broken/dropped/lost/stolen, so if the pics are good then they’re probably his.
.
An interesting thing about mountaineering is that you really can’t take pictures of the climbing, at least not on routes that can be climbed in a single night. With few
exceptions most of our photos are of the mountains either before or after ascent, or of the route itself on the descent. You’ll have to use your imagination to guess at
what the moments in between were like.
I’m going to leave out the day to day travel details as there are no photos to go along with a narrative, also such details are best shared over a beer. Come down to Brooklyn
and we’ll talk. All the same, here are the basic details:
- Leave NY
- Arrive in Lima at about 12am.
- Get ripped off by cabbie at about 1am. (damnit)
- Meet Page the next morning, catch evening bus to Huaraz
- Bum around Huaraz for a day or so, buy food, discuss routes, pack the bags and head out
- Return from trip, gorge on food
- Repeat last two steps
Actually, here’s one photo from Huaraz that some of you might find funny, Page did.
Trip 1: Yanapacha and ChopicalquiYanapacha(the route went basically up the middle of the face):
Chopicalqui (our route followed the right skyline):
We headed out to climb these two peaks for acclimatization, neither are too technically difficult, basically snow slogs, but at about 21,000 feet Chopicalqui is the 4th
highest mountain in Peru.
Here’s basecamp, for the climbing trips we used a megamid and bivy sacks. For the Huayhash circuit we ditched the bivy sacks in Huaraz.
Here’s the less pleasant part of that plan in action at the Yanapacha moraine camp.
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Yanapacha turned out to be an awesome climb. It started off with about 100meters of 45 degree ice, then a slog up a glacier capped with a final bit of steep (50-60deg) hard
snow to a great summit.
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Page descending Yanapacha’s glacier with the headwall behind him:
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On Chopicalqui we had our first meeting of bizarre coincidence. At the moraine camp at about 5000M, I ran into a guy who lives 6 blocks away from me in Brooklyn. Damn…
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Looking up the face:
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Chopicalqi is supposed to be climbed in about 3 days. From the basecamp you hike up to the moraine camp, a place with pretty good views:
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The next day is spent climbing the glacier to the col camp
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…and the following morning you get up and trod up the ridge to the summit.
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Page and I skipped step 3 and went straight from the moraine camp the summit, we were hardly speedy but still did catch a guided group of Slovenians on the summit who
had started at the Col camp that morning.
The ridge is mostly a slog:
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But it does get steeper:
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Roads are steep in Peru.
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That’s a single lane dirt road, by the way. Cars, buses, and trucks go both ways on it, it’s important to honk when you’re rounding a corner.
Trip 2: Tocllaraju times twoFor this one we had two objectives, the west face of Tocllaraju and a route on Ranrapalca. Once we arrived at the basecamp though it was pretty clear the routes we were
thinking of doing to do on Ranrapalca were a bit spicier than we were ready for.
Tocllaraju’s west-face:
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Ranrapalca lookin’ burly:
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The hike in:
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Ranrapalca being ‘out’ turned out to be a good thing, as we headed off for the west-face of Tocllaraju on an overcast night with no moon. The previous day had been cloudy as
well, with the face of Tocllaraju blocked from good viewing. With nothing to go on but the guidebook description we searched the bergschrund by LED headlamp looking for a crossing. At about 4-5am we said, “fuck it” and just did the mountain by the “normal” route up the NW ridge.
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An American guided group preparing to descend:
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On the way down, now in sunlight, we finally saw several crossings over the bergshrund. We had been searching the big semi-circle, but all the crossings were down and to
the right.
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Two days later we were back and climbed the face in 9 hours. It was amazing, one of the best climbs I’ve ever done. Lots and lots of 55 deg ice capped with some steep
snow climbing.
Quote - Page upon making it up and over the bergshrund and onto the face, “Oh my god, the sticks are incredible!...
[some time later]…And Dude, it takes screws!”
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And Page approaching the final summit shoulder:
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The one ski shot: That dot is a local Peace Corp worker getting some turns above the moraine camp. He did the NW ridge the same day we did the West face. He reported the
conditions were crap.
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Trip 3: Quitaraju and ArtesonrajuThis was our last climbing trip, we had previously decided that for our last trip we would ditch the heavy packs and just go backpacking. After a while (in our case about 4
weeks) one gets tired of a 70 pound pack.
Quitaraju’s north face was first on the list.
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Quitaraju is not as well known as its neighbor, Alpamayo.
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Alpamayo’s Ferrari route normally gets tons of traffic, but this year was out because of a serious cornice overhanging the route. The Ferrari route takes the line from the highest point of the bergschrund to the ridge. The French direct was in though, it takes the route from the lowest point of the bergschrund to the summit. (Wish we hadn’t left the ice screws back at the base camp)
Page is into yoga, and pretty much no matter where we were he would bust out his sleeping pad and start stretching.
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We had heard a horror story from a friend about an 18-hour camp to camp push on Quitaraju, and when we arrived at the glacier camp at 5pm we could see a team descending (not a
time one wants to be descending a steep snow slope). That, plus the fact that we would be sharing the route with at least two other teams, meant Page and I started off early…
too early.
We climbed the face in 3:40 and reached the ridge at 4:20, by 4:40am we were at the summit. The sun rises at 6, and damnit… we wanted a summit photo. Also, to descend you rap
the route, and finding pickets left as anchors by other teams is easier with a bit of daylight.
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We were back at glacier camp by 9, and base camp by afternoon. A lot of cheese, peanut butter, and tuna later and we were in bed by 5.
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Artesonraju is the mountain from the Paramount pictures logo.
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The most popular route is the south face from the Paron valley which Page had done 2 years ago. This time we did the north (northeast?) face to the east ridge. The route
goes from the bottom right corner of the glacier, across to the left, up along the rock-band that is eventually crossed, along up another steep snow/ice slope, a final
rock band, then the ridge and the summit.
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The route was “a full day” according to the guidebook, especially as it involved a 2-3 hour approach over rock slabs (you can’t camp under the north face). It was also
clearly not in “guidebook” conditions though; from the moraine camp it was clear that what the guidebook called “mixed rock and ice gullies” translated into rock
climbing.
We spent a day sitting at the moraine camp scanning the face with binoculars, resting, and listening to the late afternoon rock-fall.
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That night we got started ass-early (9pm) so we could get up the route and then back down before too late in the (following) day. We did not want to be under the cliffs of
the north face (ascent or descent) when they started dropping rocks.
The route got interesting when we left the first snowfield and crossed the rockband. Page was more comfortable climbing in crampons so he led both times when the route
crossed a rock-band. Here I am following the first one at about 2am:
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Here’s what it looked like in daylight:
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Once on the second snowfield I led off on great hard snow and ice:
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Sun is rising:
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I reached the second rock band, and final technical pitch, just as the sun rose:
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Page on the final rock band:
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Page nearing the summit:
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Summit:
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Everyone is allowed one cheesy summit pose, right?
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On the descent the chosspile nature of this mountain’s rock was made very clear:
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All went well though, and despite a obnoxious descent down the glacier over slushy neve pentientes (suncups from hell)
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…we were back at the camp with plenty of time to share some beta with an arriving Irish team we had met on Quitaraju, eat almost all of our remaining food, and then pass out.
Trip 4: The Huayhuash circuitThe Huayhuash are a small compact mountain range south of the Blanca. It’s best known as being where Touching the Void took place, parts of the movie were filmed there too.
We had thought about climbing there, but the longer approaches, higher difficulty, and lack of info on conditions led to a decision just to hike around the damn
thing instead.
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The Huayhuash circuit is a rather popular trekking loop that’s called “The second most beautiful trek in the world”, apparently there’s some loop in the Himalaya that
connoisseurs have decided is better. The trail is normally followed clockwise and the full loop is supposed to take about 10 days. Without climbing equipment our packs were
way lighter than before, and without burros we weren’t tied to a donkey’s schedule and could skip campsites if we wanted.
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All in all, the trek took us seven and a half days.
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It is important to wash your socks.
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All of the kids on the Huayhuash trek and in the Blanca, that is all the local Peruvian kids, are trained by the trekkers to demand candy and gifts from you. The first
thing any kid asks you when they see you is: “Caramello?!” Most trekkers see no problem with this and hand our candy like they’re a friggin’ sweet shop. Page and I kept our
thoughts about this mostly to ourselves, but did stop another trekking group from giving a 5 year old girl her 2nd sweet of the day… and it was only 8am.
That girl is Maria. Here she is with Page:
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And again with me:
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Even though I didn’t give her a candy bar the side of her palm (other trekkers took care of that) I did play catch the potato with her. She seemed to like that. When I
starting reading Gravity’s Rainbow to her (me = no Spanish or Quechua, her = 5 year old girl) she drew the line and wandered off looking for another sugar fix.
There is a lot of traffic on the Huayhuash circuit. In addition to themselves, trekkers bring burros, guides and porters. Also, several small towns in the region without
access to a road rely on the trail. Finally there are the cows and the slow growing rates of high-altitude. In short, the trail is easy to follow:
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This is Trapecio, an old Jeff Lowe solo route up the center of the face saw its first repeat (first ascent?) this summer. In 1985 Lowe stopped 750 feet from the summit after
finishing the crux pitches.
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Joe Simpson crawled down this valley….. shit.
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Pretty though:
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We almost had our own “Touching the Void” moment when descending from San Antonio pass to the valley where Touching the Void took place. We were told the route went,
and it did… with some crumbly fifth class climbing down a rotten gully.
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We descended from the col down and to viewers left of the major gully. Access to the big gully was blocked from above by cliffs, so we worked our way down a weakness in the
cliff-bands. None of this was visible from above, we descended blind on separate lines hoping that we wouldn’t cliff out and have to reclimb the slope and try again.
Looking up at one of the harder bits:
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That’s all folks!!!
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For all of our photos check out:
Page -
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b333/pagekyleMe (not in chron order) -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/HB4046/Peru
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