free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
Four miles high: Illimani from Base Camp, looking fearsome as usual.
How can a million tons of ice stick to almost-vertical slopes?
PICT3102 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
I made the move into digital photos only recently. Sadly, I now hardly ever look at my old 35mm slides. But last weekend I bought a little gadget from Aldi which can product .jpg files from old slide films.
A venture into my loft led to me finding my 35mm slides for half my trip to Bolivia. The second half.
A couple of random intro photos - firstly Lake Titicaca and a woven reed-boat - photo snapped out of the window of our Jeep. A few 6000m+ peaks beyond it including Ancohuma and Illampu.
PICT0106 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
And one of our guys drawing a few pictures as gifts for the children in the village of Pinaya.
PICT0077 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Anyway, although I have yet to find Part 1, which covers the monster peak of Illimani, I thought I would load up Part 2.
I did find this one pic of Illimani though, I took this from our advance camp "Nido de Condores" (Condor's Nest). So here's that one.
PICT3098 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
On the drive back to La Paz from the roadhead below Illimani, we saw these weird giant plants in one of the many vast canyons. Each plant is about twenty feet tall. Someone told us that they flower every hundred years or so.
PICT0075 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
After our time in the wilderness, we enjoyed getting back to the city and grabbing some some very welcome beers (think Ice Cold In Alex) and also to drop into the middle of the latest fiesta / national holiday / protest march against the hated Chileans (they seem to have all three of these events every week).
A typical weekday at the office in La Paz...
PICT3109 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Night falls on La Paz - a view across the rooftops from my hotel room window back towards the alpenglow on guess which mountain, yes it's Illimani again.
PICT3099 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
We also heard news that the recent very windy weather had been much worse in the far west of Bolivia. We decided to scrap our plan to go across the western desert to try to climb Sajama, Bolivia's highest peak.
Fortunately, one thing that Bolivia is not short of is mountains. So we took a vote and much to my surprise, my proposal won. Our decision was to have a go at Huayna Potosi, which is the most accessible peak in the Cordillera Real range, not far from La Paz.
After a rest day, we got a very early start from La Paz and used a Jeep to drive up the rocky track towards the Zongo Pass, which is a massive slice through the Andes, dividing Huayna Potosi from its near neighbour peak Tikimani (also spelt Tiquimani).
Un-named peak in the Cordillera Real range.
PICT0107 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Another un-named peak and an azure blue lake.
PICT0108 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
We stopped off at the tiny, bleak tin-mining settlement of Milluni, had some breakfast, and looked at the miners' cemetery, a truly haunting spot. Above the tombs, Huayna stood up head and shoulders above its numerous satellite peaks and ridges.
PICT0086 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
We had learned from chats to the locals in the bars of La Paz that Huayna Potosi is an Aymara name (the Aymara are the indigenous people of this area) and it means "Thunderous Youth". Each one of the giant 6000m+ peaks around La Paz and Lake Titicaca is part of a family in Aymara folklore: Huayna is the eldest son of the king and queen mountains, Illimani and Illampu.
Certainly, Huayna looked less intimidating that the uber-mountain Illimani which we had just come from. Compared to Illimani, Huayna looked - well, just as impossibly high ... but, almost friendly.
But, writing this now, I am remined of a blog I read a few days ago, entitled "The Worst three days of my life" which said "Huayna Potosi didn’t intimidate me in the slightest. What an absolute pie-faced idiot I was." (
http://www.nofixedplanstraveller.com/bolivia-2/the-worst-three-days-of-my-life/ )
(The blog, by the way, is an unbeatable antidote to all those lavishly illustrated take-themselves-seriously books about the exploits of famous mountaineers that we all revere.
Plus, it's better written than most of them.)
Closer view of Huayna from among the tombs.
PICT0087 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
The graves of the tin miners were a memento mori, a reminder to us of life's transience. We chatted among ourselves not just about the hardships and dangers faced by Andean miners but also Huayna's own killer reputation. Wikipedia says
"In 1877 a group of six German climbers tried to climb Huayna Potosí for the first time... Their unsuccessful attempt met with tragedy.
Four climbers died at an altitude around 5600m; the remaining two managed to retreat in deteriorating conditions, but died by exhaustion just after finding their way to the Zongo Pass.
21 years later, on the 9th of September 1898, an expedition of Austrian climbers tried again to climb the mountain but after five days spent at 5900m they were forced to descend. Finally, in 1919 the Germans R. Dienst and O. Lhose reached the south summit... climbing the mountain on the east face on a route that later would become the current normal route..."
We had also heard sobering news when in La Paz: eight climbers had been killed on the Peruvian peak Alpamayo by a huge lump of ice falling off the mountain's overhanging summit.
We drove off from melancholy Milluni. as we drove along we saw, here and there, llamas grazing among ruined farmsteads, like these near yet another fjord-like lake.
PICT3100 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Later in the morning we stopped off again on our drive, but due to the scale and height of the mountain, our view of the peak had hardly changed.
PICT0089 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Then, like a curtain falling, we drove into thick cloud. As the Jeep bounced its way up the boulder-made road towards the top of the pass, the big pampas-grass-like tussocks of the Puna (high grassland) gave way to bare crags, rubble and snow. The Jeep lurched and strained up the steepening track. Then we parked in the middle of a frozen wasteland. It was like being on the Moon, but with zero visibility. But as we unloaded our rucksacks, gaps in the cloud revealed the snouts of some of Huayna's glaciers.
PICT0090 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Many parties use this parking area as a Base Camp for Huayna, staying here sometimes for two or three days to get used to the altitude. Leaders of commercial expeditions use the nearby glaciers to teach novice clients to ice-climb. Nowadays, apparently, there is even a hut you can stay in! Luxury, sheer luxury! But we had already spent time in La Paz, done a few days' acclimatisation trek, and then several days on Illimani, so we were already well acclimatised.
So, our plan was not to stay here at all. We would use the rest of the day to climb up to, and set up our tents in, a place which most parties use as an Advance Camp. If the weather was favourable, we would then aim to try to climb Huayna the next day.
But for anyone reading this who is thinking of going to Bolivia: don’t try what we did, at least not straight after you arrive. Because unless you spend at least several days in La Paz and the surrounding hills, getting used to the altitude... you won't make it to the summit. (But you might make it into the newspapers, and not in a good way.)
Just as we are about to set off for advance camp, the mist cleared instantly, like someone had pressed Delete on it. In the photo below, the dark ridge running in from the right is the upper part of our ascent ridge towards the advance camp site. Above it, foreshortened from this angle, are the twin summits of Huayna. The lower fore-summit is on the left and the main 6088m summit on the right.
PICT0088 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
It took us about three hours to climb to the advance camp site. In parts, the ridge was a bit like being on a good scrambling route in the UK, in winter conditions - a natural rocky staircase to clamber up, with the odd more challenging step, and ice on the rocks to watch out for. A bit trickier than Striding Edge, but much easier than Aonach Eagach.
It also felt very much like being in the British hills, because thick mist once again started swirling around us. At one point I had this view through a gap in the mist, across to the glacier on our left...
PICT0091 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
... and, a bit further up the ridge, the fog rolled back briefly and gave us a glimpse to our right of Tikimani rising above the clouds.
PICT0093 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Advance camp was a nice spot - much nicer than the grim, scary advance camp we had stayed at on Illimani. Here, a rock spur jutted out from the glacier, with big boulders around it giving it a sheltered feel. Almost cosy.
It gave us a view out over foothills with a Torridonish look about them.
PICT3108 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Over a late afternoon meal and several cups of tea we discussed the main problems we would face tomorrow.
Because Huayna is close to La Paz, and has the Zongo Pass road running past its foot, it is the most popular 6000m peak in Bolivia - a group is likely to attempt it on most fine days in the climbing season. This meant that we had been able to have chats in the La Paz bars to other climbers who had returned from the mountain. They had told us of the problems caused by the unusually dry and windy conditions this season, which had been made worse by recent high winds.
First, there is a bergschrund - a big crevasse. This usually has a lot of snow covering parts of it. So in the "Worst Three Days" blog, her group was able to walk across a platform of snow covering the gap, then simply climb up the ice of the 30-metre back wall of the bergschrund.
Our situation was different. Due to the unusual weather, the usual snow cover had all gone, exposing a deep canyon in the ice. Also some of the climbers (a Bolivian group who gave up trying to climb the mountain, once they saw the bergschrund) told us that, due to ice movements, the bergschrund was wider than usual this season anyway.
Normal practice on Huayna is to set off walking on a summit attempt soon after midnight. We decided to set off a little later. This would mean that, by the time we got to the bergschrund, the sun would be coming up and we could have a good look at it and try to work out how to tackle it.
I've marked our intended route on this aerial photo. It is from a book we looked at in La Paz. Sorry to post up an unattributed picture (and draw a wiggly red line on it) but I don't think it will do any harm.
Huayna-Potosi by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Another party of climbers had told us about the next obstacle we'd face if we got beyond the bergschrund. For those of you familiar with Snowdonia, Huayna's summit ridge is nearly the spitting image of Crib Goch - but made of snow, of course.
So you walk along a trodden path, about a foot wide, on the crest. But the freak winds had blown the snow away, so the ridge was now a sharp fin of hard ice that would be dangerous to attempt.
However, there was an alternative "Direct" route for the final section of the ascent, going straight up the east face to the summit. In scale and angle it would be like a snow-and-ice version of going straight up the south face of Crib Goch from the Miner's Track by shore of Llyn Llydaw, rather than approaching it like everyone else does along the ridge via the Pyg Track from Pen-y-Pass.
The upper part of this alternative route would be very steep, so rather than just all walking along roped together, we would have to climb it in pitches, going up the rope one person at a time, with one of us as an anchor man at the bottom. We would need to use two ice axes each and the front points of our crampons - hard work! Also, in order to come back down using this route, we would have to do three or four long abseils to get down from the summit to a place where we could walk normally again.
These changes, plus all the bare ice everywhere instead of the usual nice crisp snow, would raise the overall grade of our climb from PD to AD. (PD = peu difficile, a little difficult; AD = assez difficile, quite difficult.) We had a snow stake with us - an aluminium bar which you hammer into the ice to attach the rope to - but no ice screws, which are easier and safer when you have bare ice to deal with.
I had never done an AD before (and haven't since!). I was aware that the normal routes on the most difficult Alpine peaks such as the Matterhorn and the Eiger are graded AD. Comfortingly, my companions had more technical climbing experience and skill than me. (In contrast, my only real climbing skill is possessing the stubbornness to keep putting one foot in front of the other.)
Challenging thoughts ... but, the good news was that the cloud cleared and we finally got to see the whole of Tikimani.
PICT0101 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
It was a beautiful late afternoon, and we sat around in the sun trying to enjoy the views. And to not think about how, when we had been back in the UK, we had read up on Bolivia - and blithely decided not to buy those expensive ice screws. Or to bother with prussik loops (you use the latter to climb up a rope to safety, if you are dangling into a crevasse).
The other good news, apart from the nice weather, was our knowledge that we all trusted each other and that we all knew that no-one among us wanted to take any unnecessary risks. If it got dangerous - we would just turn back.
Alarms went off at 2.30am and we blundered around for an hour or more in flickering torchlight getting kitted up. Finally, we were all roped up and set off in the dark. One of us spotted a meteor shower but I must admit I was just plodding along mindlessly and didn't see it. A shame - at that altitude it would have been an amazing sight. However I did notice that the sky was full of stars, literally thousands more than you can see in Britain. My brain dimly registered that this beautiful spectacle meant clear skies... the weather was holding for us - good.
Walking on a climbing rope in the dark can get a bit hypnotic, trudge trudge and all you really see is the waving beams of your companions' head-torches in front of you. There was the thin trodden trench of a path in the snow, and we followed it. First, we climbed up a little steep snowy bank but then almost immediately the angle eased. Holding an axe in the "uphill" hand and a climbing pole in the "downhill" hand, we followed the trail of footsteps, contouring along a gently curving snow-crusted glacier. After an hour or so even this gentle slope levelled off. Without a word, we stopped and stood, trying to make out our surroundings in the blackness. We were on a flat glacial plain in a corrie immediately below the fore-summit of Huayna.
As we crossed the flat glacier, some crevasses loomed up, ugly black slits in the ice, picked out by the light of our head-torches. They plunged down to unseen depths, but they were mostly only a couple of feet wide and we managed each one with just a big step. Above us we could see the sharp pointy fore-summit of Huayna, in a sky which was changing from black to deep blue. One by one, the stars disappeared.
The sun came up.
PICT0081 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Here is Huayna lit by early morning light - the foresummit on the left, the main peak (most of it hidden by the nearer glacier) on the right.
PICT0095 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Just below the sunlit orange rocks in the mid-left of the picture you can see the big crack of our much-discussed bergschrund. A bergschrund is basically a giant crevasse which forms when a big mass of glacial ice in a corrie breaks away from the static ice ("firn") attached to the mountain slope above. According to Wikipedia "a bergschrund can present a very difficult obstacle to alpinists."
However, this one was not an obstacle (in theory) because, as we got closer to it, we could see that it was bridged by a ladder. This was a safety system Bolivian-style. It consisted of two aluminium ladders, the extending slidey-out sort you can buy from B&Q. They were both extended to maximum length, and lashed together end-to-end. The tope and bottom of the whole thing was wedged into the lips of the bergschrund.
We looked over the edge into the gulf. It was too deep to see the bottom clearly - just a big empty space of ice-blue darkness. We guessed it was several hundred feet deep.
We discussed the situation. The bergschrund dwarfed any crevasses any of us had seen in the Alps. (Plus, I don't like crevasses, having fallen into one in the Alps - luckily I managed to climb out. Joe Simpson described crevasses as "not places for the living" - and he should know.)
We were not aware of anything like this ladder setup in the Alps, but we knew that ladders like this are used on the gaps in the Khumbu Icefall of the Western Cwm on Everest, and I have seen them in Victorian era photos of Alpine ascents.
We noticed that the overlap of the two ladders, where they were lashed together, was about two meters. They looked to be tied well, and so the whole thing should be rigid. We also noticed a dangling end of a rope at the top lip of the bergschrund, presumbly where the ladder was tied into a snow stake or other anchor. Whoever had set this up knew what they were doing.
We decided to go for it. We hammered an ice axe into the ice as an anchor at the bottom of the ladder and wrapped the rope round the axe. I paid the rope out slowly, keeping it as taut as possible, as the first of our group of three climbed the ladder. Clunk, clunk of crampons on the aluminium rungs.
At the top of the ladder, hooray!
PICT0100 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
(I zoomed to get this photo. Should have taken more pictures of the place really, but I had about 15 frames left on the film, and I was saving them for the summit shots.)
He was able to hammer our snow stake into the top lip of the bergschrund and loop the rope around it, so as to control the rope for the two of us still at the bottom.
I was the last one of the three of us to cross the ladder, so I untied the rope end and took it and the bottom anchor axe with me. The snow stake at the top lip of the bergschrund would hold me if I slipped off the ladder. On the other hand, we had not brought prussik loops, so if I fell and ended up dangling in the air on the rope, I would probably not be able to climb back up the rope myself, and it seemed unlikely that they other two guys would have the strength to pull me back up. Hmm.
I recalled the key mountaineering advice - simply, make absolutely sure that you don't fall in the first place. With each rung I stepped on, the ladder shook, but the lashings to the other ladder looked strong, and the whole setup was well wedged into the ice at each end.
Once I reached the middle of the ladders, it was quite weird. Of course the sky at this altitude is darker - the same colour as looking down into the blank depths of the bergschrund. I looked up, I looked down - I felt I was completely surrounded above and below by an infinity of indigo-blue. But there was only one thing to do: focus. Keep concentrating on grasping the next rung, and the next.
Off the ladder and back onto lovely firm ice. Phew.
Thinking back, were we stupid? I think the situation looked and felt scary - but when considered logically, we objectively evaluated and managed the risk. If you were asked, at ground level, to climb two well-tied ladders slanting at 45 degrees, you'd do it - and make sure you didn't fall off.
Therefore, most of the danger was in the mind - and we just needed to overcome it. Which we did.
Above the bergschrund, a steep slope gradually eased into flatter ground, where there was another major crevasse - visible in the foreground of this photo. However it was only about three feet wide at the narrowest point (hidden down in the dip near the middle of the photo) so it seemed a piece of cake after what we'd just done.
PICT0094 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Once above the steep slope and the crevasses, we walked along a snowy shelf running along the east face of the mountain, below the fore-summit, towards the main summit which now towered steeply above us, perhaps 1500 feet above us. We could also see, for the first time, over to the lands on the far side of Huayna - a valley many thousands of feet deep, backed by a saw-toothed ridge.
PICT0097 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
The snowy shelf seemed designed for you to admire the scenery from. Here's the view back towards Tikimani -
PICT3105 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
And here's the view from a bit further along the shelf.
PICT3103 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Then, a bit further along again, we could see, miles away on the other side of La Paz, the lurking bulk of Illimani on the horizon. "Killermani" - even from this distance it looked enormous and forbidding. The flat-topped mountain on the left is called Mururata (in the legends, he got his head chopped off).
PICT3104 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
The slopes steepened up sharply towards the summit. We climbed and climbed, then we got to a point where it seemed dangerous to keep walking along together, so we set up our first belay point and got ready to climb. Like at the bergschrund, I was the back-marker of the three of us, the anchorman.
Mostly this steep slope was hard bare ice,. and we were using two axes and the front points of the crampons. Calf muscles full of lactic acid. Just try to ignore the pain - and the huge drop below us - and take the next step. And the next one... Up to the next belay stop, pant with exhaustion, fiddle about with the rope, start the procedure all over again.
I'm not much of a rock climber, but I've done a few ice-climbs in the Cairngorms and the Alps. Pitched ice-climbing is an odd experience, because when you're standing at the bottom, paying out the rope, you get freezing cold - but then when you're climbing the pitch, kick step with your crampons, the exertion makes you horribly hot.
It was four 60m rope lengths, so a total pitched climb of around 750 feet. My camera stayed in the rucksack for this bit, but this photo from the book we saw in La Paz shows this section of the route. Apologies again to the authors.
PICT3106 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
We reached the summit around 10.30am. 6088 metres up in the sky! The tiny summit plateau is poised in the air in such a way that you cannot see its supporting slopes, so it feels like a little magic platform floating in the sky. The normally deadpan Wikipedia says of the view from Huayna "The views on a clear morning from the summit are unbelievable - the mountain is far higher than anything else anywhere nearby, and the Cordillera Real [mountain range], Lake Titicaca, La Paz, and part of the Altiplano they reside on are all visible."
All perfectly true.
Lake Titicaca can just about be made out in the far distance.
PICT0099 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Here's me, looking happy but slightly out of focus. Perhaps that's a good thing. Beyond me is the chain of the Andes - lots and lots of Andes.
PICT0098 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
My companions enjoying the two options offered by the summit (a) enjoy the view (b) lie down in utter exhaustion.
PICT0096 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
My big grin is more in focus on this one. Behind me is the bulge of the overhanging summit cornice.
IMG_7012 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
We were in no hurry to leave. The views were mesmerising: it was as if we were standing in Space looking down at the detached planet below us.
PICT3107 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
I can't put that time I spent on the mountain-top into words - but Frank Smythe tried to, describing his ascent of the Mana Peak (at the time, I think, the highest climb done by humans).
"It was as though I had been led blindfold up the mountain and the bandage had been removed on the summit. It was this, more than any sense of “conquest” or achievement, that made my few minutes on the summit unforgettable, so that if I live to be old and feeble I can still mount the golden stairs of memory to inspiration and contentment.
I seemed on the very boundary of things knowable and things unknowable."
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/s%20...%20Gw4mt.dpuf But, to misquote Wittgenstein, things that are unknowable ... well, they have to stay unknowable. We can't stay up here for ever - might miss the afternoon cuppa back at the camp!
The abseils to descend were... interesting. Sadly I had used up the last of my film, so it is unrecorded. However here is another photo of a picture from that book in La Paz, showing the abseil, looking almost vertically down from Huayna's summit.
PICT3110 by
Tim Pearce, on Flickr
Once we reached the flatter ground at the bottom of the abseils, of course we started thinking about the bergschrund and the ladders. Suffice to say that the moment I had descended the ladders and put my feet back onto the snow was one of the best of my life.
We got back to the camp at around 2pm, and the next morning we packed up camp and did the easy scramble back down to the road and the Jeep. It had been an unforgettable experience: unforgettable in exactly the way Frank Smythe described. I can still recall that half-hour on the summit more clearly than some things that happened earlier this week.
Or is that my Alzheimer's starting to kick in?