Huayna Potosi - 6,088 meters (19,974 feet)

As you all know I am always full of good ideas.  Take for instance my bright idea of going paragliding last year.  Being afraid of hieghts, it turned out I should have bought some adult diapers before running off that damn mountain!  Well, once again another patented great idea - moutain climbing!  Really, how hard can that be, include my fear of hieghts, easy!  I just had to find someone equally as "brave" as me, that was easy, my Swedish friend Julia once again fell for another of my great ideas.

How did this all come about, you ask.  Well, all the trekking at high altitude this year gave me inspiration.  Imagine standing on top of the world and having that feeling of acomplishment.  Yes, done we were off.  We found a great mountain climbing operator that specialized in Huayana Potosi excusions, they even had a doctor talk to us about the trek, safety first.  We scheduled our trek for two days later, this gave us time to prepare ourselves and have one final drink with the Pampas crew.

That morning the lady at the agency told us that it was unlikely that we would make high camp, let alone the summit.  She said that the weather outlook was poor at best, and if we wanted to turn back now it would not be an issue, she would return our money, but if we went it would be our loss.  Being budget travellers we discussed this in detail, being idiots we told her to put us in a car and send us to the mountain.  Three hours later we arrived at base camp, 4,750 m (15,584 ft) with our guide and had lunch.  After lunch it was time for our training session.  This included a four hour round trip hike to and from a glacier.  The glacier was neccesary because we needed to learn how to use our crampons and ice pick.  The hike itself was a test, mainly beacuse mountain climbing boots are not like hiking boots, there is no flexibility so walking is a very stiff and labourious ordeal.  Even after four hours in them, I was still not fully comfortable.  Then you add the crampons and things get a bit strange because you have to walk with your feet apart as not to trip up in the spikes.  Add an ice pick and then you stare up at an ice wall and think to yourself "that may be a bit steep, even with all these spiky things I have attached to me."  But, you climb it anyway, several times, and decend it several times.  Then the guide sends you to walk down an ice ridge, the fear of hieghts sets in and you forget to spred your legs while walking, you trip and almost fall.  Fun.

Heating up and drying cloths

After the training was over it was time to warm up by the fire at base camp, eat and dry cloths.  You see it was snowing the whole time that day.  At this point the guide is unsure of our ascent to high camp, but says we will make the attempt.  As for the summit, he does not want to put our lives in danger, so if it´s bad we will return to base camp.  Fair enough, we knew that going in.  The four hour trek had made us tired, add to that the practice session on the glacier and it was time to go to sleep.  Did I mention it was cold, Minnesota cold?  So sleep was a chilling experience, even in our sleeping bags.

We made it through the night to wake up to more fridgid tempuratures and heavy snows.  The guide was unsure of our attempt at high camp at this point.  We were to relax and wait until after lunch to make the move.  So we waited and waited some more.  The snow would lighten up a bit, but return to falling in bunches.  Finally the guide told us to get ready.  We had a four hour uphill hike to high camp, 5,300 m (17,388 ft) and we had to get there by nightfall.

Fearless (or stupid) friends at the start of the trek

Hiking a steep ridge

Snow is starting to get deep, and the climbs steeper

High camp

The trek began in the snow, but it began to taper off to a light flurry.  It was all uphill, straight uphill at points.  I guess when climbing a mountain uphill is the norm.  The snow was not to deep, and easily handled at the begining.  Once we passed the permanent snow line, it was thick.  The hiking became more labourous and steeper, but we pushed on.  Then a miracle, blue skies!!  Yes, the final push to high camp included beautiful blue skies, we were extatic!!  We made it to high camp in the alotted time, and had a chance to enjoy blue skies and beautiful panoramic views.

High camp was a bit small and rather cold.  Actually it was freezing once the sun went down.  But by then it we were already in our bags and trying to sleep.  At that altitude, it is hard to sleep.  You constantly wake up gasping for air, and then fall back asleep just to repeat the horrible cycle over and over again.

At midnight it was time to get up to attempt the summit.  Before we laid down to sleep we felt good about the summit, mostly because of the blue skies.  But when we awoke, disaster - full on blizard conditions.  We had a small breakfast and discussed the situaution.  The guide told us it was up to us, we could start and if it was absolutly terrible, we would turn back.  We, being stupidly fearless, agreed that the summit it was!

At 1 AM we began the six hour ascent.  The snow was blinding and visibilty was about 20 meters.  It was pitch black out, the wind was blowing like crazy and all I could see in front of me was the shadow of the guide in my headlamp.  We were roped together, me behind the guide and Julia bringing up the rear.  We were each about 10 meters apart, the rope helped us stay in line.  When we looked up, we were blinded by the snow, so keeping our heads down helped.

I have no idea how the guide knew where he was going because it was a sea of white.  This is a time in your life when one has to put all his faith in another´s hand and hope that the person knows what the hell he is doing.  Luckily, our guide had 14 years of experience on this mountain and others in Bolivia, so we felt good about it.  So we continued this way for about an hour, being blindly led up a mountain.

At this point he said that it seemed we were the only ones to make the attempt, but thought we could continue.  After a while he roped us in and said that in this area is where the crevaces began.  Instructions were as follows - "Keep the rope taught, if I fall, drop and get yourselves in the break position and wait for me to climb out"  reasuring, I know.  We plodded along, passing crevaces hundreds of feet deep.  You could see them ahead of us, like grey monsters splitting the snow, once we were on top of them my heart would race and the pace would pick up until we were all clear.  At one point we were surrounded by crevaces and had to turn back and find another route up the mountain.

The groups behind us

5,800 meters, time to turn back

Julia in the waist deep snow

Finally off the mountain, a bit frozen

We stopped for a breather, we were already behind schedule because of the insane weather conditions.  All of a sudden in the distance behind us we saw headlamps, there were three more groups behind us, following our trail that we were creating in the now knee deep snow.  We continued as the other groupd gained on us.  Apparently following someone else´s tracks is alot easier than trying to make your own path.

Eventually the groups caught up with us, we let then lead from here.  The next battle came at a ice wall atleast 100 feet high at an 80 degree angle.  The climb was a killer, the snow was so deep on the wall, it was hard to get the pick into a solid spot, let alone the crampons.  When we finally got to the top, no rest, we needed to continue.  We were way behind schedule at this point and the summit is still a way off.  We continued along the ridge for another hour, at this point it was about 6 AM.  The guide stopped and explained that the summit was not going to be reachable and we had to make a decison, continue or head back.  We were freezing, air was at a minimum and we were still in the midst of a blizzard.  We finally made a wise decision and headed back.  We made it to 5,800 m (19,029 ft), to us an incredible feat in such extreme conditions.  Later we found out that none of the groups made the summit.  The most experienced team, four French mountaineers, made it to 5,900 m (19,357 ft).  By that standard, we did great as inexperienced mountaineers!


So we began the long decent down, the weather seemed to worsen as the sun began to light up the mountain.  When we reached the bottom of the ice wall, Julia was standing in waist deep snow.  The wind was blowing steady at high speeds.  We were covered in ice, at one point my left nostril was iced shut.  We passed areas that looked like white darkness when we were climbing, now we could see the details of our attempted ascent.  The crevaces were bigger, the snow deeper and the the true steepness of the mountain stared us in the face.


We plugged along and finally reached high camp several hours later, only to have a quick snack and head to base camp.  The trail to base camp had vanished under three feet of snow and once again we were slowed by the snow.  We finally got off the mountain at 11 AM, ten hours after we began, completely spent!!

This seemed like a great idea at the time.  In retrospect is was the greatest idea I have ever had!  We didn´t make the summit, but we were faced with impossible conditions, and fought through them!  The feeling of making it to 5,800 meters was incredible, I could not imagine what it would have been to make it to the summit.  This won´t be my last mountain, I just hope I can find another person as strong and insane as Julia to do it with!!