Tuesday, October 7, 2008

A College Try on Huascarán

I´m in Arequipa, Peru right now, after having spent a couple of weeks on the Peruvian coast in and North of Lima. I´m WAY behind in posting pics, but am trying to catch up.

Anyways, as my grand mountain finale in Huaraz, I attempted to climb Huascarán Sur, which at 6746 m (22132 ft), is Peru´s highest peak. Joining me on the climb were two very experienced and strong mountaineers I met in Huaraz (Andrew Stokes-Rees from Canada/Scotland and Assaf Gal from Israel). I have to give them huge credit for taking turns leading while on the glacier, and feel incredibly lucky to have been able to climb with people who were quite a few rungs higher than me on the climbing experience ladder.

The Huascarán climb was a pretty serious multi-day undertaking, requiring 3 different camps on the way to our high camp at 5900 m. As I have only been to 5950 m twice in my life (and not on this trip), even sleeping at 5900 m was a bit daunting. Also daunting was the weather in and around the Huascaráns, which had started to look pretty bad in the week before we attempted the climb. Well, nevertheless we decided to give it the old college try.

The long story short is that we didn´t quite make it to the summit, although we did make it to 6000 m. The climb was really beautiful, even though the weather was fairly crappy, with it snowing on and off while we were on the glacier. And for a mountain this popular during other times of the year, it was really spectacular to spend 4 days climbing and not see a single other climbing group! (okay, okay, so maybe thats testament to the fact that we shouldn´t have been attempting it in the first place...)

Hope you enjoy the pics!

PS. All of the albums I post here can be seen on my picasa webpage, or by clicking on the lower left corner of the screen before the slideshow starts.