Huayna Potosi - 32nd Highest Peak in the World

Day 1

Me and Elizabeth met at the tour office at 9 with all our gear and were quickly bundled into a prosession of taxi´s, stopping off for all the usual crap. Breaky for driver and guide, Meths, Coca leaves, ect. After an hour on a V bumpy road we ended up at low camp. Basically a half built building, a house we couldnt go into and a wierd looking sheep thing. So it was kit issue time and man, am I glad i brought lots of my own gear as both of the jackets had dodgy zips so i gave the best one to Liz and just used my own (it wasn´t really designed for this kind of thing but had to be the gentleman!!). We then set off for the glacier with 2 guides and 2 English lads. Spent the afternoon learning the finer points of ice climbing, cramponing, rappelling (abseiling for those who speak proper english) and other ice related activities. Pretty hard to haul yourself up 25m of ice wall at 4000m above sea level but we rose to the challenge. Had an early night and crashed out in the tents.

Day 2

Next morning it was up at 8 and hiking to the high camp by 9. Only took 3 hours as it is only 600m just to the edge of the snow line. Not much to do once we got their except get our kit sorted and hit the hay, My ipod doesn´t appear to work above 3000m for some wierd reason so no tunes for Chris!!

Day 3

The reason we all went to bed early is that we had to get up at 12:15am to have some coca tea a spot of breaky before starting the climb. It was lashing with snow and blowing a gail, something that was going to be a constant till we got to the top 1000m further up. So we donned our snow gear, crampons, ice axes and bergans and started the acsent. I was feeling pretty happy with the whole thing till we got to Camp Argentina where the first people started spewing and turning back. The nest section was 50m of almost vertical whiwhc almost killed us and this was the easy section. Very strange experience not being able to see anything except some snow that your head torch illuminates - quite otherworldy! The main part of the trek was me concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and making sure Liz was ok. Not too ardious...

However the last section of the peak was 200m slope at a constant 55 degree angle so you are basically ice climbing the whole way. Took us about an our to get up it as we had to stop every 10m or so our lungs and hearts didn´t explode!! But 10m from the top we broke through the clouds and summited in sunshine at 6088m above sea level. So got some savage picks of the dawn. Unfortunatly clouds on the other side weren´t being so helpful so no views of lake Titikaka. But the guide did say that that is about the worst conditions that they will let people climb in and out of the 9 people trying we were 2 of 5 so not a bad effort. The trek back down was fine apart from me bitching that whole way about wanting my snowboard!! Honestly virgin untouched snow, awesome slopes and prob only a handful of people in the world have ever ridden them! Would have been worth the extra effort to carry it!!

Got back to the high camp for some much needed rest and a good cup of tea before having to hike back down to the low camp to meet the transport. This was prob the most dangerous part of the whole trip as all the rocks were snow covered and our legs were not as stable as they had been 24 hours earlier!!

Anyway awesome experience and also one of the most physically challenging of my life. Will get the pics on bebo over next few days!

C