For months I had been dreaming of climbing Huayna Potosi . Firstly, because it was over the magical 6000m, and as Edmund Hillary of Everest fame once said, “because it is there”. We had chosen an agency called Refugio Huayna Potosi as it is run by Doctor Hugo Berrios Martin, who has not only been instrumental in training guides for the mountain (so he should know the mountain well), he is also versed in high altitude medicine, a skill I hoped we would not need to use. After 5 days acclimatizing in La Paz (3600m), I set off for the three day climb with an Aussie climber called Joel. We arrived at the first base (4700m - nearly as high as Mount Blanc) and trekked to a glacier at 5000m to train in the art of
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