Huayna Potosi

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Climbing Huayna Potosi

After acclimatizing in Condoriri for five days and then resting in La Paz for two, we were ready for a new mountain. This time breaking the 6000 meter border. Huyana Potosi is probably the most touristy mountain in Bolivia, popular because of the altitude of 6088 meters and the easy access. But the mountain can present some interesting and serious routes beside the normal route that most people uses. The West face is about 1000 meters high and contain several routes, and the east face have a route that Hilde and I decided to go for; "Via Los Frances". A 300 meter snow face.

The most of the agencies in La Paz offer the mountain as a two day trip, which is pretty crazy when you know that most of the people are not experienced or well acclimatized. We decided to use the same amount of days, driving from La Paz and walking up to camp La Roca the first day. The next day we went for the summit and walked back down to the pick up point driving back to La Paz.

We all set off 2 am for the summit, Hilde and I struggling a little bit to find the path to the climb in the dark. But a helpful guide doing the normal route did the job. He was screaming directions from above : )
We started climbing around 6 am after almost an hour in the bivy bag resting and waiting for the sun, when our estimate of the approach time was a bit to much...
The climb took us three ours in a beautiful scenery and good snow conditions, and we reached the summit ridge at 9 am. After downclimbing the backside for about 60 meters, we headed for the ridge of Huayna Potosi. 12 of clock we reached the summit ten hours after leaving the camp. Defenitely not a speed ascent since the guidebook suggested to climb the route in 4 hours, or 38 minutes! But we had a great day anyway.
Bjoern, Torbjoern and Eirin summited by the normal route at 8, and were back in camp long before us.

Our first 6000 meter on this trip was done and we could celebrate with steaks and wine in La Paz.

The next mountain is going to be Illimani, the iconic mountain ruling in the horizon of La Paz!

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