climbing Nevado Chachani

---

After one day of rest from climbing El Misti, i set about climbing chachani, which is a 6080 meter (thats 19,800 feet) peak with three other people and a guide. three additional participants got severe altitude sickness at the base camp (5400 meters) and had to go back down before the summit attempt. this was the highest elevation i´ve ever attained and it was some pretty slow going with some pretty thin air up there. several parts of the top required crampons and ice axe for stability for rather lengthy sections and on the return trip one of my crampons came off my foot, having shaken loose one of the two screws that held them together. lucky for me it happened within a couple hundred feet of the end of the glacier so i make it back without crampons (when one goes bad, its easier and more balanced to just to remove them both).
Of the four plus guide that summited, two were spaniards who fairly flew up that mountain...might have had something to do with the fact that they were 20 and 22.
When i got back i went to use some travelers checks and found that they all were missing. i phoned american express and was informed that they all (2300 dollars) had been cashed four days prior and was i sure that I hadn´t cashed them and just forgotten.
needless to say i hadn´t and was told that a refund would be four weeks in the future after the checks had been examined for possible fraud (that would have been me). somewhat dazed, i said okay and hung up to examine my alternative courses of action. the next day i phoned them back and went from one supervisor to the next over the course of an hour and finally got them to agree to send me $200 and the rest to wait for the four weeks. what a nightmare, after all those carl malden commericials promising refunds within 24 hours...apparently such timelines only apply if the checks haven´t been cashed. well duh, what else is going to happen to them if they are stolen?
thus stands the saga of travelers check security.

---

Photos

5,200 meters up chachani
the start fo the climb toward base camp

see that saddle in the center
we came around that saddle and climbed to the point where the photo was taken from enroute to peak

thats chachani in the very top left
the last part of the ascent to peak was not over glacier, but it was pretty cold

that´s me on top
departed basecamp at 3 a.m. and arrived summit 9 thirty a.m. spent a whole fifteen minutes on top before starting down again. thats El Misti in the background