To the top of the world!

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Hello again. Nice to see you. How are you doing?

So, before I set off for my trip, I had a couple of goals. One of them was to become as close to fluent as possible in Spanish. Another was to climb a 6,000m mountain. The first one is coming along alright, and in the next few paragraphs you'll find out whether my attempt to achieve the other one was successful or not.

Day 1

I'd always earmarked Huayna Potosi as the one I was going to make my attempt on, as standing at 6,088m, it has a reputation as being one of the easiest 6,000m + mountains to climb. And that's how it came to be that myself, Hans, a Belgian that would be attempting the mountain with me, and our guide Nelson left La Paz for the base camp. We were told our guide had 17 years experience on the mountain, which left us a bit confused when he told us that he was 24. All was soon revealed though, when we found out his family actually lives at base camp.

After Nelson's mum cooked us a very nice lunch of chicken and chips, Nelson took us out onto the old glacier for us to practise with our crampons and ice axes. While not part of the actual climb, this was actually really fun, and probably left us in good stead for the actual day of ascent, otherwise we would have had our first go with them in pitch black. Following this, we returned to base camp, and after Nelson's mum cooked us another meal, we had a relaxing evening playing cards with a Japanese couple who were also going to be attempting the climb.

Day 2

We awoke this morning to find that the Japanese couple were to become the first victims of the altitude. The girl had had a really bad nights sleep, so they decided not to continue. Unperturbed, myself and Hans packed up our bags, and set off following Nelson to high camp.

The walk to high camp didn't take long, only about 2 hours at most, but was made difficult by the fact we were all carrying all of our equipment. It also didn't help that a lot of the ascent was over loose rocks, where it was very easy to loose your footing. I didn't take any tumbles though, and just after midday our work for the day was done. All that was left to do was to admire the amazing views from 5,130m, and mentally prepare ourselves for tomorrow. Gradually, other groups arrived, and it turned out there would be 6 of us attempting the summit tomorrow. After food and a couple of games of cards, bedtime was at the unsually early hour of 6:45pm.

Day 3

The reason for our early bedtime was that my alarm was set for 12:15am. Remember what I said about needing to get up early to do anything good around these parts? But it didn't really feel like we were about to do anything good as we all ate a very silent breakfast at 12:30. Groups then started to get ready and go, and fairly typically for me, myself and Hans were last out of the camp at 1:15am.

I'm not going to lie, I really enjoyed the first couple of hours of ascent. It was reasonably easy going, we were setting a good pace, and I remember thinking to myself that perhaps I should do this more often. We even managed to quite easily navigate the many holes in the snow that appeared here and there.

However, then we reached a narrow ice ridge. Nelson warned us beforehand that this was a tough bit, and boy he wasn't lying. Despite swinging as hard as we could, it was impossible to get a decent amount of the ice axe to stick in the ice, and therefore more often than not, rather than moving gracefully up the ridge, we were scrabbling, desperately trying to get a decent foothold, and being very grateful that we were all roped together.

Eventually we reached the top of the ridge, and here we met another couple who had set out before us. Sadly, the ridge had taken their last strength out of them, and shortly afterwards they turned back. Meanwhile, we plodded on, feeling a lot more tired by this point. Beforehand, we had been told just to take one bag between us, containing water, valuables and food, and until this point Hans had been carrying it. However, he was now struggling with it, so I took the reigns. Despite it being relatively light, at this altitude, and now feeling tired, it was too much for me aswell, so we decided to leave it in the snow. It was that or not be able to continue. So that's how my passport, money and ipod ended up unattended at about 5,600m.

Without the cargo, we got a new burst of energy, and were making better progress again (by this point Nelson was telling us we were too slow). Coming to the biggest hole in the snow we overtook another fellow climber, who was also unfortunately not to make the summit. To cross this particular hole, Nelson had to jump across, while myself and Hans held the rope. We literally had his life (and probably ours too) in our hands for a few seconds. All was fine though, and we pushed on.

Until that is, we met the one remaining climber apart from us, whose guide had stopped him about 200 vertical metres short of the summit. It turned out that his guide couldn't spot a safe path to continue, as the sun had come up and the snow was getting potentially dangerous. Luckily, Nelson´s 17 years of experience came to the rescue, and we took the lead. By this point, I was feeling absolutely shattered, but I'm a determined bugger, and there was no way I was going to get this close and fail.

And so it was, after 6 hours climbing, we scrabbled up the 45 degree rock face, and made the last few steps through deep powder snow, and stood (read collapsed) on the top of Huayna Potosi. The views were incredible, we could see La Paz, the rest of the Cordillera Real, and even as far as Lake Titicaca, some 50 miles away. Wow. We only had 5 minutes to enjoy this though, before we had to begin our descent.

It was on the descent that the real probems started for me. On the first spot where we could stop after the summit, altitude sickness suddenly hit me. Until that point, I'd been absolutely fine, but all of a sudden, I had a splitting headache, and just wanted to discharge the contents of my stomach onto the mountain. This meant we had to start to descend as quickly as possible, which wasn't easy, as the snow had started to melt, so the terrain was quite trecharous. I lost count of the number of times I ended up on my arse.

Coming back down from the summit to the high camp really was one of the most horrid 4 hours of my life. During these hours, any feelings I had at the start about really enjoying it and doing it again were definitely being looked upon as the thoughts of an idiot and a fool. Nelson saw us down safely though, and it was a very relieved Stewart that raided the supplies of paracetemol at high camp. This helped considerably, and by the time we set off back to base camp I was feeling absolutely fine again.

Upon reaching base camp, we were congratulated by Nelson and his family, before our pick-up arrived to return us to La Paz. Whereupon I promptly crashed straight into bed, only to be awoken a few hours later by Rob, Sam and Beth from Salkantay, who coincidentally were staying in the same room. After just one beer to celebrate todays achievement, I crashed out for good.

Climbing Huayna Potosi really was a huge effort, and despite the guidebooks all saying it's easy, it really isn't. Anything at that height is going to be tough. I'm so chuffed I made it to the top, and despite feeling like death warmed up on the way down, I'll remember it forever. And now I've had time to reflect on it, would I try and do another one sometime? Maybe... just maybe.

Stewart

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Photos

Huayna Potosi
There it is from a distance

Up the Town!
At the summit

Myself and Hans
Practising/posing on the old glacier

I know I'm sad
But someone saying they used the quadratic formula to climb a mountain made me laugh