Advertisement
Published: July 21st 2009
The first thing you notice when arriving in La Paz is the scarily busy streets filled with many markets and the constant sound of car horns. The most interesting market is the witches market which is filled with different potions, llama foetuses, jaguar skins and other more things used for different spells and sacrifices. Aswell as looking around the city we managed to fit in some activities too. Dave and some friends cycled down Death Road, which is known as the most dangerous road in the world. You begin at over 4000 meters high above La Paz then descend 3000 meters in 80km and end at Coroico. The road itself didnt feel that dangerous, it was however, the hundreds of cyclists flying down the hills on cheap bikes with bad breaks which made it scary. Everyone survived the jouney, the only mishap was our friend Josh going over his handlebars and getting a few scratches.
I instead spent the day preparing for what was about to come. After dave succeding in climbing Cotapaxi he decided to try another mountain, and I decided to join him. W decided to attempt Huayna Potosi a summit of 6088 meters just outside of La
Paz. We decided to do this in 3 days as it was reccommended to sleep an extra night at high altittude to adjust. We knew that not everyone who attempts it makes it to the top and this made me extremely nervous. We set off on the first day to 4800 meters where the first base camp is. We spent the day with our guide practicing ice climbing on the glaciers which was extremely difficult but great to try and Dave was in his element. It was useful to practice using ice gear on so i knew what to expect on the climb to the summit. It was difficult sleeping at such high altitude but plenty of coca tea helped. However, nothing could help how cold it was and having the ´toilet´located outside quite far away wasnt that plesant in the night either. On the second day we hiked to the snowline which although only taking a couple of hours, was difficult especially carrying all our ice climbing gear. The night we slept at the rock camp which is 5200 meters. Sleeping here made me realise there were levels of cold that I didnt even think existed. Even sleeping in
Ice Climbing
Cassie looking rather scaredabout 6 layers, 3 pairs of trousers and a balaclava didnt stop the pain. Our friend Josh came to meet us at the rock camp that day, who was doing the hike in 2 days. We went to bed at 6 that evening and after a few hours of not sleeping we got up at 1 am. We put on out ice gear and headed to the snowline; me, Dave and our guide were all roped together with harnases. The walk was so diffilcult and so cold and it didnt help that Dave felt really ill too. It took us 5 hours to get near the summit which was made even harder by our guide refusing to allow any breaks as its safer to get to the summit for sunrise before the ice melts to snow. 5 people including us set our that night and sadly in that 5 hours 2 people had to turn back. When we began to approach the summit there were 2 options, walk for a couple of hours along the ridge to the summit or ice climb 200 meters almost completely vertical. Before we began I had made my choice of walking the ridge. Unforntunatly
Huyana Potosi
Crying at the summit!!!!!!! due to lack of time we were left with only one option......so we got our ice axes and began the ice climb. The last section almost killed us and was by far the hardest thing we have ever done. But when we reached the top it was amazing. Unfortunatly we couldnt enjoy this for long as we had to get back down to rock camp before the ice began softening. The journey back was awful with no energy and no will left and was a really tough experience.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.108s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0617s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
