Ice Climbing

---

Huarez is located in the Peruvian Andes at 3200m, a great base for climbing the local mountains, including those experienced in "Touching the Void". The activity for the gang was to scale a 12m tall ice wall using crampons (spiky shoe addons), ice picks and natural skill! The ice wall was located at altitude of 5400m, the highest that the majority of people had ever been.

You can see the beautiful scenery that was experienced and certainly a change from the arid, blandness of the Peruvian west coast.

The ice climb itself was exhausting for all, physically very demanding, but exhilarating successful upon completing the ascent. Cheers and words of encouragement from below enabled people to push themselves further.

I was given some words of advice the day before arriving in South America by a good friend - on this day, at 5000m, that advice became very relevant. Sometimes, there are days, or moments, when it isn´t really much fun… well my body doesn’t enjoy being at such an altitude, and I suffered as a result of the lack of oxygen. It felt very much like being a goldfish, out of water, gasping for air. Consuming water, food was all difficult, and increased the starvation of air. The guide boiled some Coca tea for all to alleviate some of the effects of altitude, but for me the vacuum was too much, so I headed off early back to base camp, 1000m below early, to rest up and recover. By the time the rest of the gang got back, I was all good again…

---