Mounting Misti

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Misti was a bit of a challenge, but but I knocked her off.

The last 3 hours of walking was a bit of a strugle, when I suddenly developed a bit a stomach ache. Every few minutes I felt like I wanted to shoot something out from one end or the other, but could not work out which. So it was plod, plod, plod... stop, wait while my stomach calmed itself down....plod, plod,plod. I have never walked so slow in my life, but I made it to the top and forced a smile.

Misti is a 5829 meter volcano at the back of Arequipa. It´s fairly high, and we started out at 3200 meters and climbed up to the camp at 4700 meters the first day. I have passed the last 6 weeks without droping much below 3500 meters so I am fairly well aclimatised, so breathing was not much of a problem.

But, boy, is she steep. 5 hours walking up loose gravel with a backpack, followed by another 5 hours the next day. Basically 10 hours of nothing but up. It is a lot different than walking in NZ.

I walked up with two fullas from Spain and a guy and his girlfriend, both from Canada. The fullas from Spain are both Mountaineers, and the couple from Canada had just finished a 8000km cycle across Canada in 80 days, so I was with a pretty fit bunch.

The second day we left at 2am to arrive at 7am. There is no daylight saving here, so it is fairly light at around 4 o'clock, but the first few hours were obviously by torch light.

Anyway, we got to the top (I was about 5 minutes behind everyone else) slaped each other on the back and took photos before desending. Now the entire desent only took about an hour (excluding the stop to repack our tents) and consists of nothing but running full tilt down scree slopes. I hadn't done that since I was in Canada, so I rather enjoyed that part of it.

Mount Misti in it's self a fairly boring hike up. It has a crater, but other than that there are no great interesting features. It is the least techincal of the volcanos here, but not the easist (one is only 6 hours walk), and I think it would be better to climb one of the others than Mt Misti.

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Photos

climbing up
ont the first day

A well deserved
rest about 4 hours in to the climb

Our camp site
at 4700 metres.

The best tasting tea,
but then after 5 hours, I would have drunken water and rocks.

The top of mt Misti
complete with cross.

Walking the finner stuff
Looks somewhat like NZ

The reward for a successful ascent
Guinea Pig slowly cooked in Bread crumbs..but there is more meat in a Vegiterian sandwich