Back from the Brink (by Lawrence)

I returned yesterday from a week in the city of Huaraz and its adjacent mountain range, the Cordillera Real.

Wow.

Both the city and the surrounding countryside are very, very different from Cusco and its environs. In 1970 Huaraz was reduced to a pile of rubble by an enormous earthquake that killed virtually everyone in the city. I'm sure that because of this in part, it has the feel of a frontier town -- blocky, squat buildings, built in haste, that have all the charm of a Siberian gulag, laid out in perpendicular streets. The neighborhoods and streets are so nondescript that I found it nearly impossible to tell one from another. I made a point of asking a cab driver who appeared to be my age if he remembered the quake.  "Yeah," he said, "I was working in a field across the valley with my grandmother, and we were the only members of our entire family to survive."  All I could mutter was "lo siento."

The trip from Cusco to Huaraz involved a plane to Lima, and then a bus through the night to Huaraz.  The buses in Peru take themselves pretty seriously, going so far as to call their bus stations "Tierra-Puertos" (earth-ports).  After showing my passport and getting groped with a metal detection wand I was shown to my seat where a stewardess attended to my needs.  There was even a video shown telling us how to operate our tray tables, seats, and emergency exits.  In a bold move the video informed us that yes, there was a bathroom, but only for urination -- if we had other needs we would need to speak to the stewardess so we could stop at a proper facility--most likely a boulder on the side of the road.  Sadly, the bus was populated with twenty or so teenagers on a school trip from Lima so not much sleeping occurred.  


I had a wonderful reunion with my long lost friend Eli Helmuth who runs his own mountain guiding service out of Estes Park, Colorado, climbinglife guides.  I also met one of Eli's proteges, Mike Arnold, and another client named Frank Nederhand (Frank was in Peru conducting experiments on air quality, snow and ice alkalinity, and weather patterns).  We spent the day figuring out food, shelter, climbing gear and how to recognize the signs of altitude related illnesses.  After an excellent Thai feast in Hauraz we went to bed, ready for a big day of hiking ahead.

The next morning we packed up the van and buckled ourselves in for the hour ride up to Pashpa, a tiny village about five miles (and 3000 feet) from our base camp in the Ishinca valley.

This is where we met our burros.  Let me just say that as someone who has backpacked thousands of days carrying my own load on my back, I really like burros a lot. 

We had to carry anything pointy that might injure the beasts of burden should they fall (ice axes, crampons), but all other items (preferably of considerable heft) were fair game for the poor creatures to carry.  And so it was with light packs that we headed across the meadows toward the soaring entrance to the Ishinca cirque.

The hiking was really pleasant.  The trail we were on was well maintained and at times contoured along canyon walls, ducked under dense trees fed by springs, and meandered through meadows littered with huge boulders (glacial erratics, left behind by receding ice).  My first view of the head of the valley, dominated by Tocllaraju, took my breath away even more than the altitude.

Tocllaraju

By the time we arrived at camp our cook, Joaquin, already had the kitchen tent set up and soup and tea ready for us.  Joaquin, a 58 year old Peruvian high altitude porter and cook, turned out to be  an enormous asset to our team and the entire experience.  This was one of his first stints in the mountains since July of this year when he had an accident.  While descending the extremely technical Alpamayo with an 80 pound pack on his back, the rappel anchor he was descending from failed and he fell 300 feet down a 70˚ ice slope.  He is lucky to be alive, but amazingly, he was not even seriously injured.

So Joaquin routinely made us enormous quantities of delicious food: steak, soups, quinoa, rice, eggs.  We all ate better on this trip than we do at home, and all this at 14,200 feet in a tent in the middle of the Andes!  Some of our ingredients were exceedingly fresh, (see below)...

Our first climbing objective was a mountain called Urus Este.  This is the easternmost peak of the Urus massif which defines the northern edge of the Ishinca Valley.  We packed the night before and woke up to cloudy skies at 4AM.  After an amazing hot breakfast of eggs and coffee we began the slow slog up a shallow ridge of glacial moraine that shot up 2000 feet from the valley floor.  Once we gained the start of the snow and glacier, we donned harnesses, crampons, and ice tools, tied into the rope, and began the real climbing.

Clouds trap heat between themselves and the ground, so the snow conditions after this cloudy night were softer than we had hoped.  There was a lot of post-holing and we had to be particularly careful around rocks and crevasses since the surface surrounding them wasn't supporting much weight.  We progressed without incident, traversing a slabby rib of granite, and then finding ourselves in a forest of three-foot-tall nieve penitente -- a dagger-like snow formation endemic to equatorial glaciers.

We had to ascend some loose granite slabs to get to the summit, and then we were there!  5430 meters (17,814 feet) above sea level.  I took this panorama of the view from the top.

The descent is often the most challenging part of a climb, and this proved to be the case for us.  Group travel on a rope is a very difficult type of climbing, requiring cooperation and communication over tricky terrain  after a hard climb up.  Add to this the fact that the snow is even softer in the afternoon and you've got a recipe for discord.  Needless to say, on the way down we all got a bit punchy.  I was sure not to congratulate anyone until we were off the snow -- I didn't want to jinx anything.  We arrived in camp with hot food and an amazing sunset waiting for us.

The next day was a "rest day,"  which meant we were just going rock climbing in preparation for a two day effort on or next objective,  the 6034 meter (19,796 foot) Tocllaraju.  There is a gorgeous cliff face 600 feet above the valley floor, and Eli accomplished his highest-ever on-sight climb at nearly 15,000 feet.  He said it was one of the best pitches of rock climbing he has ever done.  I made it through the crux, but didn't have the endurance to make it to the top.   I guess I'll have to come back to finish it someday.

Tocllaraju is a high enough peak that it warrants an advanced camp, at nearly 5000 meters to shorten the climb on summit day.  Eli and Mike ferried two big loads of gear to the the high camp later on the afternoon of our rest day while Frank and I actually rested.  The next day we all headed up to the high camp with the rest of our gear.  To save weight we only brought up one three person tent for the four of us.  We pitched it in a small flat spot among the broken rocks and talus. Eli leading a gorgeous rock route  with our route on Urus Este visible above, and our base camp below on the valley floor

High Camp on Tocllaraju

 We knew it would be tight in the tent, but not THAT tight.  I swear I heard people snoring, but when my alarm rang at 2AM, each of us claimed we had slept less than an hour.  I am sure that part of the difficulty was the altitude, but the cramped conditions didn't help either.

Eli was on top of getting us fed, and we were headed up the hill by around 3:30 with headlights blazing.  The snow on this glacier was wonderfully frozen giving us a much more solid surface to walk on.  The faceted flakes shone like diamonds as we walked up the steep slopes in the pre-dawn darkness.  

As the sun began to rise the enormous scale of Tocllaraju became apparent.  This is one really big mountain.  As the world continues to warm up, tropical glaciers like the ones on Tocllaraju are becoming more dynamic, more volatile, and more dangerous.  Safe routes through crevasse fields change from week to week and some of the cracks in the ice are huge.  Eli did a masterful job of guiding us through the labyrinth of seracs, snow bridges, and holes.  The temperature was around 12˚ Farenheit as we made our way up, away from the valley floor still cloaked in low clouds.

After our second break I began to feel kind of crappy.  Mike also was not feeling well and actually vomited up his breakfast.  I began to lose concentration and balance, and started to weave a bit. I still had enough sense to realize that it would be really bad if I lost my balance and fell.  I told Eli that I was not feeling well and might need to turn around.  He heard me, and we both agreed to try and see the end of the summit ridge before  making a decision.  With our ropes pulled tight Eli tip-toed his away around the corner to the east side of the ridge, where he found himself on a wall of loose rock and ice dropping thousands of feet below him.  As it turns out, the summit ridge was not easily surmountable, and I threw in the towel.  I couldn't go any further.  5650m (18,500 feet) was as high as I would get on this day. 

The walk down was stunning, but I was pretty disappointed that we weren't able to make it to the top.  We spied more nieve penitente on this glacier, although it was not nearly as tall as the penitente on Urus. 

I have been home now for two days and am just starting to get some energy back.   The high altitude environment took a lot out of me.  Krista reminded me that that the last time I climbed above 5000 meters in Bolivia in 1996 I said that I liked climbing, but I didn't like altitude.  I feel the same way after this trip, but I did find it a little bit easier this time.  If this pattern holds true I should be back up high again in 2021 when I am 57 years old (ha!).  One thing is for sure, this trip has gotten me excited to explore the mountains of my home state of Maine and its neighbor New Hampshire.  All the excitement of the high alpine environment and none of the oxygen deprivation of the Andes!

I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to travel through one of the most dramatic and dynamic mountain ranges in the world.  I am in deep gratitude to my darling Krista for giving me this opportunity, and also to Eli who didn't hesitate to invite me along and kept me safe throughout the journey.  Sophia and Isabel jumping into my arms upon my return further cemented the fact that I am a very lucky man indeed.