Watch Your Step

Yanapaccha, as seen looking up its glacier

The following morning, Honza and I embarked upon a multi-part quest to get to Yanapaccha. After our morning breakfast of oatmeal, we hoisted our backpacks and hiked into the center of town to get a collectivo to Yungay. The ride was packed as usual and our driver was playing a game where he tried to hit every bump and pothole in the road.

Meanwhile, Honza struck up a conversation with a couple of climbers. They were both Hungarian, but had lived most of their lives in Venezuela--not a combination you hear about every day. Since they were going to climb Chopicalqui, which was along the way for us, we decided to split a taxi with them in Yungay.

Yungay is famous because of The Great Earthquake, which struck the Ancash region in the seventies. According to Wikipedia, the disaster killed half of the people living in Huarez and destroyed 90% of the buildings. Yungay fared even worse. Situated beneath the slopes of Huascarán, it was right in the path of a gigantic mudslide that came down the mountain and buried the town entirely. Except for a few hundred survivors, all of the 20,000 living in the town perished under the onslaught of ice and mud. The scale of destruction wrought by the earthquake, both around Huarez and elsewhere in the region made it the most deadly earthquake in Latin American history--until the earthquake in Haiti this year.

Yungay, has since been rebuilt entirely, only a couple of miles from where the old town once stood. Because Peru's government has declared the site to be a memorial, the buildings and inhabitants remain buried where they were at the time of the disaster.

Our taxi ride got interesting fast as our driver began a steep ascent on the bumpy dirt road, climbing past farms and mudbrick buildings. We passed the site where Yungay used to be where there was a large Jesus statue, like the one in Cuzco (or Rio de Janeiro), standing over the site in commemoration of the dead. Huascarán loomed above us like a pillar of white, stabbing into the dark blue sky.

The driver was extremely slow and thus an exception to the Peruvian drivers that I had encountered thus far. When we came to some very tight, narrow curves, he would blow the horn as a preventive measure in case there happened to be another vehicle barreling down in the other direction. Another habit, which got old fast, was his tendency to spit out the window, an act that he repeated every two minutes.

After we had gained perhaps two thousand feet of elevation, we came to the entrance of Huascarán National Park, where all visitors have to pay 85 soles for a 10-day pass. The Venezuelan/Hungarians had paid for theirs eight days ago, so they lied to the officials and said that they were doing a two-day trip to Pisco and got out of paying an additional fee for their three-day excursion. For my part, I couldn't let them know Honza was my guide; he didn't have the proper certification and could have landed in trouble.

Back in the taxi, the road leveled out and we entered a canyon flanked by 500 foot walls of battered rock. We emerged from the canyon after about two miles and came into a vast, open area. Suddenly, I could see all the mountains in the valley. Huascarán is king here, but the other mountains are impressive in their own right and many exceed 5,000 meters. Even Pisco, which never seems to get any respect, looked like an impossible wall of monstrous white. The road went by two lakes that were an enticing shade of turquoise, reminiscent of the Caribbean. These waters were in fact glacial runoff, so they were probably ice-cold.

Honza and the other climbers talked about how the alpine maps from ten years ago were hopelessly inaccurate now because the glaciers had shrunk so drastically. That couldn't be because of global warming though--there were probably just layoffs at the ice factory or something.

Myself at the trailhead, with Huascarán in the background

High-altitude lunch. The lakes I mentioned earlier are visible far below.

The hike in. You can see Yanapaccha's Glacier up above.

The car began climbing again soon after the lake, up an endless series of switchbacks. After an hour of climbing, even the high-altitude lakes were thousands of feet below. When Honza and I got out, and started along the trail, we were already at almost 15,000 feet of elevation. The net climb I was about to do would only be about three-thousand feet. In other words, it would be less than climbing New Hampshire's Mount Washington from Joe Dodge Lodge.

This does seem a bit like cheating and I can't pretend that it wouldn't have been more badass to have started in Yungay--or maybe the Pacific Ocean at zero feet. Then again, starting at a high altitude, maybe already more than halfway up, is pretty much the norm in mountaineering. The summit of the mountain I was about to climb was still 2,000 feet lower than Everest Base Camp. Really, Everest is only a 10,000 foot climb--but what a 10,000 feet!

It is also true that the real mountain features, namely the glacier, don't begin until high-elevation, so if that's the only part of the climb you're interested in, you might as well take a road to that point when it's available. My head-start got me to the mountain's true challenge. Getting to the summit from here was going to be no cakewalk.

Honza and I hiked the trail for a couple minutes until we found a good spot where we could sit for lunch. We had some bread and avocado and then moved on. All around were spectacular views of Pisco, Chopicalqui and of course the mighty Huascaron, which loomed up behind us. About halfway into our hike, I got my first view of Yanapaccha, a little shorter than some of the other beasts on the scene, but impressive. A great glacier spilled down from the top to where it terminated a short distance above where we stood. At its bottom, the ice ended in a confused riot of seracs--thirty foot blocks that leaned drunkenly in different directions.

The trail was rugged going under our heavy packs. Still, I felt pretty high-energy and was doing a lot better under the lower oxygen than I had dared to hope earlier. The time that I had spent in high-elevation towns like Cuzco, Abancay and Ayacucho had evidently paid off in allowing me to acclimatize.

Despite some tricky terrain along our hike to camp, it was not incredibly hard, and we shaved half an hour off the two hours that Honza had anticipated we would need. We pitched tent alongside a high-altitude pond, where we would have a water source, as well as good shelter from the rocky walls that surrounded it.

One of the mountain agencies had done everyone a favor and dug a toilet about a thousand feet from the water source. Far from a mere pit in the ground, this lavatory had an elevated "bowl" built up from local rocks. Utilizing the facility required the initial unpleasantness of putting bare ass on cold stone. Following this however, I enjoyed the most scenic bowel movement of my career.

We got everything prepped in camp, and then put our plastic boots one and left for the glacier so that I could learn some climbing basics before our ascent. To get there, we had to climb over the rubble of the moraine, boulders that the glacier had scraped off the mountain. It was no small feat to negotiate the uneven terrain while wearing clunky boots and keeping crampons and ice axe in hand.

Our tent at base camp

A scenic shitter

We stopped at a large flat boulder at the glacier's edge and put our crampons on. Here, the ice left pools of melt-water we needed to step around, and formed a steep white slope that went up for about fifty feet until it got to the top of the glacier. Beyond this, the surface extended almost to the top of the mountain, a treacherous road, beset with crevasses and steep cliffs. An ordinary hiking boot would have been hopeless on the slippery surface. With the crampons however, I could get a firm grip into the ice, and kick my way up. I also had the axes which I could use on steeper slopes, to get firm, trustworthy holds that would support my weight.

I would have additional security in that Honza and I would be using snow pickets and ice-screws. These devices allow the lead climber to create solid holds to which he can attach ropes as a precaution against falls going up, or else for belaying down. Since Honza planned to lead most of the way, I would have the responsibility of removing his screws and pickets as we went and then attaching them to a caribiner on my harness.

The most basic safety precaution that we had was the rope we would keep attached between us. Two weeks before, an American had been on a guided tour up Yanapaccha and hadn't been roped to his guide. He fell into a crevasse to his death. Whoops. Presumably, if I fell anywhere along the way, Honza would have the time to perform an arrest with an ice axe and stop the fall. Of course, the rope meant that if Honza wen't down, I would have to perform the same duty or else be dragged after him into whatever crack he dropped into.

After showing me some of the basics, which admittedly, I needed to practice and would practice more before I tried any other mountain, Honza said we needed to get back to camp in order to do our cooking and have time to get to sleep early.

Approaching Yanapaccha's Glacier

The moraine at the glacier's edge

The Crampon Grip

At this moment, I suffered a severe attack of idiocy and stepped over onto a thin layer of ice, which, unfortunately, stood over a deep pool of water. The ice gave out immediately, dropping me in up to my knees. I thrashed out as right away, but it was already too late; the boots were soaked.

"So you are finished for tomorrow eh?" Honza said.

This was the absolute last thing I wanted to here, especially because I knew that I had just done this to myself. To compensate for the realization that I had been utterly stupid, my ego flashed into complete denial mode. It didn't matter that the boots were wet, that it was getting cold and dark, that people die ignoring basic shit like this. I was going to get the boots dried, and we were climbing tomorrow.

Back at camp, I took out the wet liners and began stuffing my boots with extra clothing, the T-shirt that I'd worn hiking in, almost all the toilet paper that I'd brought with me. I put the whole mess near the feeble heat of the cook stove and prayed that everything would work out exactly the way it was supposed to.

The thing was that it worked--mostly. After we'd eaten dinner and I'd spent two hours desperately replacing clothes and toilet paper, I ran my finger along the inside of the boots and liners, into their toes. Everything felt pretty dry, maybe a little moisture left over, but no big deal right? Obviously, there was no chance that I'd try to rationalize my way into thinking that I'd fixed something that was still bad.

Honza however, still felt dampness and told me that I was almost guaranteed to get frostbitten If I were stupid enough to try the mountain the next morning. It was far from what I wanted to hear, but I went with it. I decided that we could delay the hike a day and give the boots some more time to dry in the sun. Unfortunately, we couldn't start the hike in the afternoon because, during the heat of the day, the ice softens and starts to build up on crampons in addition to becoming unreliable and unsafe. We would simply have to move the entire plan up 24 hours and begin our night climb at 1:00 the next morning.

Despite being pissed at myself and the circumstances, I began to try to make the best of it in my mind. This was not one of those situations where, we had a narrow window in between storms or other unfavorable conditions. The Andean weather was guaranteed to be sunny and beautiful until the end of the dry winter season. Meanwhile, Honza and I could practice some more technique the next day.

Perhaps I was just as inexperienced as my American predecessor that had fallen into the crevasse. Still, I was glad that my misstep had resulted in only a lost day, and that we weren't going to let it become something far worse.

Let's Climb a Mountain!

It was around six in the morning when the bus pulled into Huarez. I got a taxi to Joe's Place, a hostel that the guidebook said was a popular haunt for experienced climbers and guides. I figured that it would be a good spot for me to pick up advice about which mountains in the Cordillera Blanca were good, what kind of challenges I could expect, and information as to where I could pick up a reliable guide. While I did not have much experience climbing on ice, I also didn't want to do a mountain that was too easy. The mountain I was looking for definitely had to require crampons and ice-axes, and had to be something that most people wouldn't be able to do. I didn't want to come home to America and ask myself, "What if."

Joe's Place had multistory dormitories and a courtyard for tenters. The outside staircases and patios it the feeling of a large treehouse. Joe's wife Vicki put me in one of the bunk rooms. Inside, a dreadlocked fellow wearing glasses was already up and moving about. His name was Honza, yet another one of those permanent European wanderers, he was born in the Czech Republic and been everywhere from Japan to Canada and Ireland. He had spent six months in the last country as a guest worker in Oughterard, County Galway. This was only twenty miles from where I had spent my term abroad two years before, and I had even stopped in that town to go off hiking in the mountains of Connemarra.

More relevant to my current mission, he had lived at Joe's Place since April and since then had done nothing but climb mountains in the Cordillera Blanca. In addition to climbing dozens of local mountains that were above 5,000 and 6,000 meters, he had climbed Huascaron, the tallest mountain in Peru which stands at 6,768 meters or 22,205 feet. Honza showed me pictures from his latest exploits on the hostel computer.

Pisco, which he had been up a month ago, was one of the most popular mountains for inexperienced climbers as it required few technical skills. "A hike on crampons," he said dismissively. Despite Honza's disdain, the pictures of the ascent up the glacier and the shots of the surrounding Andes at the summit were striking and looked more wild than any mountain I had climbed. Then he showed me the pictures of Yanapaccha, a shorter mountain, but one that he had more respect for because it required technical climbing: crampons, ropes and ice-axes to get up the face of the glacier. He had guided a couple there a week before and considered it a worthy challenge. I still wanted to consider a few other mountains and look at the guides in town, but I asked if he would be available to guide if I chose to go up it. He told me he would be willing to go back and guide me up the mountain if I paid for his services. It was a steep price, but he said that I could save some money if I found a partner who was interested in climbing with me and would split costs. Meanwhile, I would go into town and check out some of the other tour options.

Huarez is a pleasant enough city; it resembles Cuzco in that it is approximately the same elevation and also fosters a good amount of tourism. Several alabaster peaks rear up around the town in all their jagged splendor.

The breed of tourist that comes to Huarez is slightly different than the Cuzco variety in that he is more likely to be someone interested in serious climbing and trekking. Thus, the area around the main street and the Plaza de Armas is clustered with guiding and equipment rental agencies that supply foreigners with the resources they need to claim an Andean summit. Treks offer an option for those who are interested in putzing around high altitude trails with heavy backpacks or mules.

I walked around to a couple of tour agencies to see if I could join any planned expeditions. Many of these went up to Pisco or to Vallunaraju which is an even easier peak. I was nervous that the climbs I was finding were not supposed to go until a few days in advance, cutting into the amount of time that I'd have to get back to Lima. I had a bordering-on-irrational fear of missing my flight. Because mountain climbs were unpredictable variables, I didn't want to push my luck with getting home.

After wandering a while amongst the various agencies and randomly asking climbers I saw on the street if they wanted to join an expedition, I began to think about taking Honza's offer and whether I was willing to do this as just the two of us. If anything this would cut down on the risk of screwups--if somebody else went who didn't have experience, he might not be up to it, forcing us to bail on the expedition, and losing me an opportunity to climb. On the other hand, most of the climbers in town were more experienced than I was, so it was far more likely that I would be the weak link.

Back at the hostel, I ended up to talking to Eric, a South African who, like Honza, had done a lot of climbing in the area. He was another Pisco hater.

"Its just a walk, not a climb" he told me and was more enthusiastic when I told him I was thinking about Yanapaccha.

"You'll just feel better when you get to the top, knowing that you climbed something real." He agreed that it would be challenging, but thought that I could do it.

At this point, I had figured that I could afford the time it would take to do an expedition up Pisco or Vallunaraju. Moreover, it would have been far cheaper to do it with group rates. But dammit, I did want a real mountain. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone. Sure my experience with ice axes and crampons was slight and experience using ropes and harnesses close to nill. Truthfully, I didn't exactly relish great heights. But then, I was able to function when I went up and down the broken ladder near Machu Picchu. Maybe a little fear was allowed. The serious possibility of failure was necessary for success to mean something.

With these high minded values bouncing around my brain, I went over to the computer room where Honza was working and told him that I could pay him and that we would do it tomorrow.

Motivation seminar cheese aside, there was a lot of basic preparation to do and I had started late. It was about six at night. I would make some pasta and lentils for myself to eat and then Honza and I could get food supplies in town and also rent the stuff that I needed to make a climb.

We set out for a gear rental place in town where I got some of the the badass mountain climbing stuff that I needed. This included crampons to dig into the ice, hard and heavy plastic boots with insulation, twin ice axes, waterproof pants as well as gaiters to keep ice and snow out of the boots. I also got a sleeping bag and mat. Honza already had a tent we could use, so we were fine there. Back at the hostel, Honza loaned me his climbing harness, gloves and thermal underwear. I was already had the rest of the clothes that I needed such as my heavy mittens, parka, fleeces and tech shirts.

We brought food for three to four days, though if things went according to our ideal plan, we would be able to finish in two. With the food included on top of everything else, we had amassed ourselves a heavy payload we would have to haul into camp. I spent a good part of the night wrestling all the necessary crap into my rucksack and tying it together. All together, it probably came to close to forty pounds.

According to plans, we would leave around midmorning, get to the trailhead around noon and then take a two hour hike to the base of the mountain. After practicing some climbing technique on the glacier, we would get to sleep early and set an alarm to wake us up at 1:00am to hike the mountain by headlamp. We would be able to summit by early morning and get back to camp by noon. If all went as planned.