Last night was the last night we spent together as the full Bolivia ’08 GAP group, so needless to say, we were a little tired in the morning. After our flight to La Paz, none of us had much energy and it took almost the rest of the day to have lunch (for all we know, it might have only taken about 15 minutes, but we were a little slow). The rest of the day I spent getting ready for my trip I mentioned I booked last week; climbing Huayna Potosí.
Huayna Potosí is one of the large mountains around La Paz, and is viewed as one of the easier climbs in Bolivia where they claim people who are fit can do the climb. At 6,088m it passes the “magical” 6,000m mark, but is sadly 26 feet short of the equally magical 20,000 feet mark. At this altitude, they recommend that you take at least two days to climb, and if you have never done anything like this or worked on glacial ice and cliffs, spend another day training. When I booked, no one told me about the cliffs, so when I said I was from Canada, they didn’t figure I needed any training on how to walk on ice….I didn’t argue.
Before I left for base camp, I had to get a bit of equipment in La Paz. The company I signed up with, Travel Tracks, supplied most of the equipment including crampons, parka, warm hats, mittens and winter pants. The one thing they didn’t have were boots for me. As I have explained many times over, nothing is built for me in this country. I tried on at least 20 pairs of boots in two different rental shops before I found something that fit me. Even then they were quite snug. As I sat in a chair they kept looking along the shelves pulling off boots they though might be larger than what the chart said was the largest pair in the store. Each time, they didn’t fit. It wasn’t until someone suggested we just try on the insoles, to speed the process along, that we figured out the largest pair of boots didn’t fit me because someone had switched the insoles on us. Once they were put back together I had no problems at all and was ready to go.
After a farewell dinner with those who flew with me to La Paz to end the trip, I got into bed quite early to make sure I was fully rested for my upcoming climb. I had to depart at 9:00 in the morning from the Travel Tracks office and took a taxi to the trail head where I would start my climb at Paso Zongo (4,700m). At the trail head I was supposed to meet up with the girls that would participate on the climb with me, but sadly one girl in the group was forced to return to La Paz due to altitude sickness and the others had gone ahead. Once we all got squared away, Pasqual (the cook), Fritz (my guide) and I headed on our way up Huayna Potosí.
The beginning of the walk was very simple and not too strenuous, but it wasn’t what I pictured a hike through the mountains would be, especially since we started with a quick trip across a dam and then walked on top of a pipeline before turning off to the actual trail. From that point onwards it was practically straight up. As this mountain is considered an easy hike, it didn’t take too much effort on my part for the first part of the climb and we caught up to the girls in our group very quickly. Before we met up with the girls, Pasqual kept informing me that they were a couple of beautiful women and I would really enjoy climbing with them. Once we met up with them (keep in mind the girls didn’t speak Spanish, and Pasqual and Fritz only spoke Spanish) he was very quick to find out if I thought they were beautiful as well. From that point on, Pasqual and I had bonded and the topic of conversations only went downhill from there, but it was enough to keep my mind off of this mountain that seamed to only get larger as I walked onwards.
Before we stopped for lunch, we hit the first wall of our hike. There were two options to get past this wall, one that they told me about, and the other I didn’t find out about until I reached the top of the wall. With my walking poles on my wrists, my massive 25kg backpack on my back (I had to carry all my winter clothes, safety gear and boots for my final climb tomorrow) I had to scale a vertical wall with minimal foot and hand holds. There was nothing like climbing up a rock face without any safety lines with the weight of my backpack trying to pull me off the cliff. I defiantly harassed Pasqual and Fritz a lot when I got to the top and noticed that the black rocks had been warn brown from the traffic of the main trail, the one that everyone else appeared to climb on their way up the mountain, or at least the one that everyone passed us on the trail used.
After a quick lunch, we headed off for the final hour of the climb up to Campamento Rocas (5,200m….about the same altitude as Everest Base Camp), the refuge where we were to spend the night, and the base camp for the climb to the top. The last part of the climb up to the refugio was a very easy climb and didn’t take more than an hour. The rest of the day and evening was spent lounging around and chatting with the other climbers. The two groups that stood out among the rest (about 10 climbers in total, along with their support staff) was a couple from Colorado who were there to climb their fifth mountain of their trip to Bolivia, and a man from Denmark who was practicing on Huayna Potosí before he brought a group of tourists from Europe to climb later in the summer (he also had climbed Kilimanjaro four times and was probably the most experienced climber on the mountain…aside from the guides that would climb Huayna Potosí twice a week).
After an afternoon of socializing, we headed off to bed around 6:00 as I had to get up extremely early in the morning to start my climb at 2. As it was going to be cold that evening (they figured it would get down to 25 below before the wind chill) I piled everything I was going to wear into my sleeping bag to keep it warm for when I put it on in the morning. It wasn’t until I got up at 1:30 to get ready for my climb that I realized that I didn’t put my iPod or headlamp in my sleeping bag, and the extreme cold zapped all the energy out of the batteries so I had neither my iPod to entertain me, or my headlamp to guide me for the night time climb. Luckily there was a full moon out that night so I didn’t have to worry about the headlamp guiding my way, but the lack of iPod meant I would be singing the same song over and over again in my head (because of the altitude, the air is so thin that you can get out of breath simply by talking, let alone walking…so an iPod was recommended to entertain me for the 8 hour climb ahead of me).
Needless to say, without my light or music, I put on all my clothes (practically everything I owned and rented from Travel Tracks including two hats to make sure I was warm enough) and headed out to the glacier to put on my crampons and begin my hike. Over breakfast I talked to Pasqual and Fritz about the climb ahead and they both were convinced that I would make it to the top since I had no problem with the hike the day before. All I would have to do is take my time and I’d be there in time for the sunrise. So off Fritz and I headed at an extremely slow pace (for sea level) and started the climb.
The first incline was one of the steeper parts of the climb and we made it up that with very little problem (and passed the girls who left an hour ahead of me on this incline). What made it easier, and helped me set my pace and stride, was the fact that it was such a well traveled trail so there were footsteps already in the snow that I used to help control my assent. My experience was a very unique one in comparison to everyone else as I did everything by the moonlight, which cast an eerie glow over the snow and mountains around, which I had to stop and gaze upon a couple times an hour (or at least that’s the excuse I used for why I stopped to take a break to catch my breath from the lack of oxygen).
The path we followed went up from the refugio and curved to the right around crevasses before turning back towards the summit as you wove your way between two peaks to reach Campo Argentino (5,500m), which we arrived at 1.5 hours into the climb. Campo Argentino is a plateau at the base of the final peak from where we were able to catch a glimpse of La Paz in the distance, a glowing oasis about 25km off in the distance. Also at this point we were also able to make out all the other climbers on the hill, which were easy to spot by the glow of their headlamps. The walk around Campo Argentino took about one hour before we reached the point where we would step over the edge to start our climb of the Polish Ridge. Up until that point I had no worries about my abilities reaching the top, but once I looked at this ridge all I could think was “Oh Dear God” as when you looked down you knew it was steep enough that if you fell, you would tumble all the way to the Amazon jungle before you stopped tumbling. It was also at this time I started to feel a headache from the altitude.
The climb up the Polish Ridge was a fairly dangerous one and took a lot longer than you would expect when looking at it. Because the air was getting quite thin I was forced to stop every 10 steps, not because I was tired, but because I was out of breath. The interesting thing was that once you stopped it only took you a few seconds to catch your breath because you weren’t tired because the climb was hard, it was because you couldn’t get enough oxygen to keep your muscles moving. After about an hour and a half I finally made it to the top of Polish Ridge and entered a level part that was a welcome break to the constant step upwards. It wasn’t until I reached the next incline that I began to falter. When I started the last 300m of the climb I hit a brick wall and started to feel sever stomach pain and headache. Felix was extremely supportive and felt that if I could work through it I would make it to the top, but after trying to climb further three times I decided that 5,760m was my point to turn around. Even though I didn’t make it to the top of Huayna Potosí I was extremely proud of what I had accomplished and how far I had made it, especially since I had crossed the 5,000m mark I had set before I came down to South America, and was only 300m from the top of the mountain….an incredible accomplishment.
The descent was much faster than the climb up, but it was much harder for me because of the stomach pains I was feeling just got worse as I went down (I now think that it wasn’t the altitude that gave me the problems, but over exertion that stopped my climb since altitude sickness improves as you descend, and mine only got worse). I was extremely tired and weak as I made my way back to the refugio and had to take more breaks as every step was painful. By the time I reached the hut I made my way upstairs to crumple in my sleeping bag and hopefully sleep it off, but with no luck. I was abruptly awoken when I had to quickly run outside because the nausea got to be too much. It was at that time that everyone told me that no matter what I had to get lower because the altitude sickness would just get worse until I got to lower ground.
Surprisingly, the descent from base camp to the trail head was the hardest part of my climb. The sickness only got worse as I went down and I had to stop every few minutes to gather the energy to carry on. It wasn’t until I reached the trail head and was getting into the taxi that I began to feel better, but that was mostly because I finally decided to eat some food, and as soon as the juice hit my stomach I started to feel better, but unfortunately I wasn’t myself by the time I made it to La Paz and decided to just stay in my hotel room for the evening (except for a quick run out to get some food) and sleep.
The next morning marked my last day in La Paz, which was actually a very good thing since I hurt my knee on Huayna Potosí and everything in La Paz is up and down. So most of my day was spent buying all the textile souviners I had been looking at over the past couple of months and visiting the Coca Museum. This museum is a one of a kind museum that looks at the history of the coca leaves and cocaine, but puts a very positive, pro-coca spin on the entire drug war and promoted all the benefits of the coca leaf and cocaine. Throughout the day I made my last visits to all the restaurants and coffee shops I got to know in La Paz before heading to my hotel for the early morning departure to Arequipa the next day.
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