For the attempt to climb
Tocllaraju and Ishinca Dave used
www.enriqueexpeditiontours.com - the guides for the most part spoke
mainly Spanish with a few words of English. Spanish however was the
language used when climbing.
Francisco 30 years old and Julio 39 years old - both have been guiding
in the mountains for quite some time and are both very well experienced
in mountain climbing. Julio has summitted Huascaran (the tallest
mountain in Peru) 5 times and been on top of most of the other nearby
jagged Andean peaks. When they are not climbing many of the guides farm
during the non climbing season.
The best time for climbing is in drier season, usually June through
August. May tends to have very unpredictable weather, it can be wet one
minute and snowing and then clear the next. The snow tends to be deep at
the high elevations and can be more unpredictable climbing in these
conditions over snow covered glacial crevasse terrain. However, if you
do climb in May you will definitely *not* have the climbing crowds in
the mountains that you will have later in the climbing season.
In part the information about the following climb is described here:
www.enriqueexpeditiontours.com/ishinca_en.htm
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The Andes are massive mountains very similar to the Himalayas. the
foothills are huge incredible mounds of earth towering many thousands of
feet above the deep river canyons. Huaraz lies in one such canyon at 10,200 feet and many things
are grown here including apples,
peaches and pears.
Then towering above the Andes are the huge jagged snowcapped peaks some
which go well above 6000 meters in height.
The great Tocllaraju as seen from trail |
It takes about 90 minutes to travel from Huaraz to the trailhead, as
once you leave the main road about 25 minutes from Huaraz you climb up
into the Andes on a terrible rutted road. If this road is wet it
presents additional problems. This road will lead past mud and brick
homes, poor villages and will end in the small village of Collon where
you will meet your mules and aggriero's (mule runners). Collon is simply
a meeting or leaving point - there are several mud brick homes here -
some of the aggriero's live here.
The plan for the trek into the Ishinca Valley was to summit either
Tocllaraju or an easier lower climb of Ishinca. We started hiking in the
mid morning from Collon and later in the day the plan was to establish
Camp I at an elevation of around 14,800 feet. For the most part the
initial trail was well maintained - there were several areas where it
was good to have guides with us as the trail would stop and then you
would have to pick it up again on a different side of the river or other
geographic intrusion. It wound upwards through the high Andean open
foothills, past colorfully dressed women herding sheep. These women were
dressed from head to toe in bright reds, purples and yellows. They were
very reticent about having their photo taken - even from afar when you
raised a camera they would spot you and quickly dart behind a rock
outcropping.
Eventually the trail entered small forests just below 13,000 feet. It is
here that you normally have to pay $20 to enter the National Park - but
if you are climbing early enough in May the park entrance may be closed
and you can skip this fee. Its about 4-5 hours hiking from Collon to
Camp I. Camp I was located near a glacial milky very cold river. Across
from camp in the distance is a rock hut one of several scattered around
this part of the Andes - this was built by Italians and contains basic
food supplies as well as radio communication for emergencies.
Behind the camp is good rock climbing - in case of a 'down day' due to
bad weather higher up or in case someone has Soroche (altitude
sickness), or if you have an extra day. Good rappelling available on a
100 foot+ rock face.
Camp I is in the middle of grazing land and you may see cows crossing
the trail. If you do see cows you have to guard the food as they are
quite aggressive and will try to chew threw tents in order to get a
snack. I had terrible altitude sickness at Camp one. It is as bad as
being sea sick. You can't do much - very weak, throwing up occasionally
and when you lie down you may have nasty headaches. Please visit the
Altitude section in our Nepal article for more information on altitude
sickness.
While lying incapacitated in my tent some guy opens the tent flap and
says the cows are eating our food from the mess tent. Being in such bad
shape, this didn't register and I fell back down. After minutes or hours
I get up and crawl outside and see herd of cows tearing into food tent.
I then weakly crawl over and hiss feebly making a pathetic guttural
sound. They sense weakness and come back for more. I try to yell but
this comes out as an utter croak. I remove a shoe and toss it towards
them - they back away very slowly. I throw a rock. I crawl over towards
the food and lie down. They come near me but do not get the food. I
slump over a piece of wood until passerby's see me. One of them
grabs an ice ax and stabs one of the cows in the mouth as hard as he can
- blood spurts everywhere. I drift back to my tent and fall asleep.
Our guides no speak English only Spanish. Our team was attempting
Tocllaraju an incredible pyramidal shaped mountain that resembled to
some degree the Matter horn in Switzerland. This mountain stands over
6000 meters, nearly 20,000 feet. Because we were attempting the climb in
mid April we knew the odds were against as because of the sketchy
weather this time of year. Sure enough on day two a big storm came in
dumping lots of snow on the high peaks and raining on us most of the
day. We were forced to hunker down at camp I. April weather can change
in a minute - one minute its pouring or snowing and the next it is
bright blue sunshine. After this day we changed our plans and decided to
attempt Ishinca, a bit over 18,000 feet.
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The next day several of the team and one guide begin the climb up to
Ishinca leaving at 4 in the morning. This is about the latest you want
to leave from Camp I for Ishinca - especially this early in the climbing
season when their tends to be a lot of snow over the glacial
terrain - which later in the morning or day becomes very very
soft and is absolute agony trying to ascend or descend in
conditions such as that. A better start time would be a true
alpine departure of between 12am and 2am. I sleep in and feel
much better when I awake compared to the previous few days at
Camp I. |
This is how altitude sickness sometimes works - you
finally do acclimatize and start to feel better.
The guide and I leave on the trail to Ishinca at 8am - at this departure
hour we weren't serious about summiting but we were going to hike as
far as I felt like. As we hike the more and more weak I become - finally
we reach snow line and we rope up after donning the harness and grabbing
the ice ax. Once on the snow I seem to gain energy and inspiration and
we quickly climb higher and higher. About 3pm we are at about 17,000
feet which is about 1500 vertical feet from summit. We see the 3
climbers high above and over to the right near the cumbre (summit)
trying for the top. We are surprised that at this hour they are still
climbing higher. The scenery from this elevation is absolutely
stunning, reminiscent of the high Himalayas - mountain scenery that is
rarely duplicated on planet earth.
We are in deep snow, 1 step sinks you in 2 feet - terrible climbing
conditions. Our guide says lets go down and I say no problem as by this
time its getting quite tiring climbing in these deep snow conditions
without snow shoes. We are back in camp by 4:30 only 90 minutes
walking/jogging down!
We sit in camp and wait and wait and wait some more. Soon its 8pm. then
its 9pm. Our guide runs over to the stone Refugio building maintained by
Italians. He calls Huaraz as back up and we organize a Search & Rescue -
I am thinking very clearly at this point. We take all the necessary
cooking supplies food and warm clothing and prepare to sleep out if need
be. We move up trail at a fast pace, leaving Camp I at 10pm at end of a
brilliantly powerful rainstorm. The long hill that earlier took me 3
hours to climb now takes merely an hour. At 11:30pm we see a single
light weakly waving in the distance - throwing a speck of white into the
great darkness - it is quickly swallowed up as we
reach one of the switchbacks in the trail. After 10 minutes we come upon
one of the team members walking by himself. He is utterly exhausted to
the point of almost collapse. He is out of water, weak and quite wet. We
sit him down and change some of his clothing into dry ones and feed him
warm soup from the thermos. He speaks and tells us the other team
members are behind him but are moving extremely slowly as one of the
members has absolutely no energy. While we are sitting on the trail the
other 2 members creep down the trail and join us - everyone is now
accounted for, although not everyone is well. It is another 2 hours
before the last of us straggle into the camp. By this time its after 2am
and it has been well over 20 hours since the group originally left Camp
I. Upon arriving everyone falls into their tents utterly and completely
exhausted. |
