To read parts I and II, scroll down or click the following links
Day IV - Saturday, June 18, 2011
Today began when I woke up at 9:30pm last night (Friday) and looked outside the tent. To my and Roger´s combined amazement, the clouds had disappeared, and we were left with a perfectly clear night sky. Roger said we´d sleep for another hour and get ready to go around 10:30pm. I lay back down in the tent, but was now too excited to sleep. Our summit bid was officially on!
At 10:30pm, we got up and packed our gear that we´d need for the climb - crampons, ice axes, rope, belays, and a bit of food and water for the 11 to 13 hour journey. We were hoping to make the summit around sunrise (6:00 to 7:00am) and would then need a few hours to descend, so I figured we´d be back by 10:00am or noon the next morning.
I had a cup of coffee and some bread and manjar and snacked on mani con pasas - raisins and peanuts - until we were ready to go. Finally, around 11:15pm, we set out from campo moreno into the night.
The glacier is a bit spooky at night
The moon was so bright that we barely needed our headlamps. We started off hheading across a rocky ridge and up to the base of the glacier. When we arrived at the snow line, we stopped to put on crampons and rope up. We took a slightly roundabout route onto the glacier to avoid some precariously balanced rocks. Looking down at my feet, I could see through holes in the snow that we were walking on, this was not solid snow, but a thin layer covering who knows what. This was the first of many such harrowing moments of the day.
We were then on the real path, marked by the foot prints of our predessors and tiny orange flags every once in a while, making it quite easy to follow. We arrived at high camp around 1:15am, where we were supposed to have started our bid. Shortly after passing campo alto , we arrived at our first paredcita - little cliff. It was simiar in grade and length to the 4 or 5m paredcita we had encountered on Vallunaraju. I got out my second piolet -technical ice ax - and slowly and carefully pulled myself up the first of many paredes - cliffs - for the day. It was much easier than I´d expected; the crampons and axes do a great job of catching the hard ice and snow, so it´s a lot easier than rock climbing, where you constantly need to be gripping with your fingers.
Up to that point, the snow had been prefect and compact. Walking along it with grampons, you may as well have been walking on a concrete sidewalk in normal shoes. Moreover, whn climbing, the axes and crampon points sunk right in and held like glue. It was great and made the going quick, simple, and easy.
About a half hour after passing campo alto, we reached the col - a shoulder on the ridge between Chopi and Huascaran. From here, we would follow Chopi´s ridge up to the summit. I had stopped looking at my watch, but I´d guess it was about 1:45am as we arrived at the col.
As we turned left and began our climb up to the ridge toward Chopi - and excuse my language - shit started to get real. The perfect, hard-packed snow which had been so kind to us suddenly disappeared. If that snow had been like walking on a sidewalk, the snow we encountered on the col was akin to walking through sand. Knee deep sand. Roger led the way up the slope along the ridge and our pace slowed to a crawl. Instead of simply walking up the faces, Roger was forced to kick out foot holds in the powder every step. By the time I got there, 10m of rope later, the holes were often partly filled in by the blowing powder, so I would have to kick new holes myself. But praise where it´s due - Roger was doing the lion´s share of the work.
We slogged through the hills for hours. Roger explained, as I had surmized, that all the cloud cover we had seen had dumped fresh, powdery snow on the slopes. At times, the powder was over our knees; those must have been seriously wet storms. Still, I figured at some point we would get above the cloud line and there wouldn´t be any of this fresh powder to deal with. At least that´s what I hoped...
The climbing itself was quite tiring. Even though it was only walkably steep slopes at that point, climbing through the powder sapped energy like no other. At one point, I was working hard enough that I was only wearing a shirt and my outermost shell, despite it being quite cold at well over 5000m. We were still a long way away.
Eventually, we came to a particularly steep section - not just walkable - and Roger said to me, ¨I´m going to climb up this whole rope´s length. When the rope runs out, pull three times to let me know, and then you follow.¨ I built an anchor at the bottom of the face to belay him up the cliff and watched him climb agonizingly slowly up the face. I watched the pile or rope next to me and tried to urge it to go out faster, Roger already long out of site. It took 15 minutes or so before the rope ran out, by which time I had started to really chill off. I was impatient and ready to start moving again.
The cliff was actually much better for climbing than the hills. The face was steep enough that not as much powder had stuck, leaving the harder snow still accessible underneath. I made my way up in a solid rhythm. Hammer, hammer, kick, kick. Carefully checking all my holds, I made my way up, paranoid that an ax would come free with all the loose snow and I´d go tumbling down the face.
It was good fun - exhilirating and new, tough work, but it didn´t feel like the slog of pushing through a meter of powder. From that point on, we climbed one at a time: first Roger would lead climb up to the end of the rope and then build an anchor and belay me up. It was slow going and I had a lot of trouble staying warm during my belay rounds, with some slopes being quite steep and difficult and requiring 15 or 20 minutes to make our way up the rope´s length. As we climbed higher, the powder didn´t seem to disappear as I had expected. Each traverse section seeemed to take forever as we would both plod through the deep, unrelenting snow.
I was optimistic, though, because the sky was brightening, which meant it must be after 5:00am. I figured we had an hour or maybe two more until the summit. I can handle that, I thought, I know that.
After maybe four or five rope lengths, we came to a long traverse which led to a deep bowl. We walked aroudn the edge, but Roger turned back, saying that there was no where to get up the steep cliff that rose above us and we would have to back-track. I figured the summit was just one or two rope lengths from the top of the cliff and we must be quite close by now. Getting up would prove to be challenging, though.
From our traverse, we could make out footprints up the cliff, but a crevasse had split the path and made it impossible to follow. It took us nearly an hour to find and prepare a route through a section of very powdery snow up to what would be the crux of the climb. Roger led the way as usual. The route started with an overhanging ledge, seemingly made of powder and very difficult to get a solid hold in. Above this rose an 8 or 10m vertical ice cliff. I watched him climb up the ice which then curved upwards and disappeared out of sight.
Roger ascending the steep snow slope after the vertical ice cliff
As I watched him climb and disappear over the ledge, all I could think was There´s no way I can do that! I watched the rope continue up the cliff face until finally there was none left. I pulled three times to signal he was out of rope and I was about to set off.
At this point, it had been over an hour since I had done anything physical and I was freezing. While I´d belayed Roger up the cliff, I had tried singing to myself and dancing to try to keep my blood moving, but I just couldn´t generate enough heat. I had lost all feeling in my toes, even with trying to stomp and jump as much as I could. Despite being terriffied of the ice cliff and the unkonwn that lay out of site above it, I was happy to get moving again.
Anchored in and looking down the steep slope. The ice cliff is behind the nubbin in the middle of the photo
I behan walking slowly across the powdery ledge until I rached the over-hang. I threw my arms up and gripped into the ice as high as I could with both axes. After make sure the holds were super-solid, I lifted both feet off the snow and, as quickly as I could, brought my feet up to about chest height where I sunk my points into the wall. I hung like a monkey for a second until I could balance myself and push my weight onto my toes. Finally, I was standing normally on my points and I could breathe a sign of relief. The hardest part - just getting onto the cliff face - was over.
Once on the wall, the going was actually not as bad as I had expected. It was a bit scarier than the 70 degree snow slopes, but the ice was hard and so my holds were all very solid. I just kept throwing my axes into the ice above and kicking my toes into the wall. It´s not much different from climbing a ladder, I told myself, except that there was a 1000m mountain face below.
I expected the cliff to level off quickly onto the summit ridge, but was surprised to find a very steep snow slope continuing up for another 70m or so. I was actually more nervous on this part, despite it being less than vertical, because the snow was softer than the ice cliff and so my holds were not as certain. I tried not to think and just keep climbing.
After what seemed like much more than one rope length, I finally saw Roger belaying me from his anchor on the steep slope above me. As I reached him and clipped into the anchor, I realized I had been so focused on the climb, I´d forgotten about how cold I was. As I settled down to belay Roger up the rest of the face, the cold came back and I again tried to shake myself warm. I could see a high point that looked like it might be just two ropes lengths away, though, so I told myself I could hang on for that long.
As I made my way up the ridge, though, the point I had thought was the summit turned out to be a cumbre falso - false peak. My heart sank as the huge summit towered over us by at least 100m; it looked like at least another hour´s climb, maybe more, and I had thought we were just minutes away. The summit was a giant corniced ridge, which reminded me of a big icy Pride Rock (from the Lion King). At this point, it was close to 9am and we´d been climbing for almost 10 hours. I tried not to think about how many more ropes or how much longer it was going to take and just focus on staying in a rhythm.
Roger standing on a ridge below the ¨Pride Rock¨-esque summit
The snow was deep and powdery on the summit ridge and each rope length took longer than the previous one. It seemed like the summit wasn´t getting any closer. By the time we got to the edge of the summit, the sun had finally come around to our side of the peak, which at least made the belaying more tolerable.
I was slumped on the edge of a sharp ridge where a short, steep cliff led up to the summit approach. I thought - not for the first time that morning - that we might have one or two more ropes left, but I didn´t want to get my hopes up. After Roger headed up and disappeared above me, the rope started going up much faster. I hoped against hope that this meant he was on the summit and was just pulling up the slack. I pulled three times on the rope when it was out and began to scale the final paredcita.
Looking down as I began to climb, I let out an audible obscenity; the entire back face of the mountain lay sprawled out thousands of feet below me. Used the adrenaline to push myself up the cliff to the final, powdery, steep slope of the climb.
The powder was thick enough that I really had to hack my way through . I´d been climbing for almost 12 hours now and as well over 20,000´ up. The exhaustion and altitude were taking a serious toll on me, so much so that I didn´t think I had another rope´s length in me after this one. Just as I set this ultimatum, I saw Roger above me, pulling the rope in and smiling. I got up off my hands a feet and ran up the last couple of meters to the summit and collapsed.
At my highest point ever with two feet on the ground
Roger gave me a big hug - very un-Peruvian of him. We had a special, serious bond that went beyond Latino machismo after such an unexpectedly long climb. It was just about 11:15am as we stood on the summit; it had taken us almost exactly 12 hours just to ascend. From my experience, I knew that descent usually took at least 50% of the ascent time, which meant we had at least six more hours before we would be safely back at camp. We had some snacks with us, but were dangerously underprepared for such a long day and had to ration appropriately.
Roger posing on the summit
As exhausted as we both were, we took a while to enjoy the 20,817´ summit and the amazing views it provided. Some clouds had rolled in from the jungle to the easy, but Huascaran was still visible looming above us and dozens of other peaks were poking up around us. It was quite something. After about a half hour of relaxing and resting, we began to head down. Neither of us talked about how long it was going to take; we both already knew.
A brief video taken from the summit by an exhausted, but happy, climber
And with that, we began a long, slow descent from the summit. The going was nearly as slow as the ascent. Roger would lower me first, I would build an anchor and then belay him down. It took us a while to get into a rhythm, though, with the first few pitches taking seemingly forever. At least now it was warmer - all we had to worry about now was keeping our energy up despite limited food with us.
Descending the steep powdery faces was tough and took a huge amoutn of physical and mental effort. Every second required attention, a kind of focus that I wasn´t used to. On Vallunaraju and the climbs I had done in Ecuador, I had been able to just walk down the slopes, snapping photos and enjoying the view. On these slopes, however, I was either descending, myself, which required enormous concentration or I was belaying Roger, which required just as much focus, as his life was literally in my hands.
Descending the steep, powdery slopes was physically and mentally draining
We eventually got into a good rhythm and the descent seemed to go much quicker. The majority of slopes we were able to back down like a ladder. We only needed to rapel a few times - a bit terrifying, but fun.
Wer arrived back at the col between 4:00 and 5:00pm. I had been looking forward to this landmark for some time, remembering how much better the snow had been between here and camp. Unfortunately, the midday sun had heated the snow and made it wet and slushy. This different, but still jodido - very annoying - snow, proved not to be much better than the powder on the ridge. We slipped and slid on our culos most of the way to campo alto, where a group of climbers were preparing for their own summit bid. There were a lot of tents, yet only four or five climbers. They were decked out with some serious lujos - luxuries: porters to carry their gear, multiple guides, and cooks. I felt a bit jalous then, but at the same time, I felt like our climb had been a bigger accomplishment because of our independence and the simplicity of our operation.
Roger heading down into the clouds
From campo alto, back to campo moreno, we had to descend a few hundred meters through a crevasse filled glacier field. I was so exhausted at his point from 18 hours on the glacier that I really had to slap myself to stay focused and not fall into a grieta - crevasse. Worse, we had just run out of snacks on the col, so I tried not to just think about the hot ramen we would have once back at camp. I ended up taking the couple of steeper sections mostly on my culo; I was just to tired to carve out steps.
Finally, we came to the edge of the glacier and carefully made our way back over the rock field to camp. I never thought I could be so excited by the thought of canned tuna, ramen, an instant mashed potatoes. By the time we got back to our yellow tent and finally took off our packs and breathed a sigh of releif, it was after 6:00pm; we´d been on the go for almost 19 hours.
We sat down and immediately began refueling. Mani con pasas was the first and simplest thing to go down. We then cooked up some hot dinner and savored every bite of our instant mashed potatoes. I don´t think it had ever tasted so good to anyone.
A clear day back at campo moreno
Roger said that the snow above the cole along with the alternate route we had to find up to the summit ridge had at leaste doubled our travel time. With ideal conditions, he thought we would be well ahead of schedule, on the summit before sunrise, at least judging by our pace up to campo alto. He said that this had been one of the most strenuous clibms of Chopi he´d ever undertaken. Most parties would have been turned back long before the summit ridge.
For me, this was one of the more demanding physical and mental undertakings of my life. Pushing myself to continue working and stay incredibly focused, all while in a state of serious exhaustion was a feeling I´m not entirely used to. I am used to pushing myself through extreme physical exhaustion as a runner, but usually I´m able to simply ¨zone out¨and let my body and instincts take over. Here, I was forced to stay ¨in the moment¨and focus on every single step and every anchor. The exhaustion seemed that much more extreme because I couldn´t leave my body and ignore it. I had to stick with it for 19 hours.
Overall, though, this climb was a great success for me. I tackled a higher and much more technically demanding mountain than I had ever before. More importantly, I was able to push myself to a new type of limit of what my body can withstand. Testing and pushing my limits is a huge part of why I go go into the mountains at all. The nice views don´t hurt as well!
Representing Tufts University Cross Country at 20,817 feet
To see more photos from this climb and Vallunaraju:
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