In the morning, we enjoyed our “American breakfast” (continental + eggs, if I’m honest) and excitedly awaited our “4X4” transport that would take us to the trailhead. Kuba and I were pretty impressed when we saw the vehicle, and more so when we talked with our driver. A Nissan Patrol diesel with a Dakar rally support driver would do just fine, thanks. We thought it was probably a bit overkill, having considered driving ourselves up there in the Safari.
After a quick debrief and gear-up at the tour office where we picked up our guide, Ignacio, we loaded up and started climbing. But wait! One more thing before we head up…
From Arequipa at 2300m, we climbed almost continuously for 3 hours up to 4600m. This was not a road the Safari could have handled.
We made it in good time. All we had to do was get to base camp – a 2-3 hour hike up to 5300m, or an hour and a half if you’re “experienced”. While Kuba, Ewa and I had been at altitude for 10 days now, Nina had just recently joined us. Altogether, it took us a careful 3 hours of water chugging, breath catching walking to get there. We were lucky to have decent weather and avoided getting our gear wet.
When we arrived we were all tired and the cold at 5300m was enough to encourage us all to climb into bed as soon as dinner was done. Ignacio cooked up a great asparagus soup and noodles with tuna and tomato sauce. As darkness fell (early, with thick clouds moving in), we hunkered down and tried to get some rest before the ascent.
…. huh….. what? … no no, five more minutes…
So it turns out that you’re supposed to wake up early to summit a mountain. How early? Well for Chachani, we woke up at midnight. After some really poor slumbering, we rolled out of bed and donned our headlamps. Breakfast, of bread slices, butter and jam, along with coca tea to wake us up and aid with the altitude, was ready and waiting for us as Ignacio hurried us along.
Nina’s body just wasn’t having it. For more information about what happens to your body at 5300m, please read this. The rest of us nervously finished our breakfasts then readied our day packs with water, snacks, crampons and ice axes. We wore all of our layers to keep our bodies from cooling off in the bitter cold.
At 1:15am, we started to walk. After just 100 steps we hit the snow. Trudging through alternating snow, mud and rock, we climbed continuously. The hours ticked by. 2am, 3am, 4am. At 5800m it was time to strap the crampons on as the snowpack hardened and the grade steepened.
Already, our team was faltering. Weakened by a cruel combination of extreme altitude and lack of sleep, we slowed to a crawl. Switchbacking up the sheer snow faces, we felt every step.
My toes, squished by the crampon straps, felt like they might resemble freeze dried sausages neatly packed in Timberland boot wrappers, for sale in the local supermarket by the end of the day. We eagerly awaited the sunshine to thaw out our frozen extremities. The snow finally stopped shortly before first light which revealed just how far we still had to go…
On the “last” ridge, we stopped every few metres and it seemed like we might never make it.
With Ewa falling asleep at every turn and Kuba’s body unwillingly shutting down on him, we felt a sense of accomplishment reaching the top of the ridge. Only to have Ignacio point out the cross topping a hill in the distance. “Now we attack the summit.”
Kuba announced that his body would have no more of this. Ignacio disagreed. As Ewa and I set off for the peak, Ignacio employed some sort of voodoo alcohol vapour pick-me-up to get Kuba rolling again. “Nobody makes it to this point and doesn’t reach the summit,” he declared with finality.
There are two feelings in my life that I can recall that resembled the feeling I had this day of pushing the last 100 metres of vertical to the peak after hiking for 7 hours. The first was an old one, that I think my sister might share: the last 2 minutes of an elementary school area or regional cross-country running race, where you know there’s nothing else you need to save your energy for and you push it all out to get across the line. The other feeling was much more recent: escaping Copper Canyon on the final day of our adventure there. This day, I knew before even hitting the mountain that I would make the peak. And when I did, it was just like those other times where you’ve got nothing left. Except that I was at 6075m. And my friends made it too.
It’s hard to describe what it’s like to stand at over 20,000ft without a pressurized aluminum cabin surrounding you.
Ignacio had been saying all day: “this climb isn’t difficult, but it isn’t easy”. I can safely say that we are not to be qualified as experienced mountain climbers if that is the case. 6km up is 6km up. And this was one of the hardest things we’d ever done.
Now, how do we get down? My energy stores were sapped getting up there, Kuba had already been ruined for hours, while Ewa was awake but just barely. That’s when Ignacio explained that instead of following our uphill route back down, we’d just go straight down to base camp. In style…
This would have been tons of fun on any other day, but we were toast. You might notice Kuba passed out in the video above. He admits he was dreaming of eating Nutella smeared on a warm, fresh baguette, served on a silver platter on a beach somewhere far away from here.
We finally made it down to base camp and passed out. When we were woken up 45 minutes later, our heads were pounding in the very worst way. It was only 11am, and already we’d done too much today. But the day wasn’t over. We had to get back down to be picked up at 1pm to return to Arequipa.
We packed up, walked down, and made it out. It was sort of surreal to be back in town so soon after such insanity. A nice dinner out followed by a long, wonderful sleep capped it all off.
Amazing! Gives me shivers of awesome (not cold) – so funny to see that black bag with the canada flag, its been through a lot. I’ve been reading about the value of ‘ordeal’ lately – amazing to come through that together.
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