Huayna Potossi….I know! Lets climb to 6088 feet.

We had previously met a “guy on a baot”, the travellers equivalent of that fat bloke down the pub for up-to-date relevant hot-off-the-presses information who regaled fantastic stories of climbing this huge, insane, cold and treacherous mountain near La Paz called Huayna Potosi. Not ones to baulk on a challenge Amanda and I decided there and then to look into it and possibly climb the thing ourselves. It wasn’t important to us that this guy we met had been in training for six months before he flew out to Bolivia specifically to tackle this rock. Irrelevant was the fact that in La Paz, at the ridiculously high altitude of over 3000 metres aslo we were having serious difficulty climbing the three flights of stairs to our bedroom. When we meet somebody who seems to have done something cool anywhere within 100 km of where we’re going we’ll go that extra mile to see what it’s like for ourselves.

Negotiating with the locals.

So, stepping carefully around suspicious puddles, holding our noses at the witches stalls, sometimes holding our breakfast in as we passed the foetal llamas and stuffed armadillos and fluffy cats, rictus snarls frozen on their little faces forever, we braved the streets to find a guide to take us up the mountain. The “guy on the boat” recommended warmly the agency he’d booked through so we went there first. They seemed professional enough, knew more about scaling big lumps of stone than I did and most importantly, were completely Bolivian owned (we both shy away from booking things like this through agencies owned by some European ex-pats, it keeps the money we brought to South America with the South Americans, those who need it most at the end of the day). After observing “best practice” and looking at what a couple more places had to offer we decided to go with the first one. At the end of the day, the most important factor when deciding who to go through is a good recommendation. It served us well in almost every other country we’d been to, the travellers jungle drums are very useful sometimes. It was a bit pricey, over $100 each, but for a three day climb with guide up a big scary mountain we thought it would be worth it. Besides, always the cautious travellers, we arranged to pay a deposit before the climb, then the rest later as long as we both decided to continue from base camp. Amanda wasn’t positive she wanted to put herself through it all and certainly wasn’t going to pay the whole thing before she or indeed her body made up their mind.

Not too scary an image!

Braving Bolivain stores for the three day treck ahead.

The shopping list we came away from the office with gave us some inclination of what we would be facing over the next few days: Thermal fleece trousers, alpaca gloves, two thermal jackets (to wear one on top of the other) a four season keep-you-warm-on-Pluto sleeping bag, thermal socks, thermal hat, thermal face protection and our own body weight in chocolate were among the items we were sent off to buy. After wandering around the market for a while we managed to get most of this stuff La Paz caters for all things, all at low-low prices for the less that discerning climber. As long as what we’d bought waited till after we’d climbed back down before unthreading itself we’d be happy. Thermal trousers were a problem, till Amanda found a tailor with bolt of fleece material who knocked off two pairs in a couple of hours for less that a fiver each. The remainder of the equipment that we couldn’t find, or weren’t prepared to buy (the sleeping bag and myriad fleece jackets for instance) we managed to talk the agency owner into lending us) Fully armed and confident we’d need all the gear we’d bought if not up the mountain, then when we got to the salt flats of Uyuni where the temperature drops to minus 20 degrees at night, we struggled back to our hotel, weighed down by all the chocolate we’d bought, to get a decent nights sleep before the big day dawned.

The following morning, up bright and early we stored our bags with the nice people at our hotel and headed out into the unknown. In the minibus that would take us to the mountain we met our two climbing companions, a fellow Englishman called Chris, and a Dutch guy called Niels, both seasoned climbers and fit as racehorses. We clearly had no real idea of what we were getting ourselves into. We stopped for half an hour at the agencies store room to try on waterproof over trousers and jackets, plastic arctic boots and crampons, ice axes and other strange bits of kit you only ever see sported by Edmund Hillary and similar crazy rich guys with too much money and suicidal tendencies. This was serious stuff we were being loaded up with, proper climbing gear. I once went climbing in Wales near Trefrew, halfway up Triffin we passed a lady in high heels and jaguar print leggings, this was going to be nothing like that.

We drove out of the huge bowl in which La Paz nestles in its mountain setting, over the rim and out towards the untamed Andes with no few butterflies in our stomachs. Luckily we’d been travelling at altitude for a number of weeks, coming as we had from Titicaca straight into Bolivia. The main pre-requisite needed to get accepted into a climbing group is that you are acclimatised to the altitude. If you are foolish enough to fly in straight from the coast and think you can get up to the top immediately you put your life in major jeopardy. Altitude alone such as this has killed quite a few unprepared idiots, as well as a number of people who took all the right precautions as well. Not something to take lightly. Still, as we drove through the mountains it became harder and harder to feel anything but awe as we sat in the back of our bus, noses glued to the windows, staring at the unbelievable vista we had the privilege of witnessing. All around us rose huge, immutable mountain peaks, their white tops disappearing in the morning mist, their slopes plummeting down to wide ice-carved flat valleys, brown with hardy vegetation, spotted with herds of llama, alpaca and vicuna. Occasionally a lake would come into view, half covered with thick, blue ice, what water was visible shimmered steel grey in the weak sunlight, reflecting the stone in the pit of all our stomachs when we began to contemplate that soon, we’d be out in this, climbing higher to even colder weather, even rougher terrain.

Soon we rounded a sharp curve to be confronted by Huayna Potosi herself (she has to be female so difficult is she to tame). Standing a little apart from her peers like a queen, haughty and immense. Her peak looked impossibly high from where we were sat in our tiny, insignificant van. Suffice to say, our ride did nothing at all to ease our worries about the mountain. Amanda was all doubt about whether or not she would be able to get anywhere near the second camp half way up, let alone the top. We fell to a quiet introspection after a while, each pondering to ourselves how we would fare on our own personal mountains.

It will be a pleasure....surely?

Eventually we pulled up outside the “refuge”, an old fashion wooden hut built for climbers, quite advanced in that it sported a couple of dorms, a kitchen and a common room, warm raging fire and running water (that never ever worked as the pipes were continually frozen, suffice to say, this was bad for the toilet).

After a bowl of soup big enough to make even Amanda’s mum admit we’d had enough we donned all our climbing kit, packed our crampons into our rucksacks and hefted our ice picks. Before dark we were due to go out onto the mountain for the first time, a trial run to test our equipment and to test ourselves. Before we tackled the real thing our guide needed to know if we would prove to be a danger to ourselves and our groups, or if we were just not cut out for climbing mountains at all. Amanda, terrified more of the cold than the invisible pitfalls and Yeti’s put on so many layers of thermals, fleeces, jumpers, all her socks and THREE pairs of gloves that she looked like the stay-puffed marshmallow man as she wobbled to the door. Our guide just looked at her with an amused “tourists!” expression on his face as she tried to fit through the door.

Ready steady...

We trekked out of the refuge along thin mountain tracks, barely visible through the snow and ice, climbing over huge boulders as we went. Our faces were pounded by near vertical snowfall and an incessant wind that, at first cut right through every layer of clothing we had stuffed on. Soon, though our bodies heated up with the physical effort, Amanda started shedding layers like snakeskin, my bag, then hers getting fatter and fatter as we climbed higher. Continuing up gentle slopes through the snow we realised what the real killer was on this mountain, altitude. Lower down either of us could have raced along the route we were taking that afternoon barely breathing hard, at 4000 metres above sea level every step was a mission; every breath was a struggle to fill your lungs with oxygen that just wasn’t there. Our guide showed us all how to walk without killing ourselves, taking each painfully slow step with confidence before breathing and taking the next. When you create a rhythm you half the speed you’re travelling and step… step… step… step… each footfall landing surely on the piece of rock you aimed for. A misstep or trip costs valuable energy. Basically our walk was a calculating, precise series of slow, deliberate footsteps designed not to exhaust us before we’d gotten halfway.

"I'm too hot !"

Broken Equipment.

Eventually we got used to the rhythm and found our own pace. Amanda shed enough layers to stop melting the ice around her and we inched our way to that days destination, a sprawling glacier, almost invisible in the surrounding blinding white landscape till you stop, confronted by a silent wall of ice towering above our heads. We all stopped for a breather and unpacked our crampons and ice axes for the real test of the day, the ice climb. I got my own crampons on, and then helped Amanda. Niels had to get our guide to help as his shoes were too big to get his on. As it turned out, the rushed five minutes we’d spent earlier gathering all our essential, potentially life-saving gear together had been a little too rushed. Amanda’s boots proved to be too big and kept threatening to come off as she dug her iron shod shoes into the ice, Niels picked crampons too small then didn’t try them on, we had to root around for more string to tie them on properly as he’d previously snapped what he was provided with. Still, this was Bolivia, what did we expect.

Climbing the Glacier...just a test you see.

We were eventually ready for the test about an hour after we’d stopped, Trying to force down our growing misgivings about the quality of the equipment we’d been supplied with we started to climb in the way we’d been shown how. The guide taught us how to ascent and, more importantly how to react when you fall, after a couple of hours climbing up the face of the glacier we were all expert. Amanda proved to quite a mountain goat happily pounding away with her axe and hauling herself up, inch by inch, though her boots really were a good two sizes too big, they kept coming off, her many layers of socks wrinkled around the balls of her feet. Not a good sign for the real thing tomorrow.

Taking so long to get kitted up for the ice climbing had lost us lots of time on this little pre-climb tester trek. As we turned our backs on the glacier and started to head back to the refuge the sun was already sinking below the rocky horizon. By the time we were half way there our spirits were high, having successfully completed our first challenge, but it was well into the night. Walking in the dark through snowy mountain passes when you have no idea which direction you are going in is no fun though. The temperature fell dramatically and our only lifeline was our guide, quietly pacing ahead. Breathless, all we could do was sink into our own thoughts, focusing blindly on our next footstep, lost in thoughts of the next days climb and our ability to complete it.

What ever Rocks your boat!

That night, after as much soup and stew as we could handle, we sat around the hearth with the other, much more seasoned climbers holed up in the hut, and talked of the places they’d been to before this. Many had been all over the world, there was a group from France, climbers from Switzerland, England and Italy, all craning their necks to see how best to tackle this new mountain. It was quite interesting sitting on the edge of this climber culture, a part of it but apart from it at the same time. This wasn’t our hobby or great passion; we were, as with so many things out here, just tourists, along for the ride for as long as we got a thrill until moving on to the next thing. Our travels resembled a big bag of Woollies pick’n’mix. For now we were just dipping our toes in the climbing pond, testing the water and maybe having a swim. Both of us knew we weren’t really in with the climbing crowd, just as we weren’t really yachties in Panama or spelunkers in Guatemala. Still, it was good to be a part of all those worlds for a little while, see how the other half live, maybe try out for ourselves what makes them tick. We lay out our gear to dry on our bunks and unpacked our inch-thick sleeping bags. Tomorrow we would head up to the second camp, little more than a shed clinging to the mountain, after that... who knows. Amanda still hadn’t decided whether she was up for the next day. She’d coped well with the first test but in doing so proved that they’d given her the wrong sized boots and dodgy crampons, possibly the most important piece of equipment we would take with us. She prepared as if she was going anyway and decided to sleep on it, maybe the morning would bring all the answers we’d need.

Braving the climb....it is possible.

The sun rose cold and aloof before we’d shaken ourselves out of bed. I was the first up, before even the minimal staff that mans this crazy outpost. Stepping over bodies I made myself a cup of coffee and sat for a while before waking the others out of their dreams. After breakfast Amanda tried on our guides boots… they fit perfectly, clearly that was a sign, she decided to put all her fears behind and come. So, we packed as much chocolate as we could into our bags, Amanda managed to stop at five layers of clothes and left. This time we were behind a different guide, Felix, who clearly had no patience with people who couldn’t go as fast up the mountain as he did. Within an hour he’d disappeared round the last corner with Chris and Niels panting behind, desperately trying to keep up, leaving Amanda and I alone on the path just out of sight of the refuge across the valley we’d just traversed. This had the obvious effect of bringing all Amanda’s doubts and fears right back to the surface. Alternately she decided she couldn’t do it, then that she could and would… we spent another hour on that short stretch of mountain path on our own deciding what she was going to do till our original guide ambled round the bend on his own and made the whole thing much worse.

Essentially he decided as we’d been waiting around here for so long and as Amanda still wasn’t sure she was up to it, that she couldn’t come. Just bloody perfect! I was all ready to jack it all in there and then, this climbing malarky had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. Amanda insisted that I carry on with the guide while she made her way back to the refuge alone. Reluctantly I consented and carried on while she descended, in tears, alone after screaming at the guide and refusing any help, back to the starting line. Not good.

Going it alone.

I will admit now, the climb up to the midway shelter was hard. Definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. After we reached the edge of the path we climbed along the spine of a huge ridge, up and up for hours. The walk the previous day that had so knackered us all was a stroll in the park on a sunny day compared to this. Every step emptied my lungs, every breath felt like my last. Eventually I focused on the footsteps of my guide and concentrated on putting my feet inside them one at a time, crunching snow when I didn’t get it exactly right. I can’t remember when, but I looked up after hours of incessant plodding I was faced with a white campsite some hundred metres away, tents barely visible in five foot drifts of snow. A little above this was our refuge, a circular tin wall with a conical roof, concrete floor and nothing else. To the layman this might sound like a shed. To me it looked like paradise, a little slice of heaven, a shelter in the storm… literally. Climbing up that last few, near vertical metres to rest was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Dumping my rucksack where I stood I fell into a heap for a good five minutes. The other two were there already, still panting from their exertions. Apparently, even though I waited a good hour after they’d gone off ahead before following, I’d walked sufficiently slowly to gain about 45 minutes back. This might sound strange but on the mountain not much is logical. Their guide had pushed them so hard that they had to sit down and rest for half hour stretches constantly along the way. I took a more sedate pace and made it up in half the time. Get that hot coffee on !!!