It’s 11pm. Time to get up and get ready after only three hours of rough sleeping.
I wrestle out of my warm sleeping bag, argue with my crampons, and tie into the rope.
Our goal is to summit Chopicalqui, Peru’s third highest mountain at 6,354m. High camp where we slept last night sits at 5,350m, meaning every breath is laboured and oxygen is priceless.
We leave camp just after midnight. Immediately we’re climbing steep snow, following the footsteps of those who came before.
A moonless night, it’s me, my friend Nick, our guide Juanes, and the five feet in front of us, illuminated by head torch.
The stars are putting on a show.
We walk for hours, occasionally using an ice axe to balance on knife edge ridges, eventually getting to the ice climbing section.
This is where the fun begins.
“The snow quality seems really good. We’re going to simul this”, says Juanes.
Simul climbing here means instead of Juanes going up and building an anchor to safely belay us up, we’ll all be climbing at the same time.
Much better for speed, but because we’re roped up together, if someone falls…it’s a more than moderate chance that everyone is yanked off the mountain, tumbling into a crevasse to death.
Nick and I have ice climbed three times each. It’s 2am. Nick weighs 90kg and didn’t sleep last night.
Bold call, Juanes.
After 40 minutes and 200 meters of snow, the hard technical climbing is behind us.
Tired, but we’re excited. The snow was “like sugar” when Juanes was here a few weeks earlier. He had to turn his disappointed clients around.
“Bit over half way done”, we hear.
We keep at it.
Just below the summit, we make it to the bottom of the ‘mushroom cap’ that Chopicalqui is famous for.
It’s 5am, and Juanes tells us he’s never been up here this quickly before. As the goal was to summit with sunrise, the three of us crawl into a large ice pit and huddle for an hour, coldly sheltering from the wind.
I take the opportunity to enjoy my emergency Snickers bar, and we soon continue on our way.
Juanes goes to cross an ice bridge for the final push to the top.
“ZEV! If the ledge breaks here, I’ll fall to the right. You will need to jump into the hole on the left. Watch me. Do you understand?”
This was not in our training, but here we are.
Finally, we get to the top.
Greeting us is one of the most spectacular and well earned sunrises I’ve ever seen, slowly rising above the clouds.
I close my eyes for a minute.
My knees hurt, my head’s cooked, and I can’t feel my hands from the cold.
I don’t want to forget this.
More than anything, I feel grateful. Grateful to my outdoorsy friends for introducing me to this path, and to the mountain for letting us summit safely.
Many photos later, we rappel down, passing by groups making their ascent. Eventually we make it back to high camp, and pack up our tundra shelter, finally ending our adventurous day with a 4pm dinner and well earned sleep at base camp.
Hell of a trip.
A week later, there’s an avalanche on Tocllaraju which kills two mountaineers.
Nick and I were looking at climbing it next.
I don’t think I’ll be touching it anytime soon.
It’s tough to not ask why anyone would bother climbing mountains. Between the cold, altitude, and danger, it’s not how most people think of ‘fun’.
But somewhere between the 11pm wake up and staring out on the Cordillera Blanca, I understood why people love the sport.
I’m not rushing to put my crampons back on, but I’m not hanging them up either.
I can only hope the next time I’m told to jump into the hole on my left, I’ve had more than three hours of sleep.
Until the next mountain comes.
Zev
