Bolivia - La Paz - Huayna Potosi

We arrived in Bolivia with Titicaca Tummy, not the best bus journey I have had.

La Paz is a large city and in some ways is very modern, yet in others, not so much. Almost anything can be bought on one of their street stalls by women who still wear the traditional dress, a full skirt and a tall, small bowler hat perched on top of their heads.
There is lots to do here. Most famously you can cycle down the 'Worlds most dangerous road' a dirt road that is barely over 3 meters wide, with over 600 meter sheer drops on one side.
Due to time we decided against this, we had come to La Paz to climb a mountain!

Here she is. Let me introduce you to Huayna Potosi, 6088 meters (19,973 feet) high, sat in the Cordillera Real range of the Bolivian Andes. It was billed to us as 'the easiest 6000 meter, non-technical climbing mountain in Bolivia' but let me tell you that is all relative. I nearly did not write this blog, I do not do well with failure, I usually find that my stubbornness gets me through most things of this nature.

We did not reach the summit................. we were less than 50 meters short. We got up to around 6050 meters and decided to turn back!!!!!!!!!!

Rather dramatically, here is my story........................

The climb, conveniently has 2 camps, base camp & rock camp. Both are hostels so no actual camping (this is a big part of the reason it is 'the easiest' 6000-er to climb). As you can see, they are pretty basic.

And the loo is a short walk down the hill to a brick box.

It is most important to acclimatise, at over 6000 meters high the oxygen level reduces to 50% of that at sea level. It actually takes 45 days to acclimatise fully to this. We had 3 days. Well, we had been at over 3500 meters for some time, so we were half way there.

Day 1: Practice Ice Climbing (I thought this mountain was 'non-technical'?)

Kitted out and ready to go!
I rather naively thought that crampons neatly fitted over your walking boots. No, they fit neatly over what can only be described as ski boots.

Lucky for Kenny it was the red helmet that fitted him better, not the pink.

At the base of the glacier we were then taken through our paces.

You cannot walk as normal in crampons & ski boots. You have to walk up side ways, every step, over a certain gradient is side step up, next foot cross over in front of the first, first foot back up to the second and repeat! No one told me I would be salsa-ing up the thing!

Coming down was no better either, your feet have to be flat on the ice for every spike to take effect, so you essentially walk down as if you are sat on the toilet.

Before long we got the hang of it and both of us fell in love with ice climbing.

It is now top of our list of activities we want to continue (just perhaps not at this altitude as it is very, very tiring). Good job there is no 'technical climbing' on our hike to the summit! Ummmm!

Day 2: Climb up to 'Rock Camp'

Shortly after we had set off up to Rock Camp a local guy stopped us on his way down as he wanted his photo taken with us, it seems we are the ones who make an interesting shot? (We asked him to take one of us on our own while he was there - gutted I did not ask for him to be in it too)

The walk to Rock Camp was a very steep scree slope.

Obvious photo.

The scree got steeper as we got to the top. Here I am displaying my North Face hat and Camel Pack nozzle???

Nearly at Rock camp - the summit looks a long way away.

Rock camp accommodation was a welcome sight, even if the loo was again a short walk down the mountain.

We took a look around from Rock Camp. The view was already amazing.

The summit!!!
We then had to bed down for the night at 6pm after trying to consume as many calories as possible, at altitude your appetite vanishes, so this is no easy task. All ice climbs start in the early hours of the morning as that is when the ice is its most stable & solid due to the cold temperatures (-20 C in this case). We were to be woken at 12.20 am!!

After some sleep we finally set off after more calories at 1.20am

Freezing cold, totally dark and each roped into a guide, we set off up the steep glacier, side step by side step!

Occasionally we passed by an ice feature.

Mostly it was just dark so it was one foot in front of the other.

At this point I was absolutely loving it. I felt strong and buzzing with enthusiasm! I was practicing my speech for the summit - we were only half way up the mornings climb.

Then dawn started to break ........... La Paz street lights can be seen in the distance.

It was at that point we encountered our first 'non-technical climb'???????

Looked pretty technical to me (I am the one at the top bending over). It was later we learned that the glacier changes all the time and as we were very late in the season the ice had revealed many features that would not necessarily have been there.

Kenny also skillfully negotiated the ridge.

But wow was it worth it! The sun was in full rise when we got to the top of the ridge.

I stood watching it mesmerised. I even cried a little (it was a very powerful moment).

I may never again see a sunrise from around 5650 meters with the Andes as a back drop.

No time to hang around - we had a mountain to climb.

It just kept getting steeper as we navigated the crevasses..........

.............. until we reached this crevasse, which seemed unnavigational to me.

But.... oh no silly me it was another of those 'non-technical' features we had to ..... JUMP!!!!

Ever tried jumping a 2 meter gap in ski boots? I was roped in but still the drop was more than 3 storeys deep if I had missed. (I would like to note how my dear husband managed to capture all this on his camera rather than ensuring my safe passgae!). (Errr... I was busy collating evidence for a potential Travel Insurance Claim! - Kenny)

The GAP........ by the way that is a camera angle trick not a handy bridge to the right.

Yet another ice climb ahead.

Up onto the penultimate ledge, it was at this point that I really started to feel the altitude effects, I could not walk more than 6 steps without stopping to try to catch my breath, which of course is impossible. It can best be descibed as walking up hill and trying to breath through a drinking straw.

The rests did give me chance to admire the view though - not bad.

A quick chocolate stop before the final push.
We managed to get up the ice to the right of the rock face on the horizon. All that was left was to climb up to the rock and back towards us along it and onto to the summit.

It was here we decided to turn back. I was gutted, I mean totally gutted.

We had been climbing for 7 and a half hours, uphill, in ski boots, side stepping, mostly in the dark in -20 C to a height of around 6040 meters.
We were having to stop for breath every 4-5 paces due to the thin air, the ice field we had just walked up had started to thaw since sunrise and not only was the ice soft with melting and difficult to walk on but rocks and ice from above had started to fall down the slope onto our path.
To get to the summit we still had 2 more ice climbs and a rock climb.
We had successfull negociated a number of vertical ice climbs and jumped over one, not so small, crevasse.
We still had at least 6 hours of down climb before we got back to Base Camp.


I was still gutted.

We started the walk down.

The summit, that bulge in the rock. So close..

Us next to the summit.

At least going back down you can see the view the whole way.

Kenny and his guide, the 2 little black dots, coming down the ice field. I was far ahead as rocks had really started to fall from above by this point.

A close up.

Still amazing to be up there.

A crevasse

Kenny down climbing one of the ice ridges.

Stretch - you can make it!

The hole of death! The crevasses we jumped further up.

From the 8th highest mountain in the Bolivian Andes the rest look tiny!

A quick rest before another down climb.

The basin before the summit - this time in daylight.

The crevasses we had to negotiate in the dark on the way up!!! Glad I could not see them!

Another down climb.

Crevasses and ice caves. Although scary to think we were walking amongst them, they were so beautiful. Every hole was filled with icicles and the aqua marine colour of the ice could not be picked up by my camera.

Kenny & his guide walking down. (I had stopped for a pee which is no easy thing wearing all the gear and a harness, roped into my guide who would not let me unrope so stood a few meters away while I went).

Me and my guide walking down the last slope.

Nearly at the bottom of the glacier.

The edge of the glacier taken while removing my crampons.

Kenny, back at Rock Base, refuelling on condensed milk from a tube (Thanks Toady & guys). (By the way, I also brought both the flags from our wedding up with us, but never had the summitting opportunity to unfurl them. - Kenny)

We still had to get back down to Base Camp, down the dreaded scree face. I was not so happy at this point. The scree was so dangerous and I was so tired by this point, plus my ice (ski) boots had given me 2 big blisters on my big toes so every step down hurt!

Still a way to go down but feeling better.

It was one of the oddest experiences I have ever had full of many different emotions. I was so, so devastated that we could not make the top. But really even one more ice climb would have been dangerous, as the altitude effects were immense. You not only feel out of breath and exhausted but you start to feel dizzy, sick and faint, your thought processes slow and dehydration kicks in as you have been breathing so much through your mouth.

We have both totally fallen in love with ice climbing and snow capped mountians. Right up until the last hour of the climb, I was feeling strong and ecstatically happy. We saw so many amazing things I have never seen before......... and that sunrise; Wow!

Many of my heros are mountianeers, I have read endless books about climbers from Joe Simpson, Sir Edmund Hilary to Jon Krakauer and Chris Bonnington and I have always been fasinated and in awe of what they do.

This was in no way near to the climbs they acheive but it has given me a better insight into what they endure and why.

I thought that my inner strengh would get me up and that I could conquer anything like this through pure determination. It has been an amazing lesson to learn that sometimes the conditions get too difficult. But then, when I look at it, we climbed to over 6000 meters, over ice, I jumped a crevasse! We looked into ice caves and hacked our way up and down ice walls. We were on the mountain for over 13 hours that day and got to go to a place that few have been. (Only 8 people summited that day all of which had experience on ice and high mountians).

We so nearly made it. What a wonderful experience.

Like Kenny always says, 'the mountian will be there tomorrow'

So, although I feel defeated, I know that this was not a bad end to the climb but a great start to many more.....................................