Huayna Potosi

Monday 25 - Thursday 28 April 2011

Lawrie´s Birthday present

WHY: Since leaving Púcon, I regretted not climbing Volcano Villarrica. We heading to Bolivia so I re-watched the Top-Gear Bolivia special. I wanted to find out why they made such a big deal of breathing on their drive given they only made it to 5,243m and we were to drive close to this altitude on the Salar trip. I settled on a goal of 6000m & found Huayna Potosi (6088m, 19,974ft). The only regret for this choice is that it´s not 20,000ft but mountain heights don´t include snow so I´ll semi-claim 20k ft!

Monday night I went to the office to try on gear and meet my guide and fellow climbers. There were four guys in our group, two Americans (Andrew & Drew) and a Brit living in Africa (Peter). Our guide (Silviardo) had been climbing the mountains around La Paz for the past eight years. After this I met up with our friends from the Salar trip for a (partial) beer.

Tuesday morning I headed off to the office and packed the remaineder of my gear into a sack, as my rental backpack was on the mountain. We loaded up our minibus and headed up to Al Alto, to stock up on supplies (Coca, Sorochi pills, Water & Chocolate). While the mountain is only 25km from La Paz, it took us a while to get there along a bumpy dirt road. We eventually arrived at base camp (4750m) and had a really nice lunch before heading off to the glacier. We met a group who had just climbed and had the experience described as `Worse than the rape scene from American History X`. The two day tour  headed straight to high camp.

We walked to the glacier (just over 4800m) in our snow boots, which are unforgiving and have no flex so it wasn´t particularily fun. We spent some time getting used to crampons and ice-axes before we found an ice face to climb. When we booked they promised us a 70-80º face to climb, which we got, except they measured incorrectly so it was overhanging through the middle. I hadn´t climbed anything properly in many years so decided to let everyone go first.

Walking to the glacier

`This face is too easy to climb`

First time in ice gear since I was 10.

Mist settling on the glacier

The climb was absolutely the most painful thing I have ever done and it took me a few goes (and spectacular falls) to make it to the top, which I did...just. With the two glove layers I couldn´t grip the ice-axes properly and spent 20 min after the climb with my hands locked in position...hopefully the climb wasn´t this hard!

Lawrie starting the ice climb - the easy bit

Just before a fall - you need your legs!

At the top.

The mist cleared as we were climbing.

We walked back to base camp and were fed again, played cards and worked out why everyone was here. I had rented a -20ºC sleeping bag which came in handy over the night, however I didn´t need the thermals I was wearing!

Wednesday we had breakfast, packed up slowly and headed up to high camp. This was with all gear on loose granite and we climbed to high camp (5180m) in around 1.5hrs. It was really hot in the sun on this walk and I felt dehydrated and so tired! We relaxed during the afternoon, played hackey sack with the refugio owner and met up with the others who left the day before. A few didn´t make it and had altitude sickness between 5,550 - 5,800m. Hopefully the extra time at altitude would help.

The summit wasn´t visible from here.

The full glacier

View from high camp.

Just arrived at high camp - pre snow/hail

High camp hackey sack.

We had an early dinner and went to bed around 6pm, as we needed to get up and leave around 1:30am the next morning. It was very windy and we had small amounts of snow coming through the windows into our room. I slept well considering, while the others in the group couldn´t get the climb out of their heads.

Thursday I woke and put on every piece of clothing that I had. Singlet, thermal top, t-shirt, fleece, softshell & outer jacket. I had on two pairs of llama socks, long johns, pants and waterproof covers, balaclava and thick mittens. It was absolutely freezing (-10ºC) and our waterbottles had partially frozen by the time we stopped for our first drink.

We passed a few groups on the way up (we were the last two groups to leave) and slowly made our way to the top. We caught glimpses of La Paz and icicles along the walk but mostly just had to deal with the cold. I have never been this cold EVER.We passed a few trickly sections of snow bridges across a glacier (the climb used to be technical, with ice climbing) before zig zagging up to near the final ascent.

We started up, with our guide in the lead. The final climb we just had to keep going as their were groups behind us, one foot in front of the other. (I was reminded of Dory from Finding Nemo - `Just keep swimming` and kept going. We finally reached the ridgeline where Sil walked a fresh route about 50cm below the ridge. He instructed me to walk along the top (30cm wide, no raised edge) with him on the other side keeping tension on the (now extended rope). I made the mistake of looking down and realising that one side had a 100m drop (where we had just ascended) while the other (West face) was sheer 1000m of ice. My first steps were a tentative shuffle then I decided that having spikes into snow was smarter and stamped my way across. Drew followed immediately behind me and we walked to the summit, where I was the first tourist up to the top (Drew had joked earlier that I was always going to beat him up, given our rope posistions!)

The sun was just rising at this point and while I got a few photos, I was mostly in awe of the view. You could see across an ocean of clouds with little tiny islands of just the highest peaks and off to Lake Titicaca. We did have quick game of hackey sack at around 6080m before walking back across the ridge (and really seeing the FULL 1000m drop) before trudging back down to high camp.

Sunrise over an ocean of clouds

The hat made it!

At the top!

First two up (for the day at least!)

My thighs were killing at this point and we stopped for a while for lunch. Again the food was great but I still wasn´t very hungry. I made it back to La Paz around 2pm and headed to Wild Rover Hostel to shower and get ready for the next days ride down the death road.

Nowhere near the top - people in back for scale!



Icicles...



Potosi & La Paz

Friday 22 - Monday 25 April 2011

We arrived in Potosi around 2am, getting a taxi (which felt really dodgy) to our hostel. Lawrie woke early with stomach troubles so we spent the entire day watching tv! When we did venture out, it was like being in a ghost town, with people at home for Good Friday.

Saturday morning Lawrie got up early with the intention of getting a mine tour, after a mad rush we made it to our tour agency, who, while giving us a discount, recouped their Bs with a bus booking fee (but it made it easy).

Our first stop was to get geared up (which included LED headlamps) before cramming in a micro (think suzuki carry) and heading to the miners markets, where you can buy everything, including dynamite, as presents for the miners. Our group (consisting of a Swiss couple and a Dutch guy) decided on things like coca leaves, soft drinks, alcohol (96%) & cigarettes.

The mines are worked as co-operatives, however from discussions with our guide they are anything but. Women and children sort the ore once outside, with the junior miners (down to 15) pushing laden mine carts out to the surface. Apparently the mine we visited had a geologist & a mine plan, but had no reference of the location of other mines. To determine proximity to other mines they listened to the sound of adjacent shotfiring (12pm & 5pm)...extremely sketchy.

Roof support...

Pretty easy to see the ore here.

There were two forms of ventilation; natural and that of leaky compressed air lines or air tools (including lovely oil mist)...None of the miners wore any sort of dust mask while we were there and visibilty around the airleg was around 50cm, one of the others nearly getting collected by a retracting leg. Conditions were absolutely horrible. Essentially everyone dies of silicosis. Working lifetime was around 10-15years however (apparently) they have a death rate of around 0.14%, which we don´t believe.

(Fellow travellers have since told us that their guide got hit by a roof fall & broke his leg on their tour! They had to get a worker to escort them out, eventually!)

We had to climb 15 (80m) ladders to get back out, with very little in the way of secure attachment. The mine is around 4000m above sea level so this was serious exercise given the conditions.

Lawrie didn´t want to look at the roof.

Our final stop was to visit Tio Jorge, where we layed gifts of coca, alcohol & lit cigarettes. It was obvious that he´d lit up a few times due to the combination of alcohol and flames...again very sketchy. We partook in an offering of alcohol to Pachamama (mother earth) before trying some of the Ciebo.

That afternoon we found an internet cafe with very fast internet and caught up with the world. We caught a taxi to the bus station (thankfully not dodgy this time) to catch our night bus to La Paz, arriving Sunday, Lawries Birthday & Easter.

Sunday morning we arrived in La Paz just as the sun was rising. We waited around the bus station until their was enough light to walk to our hostel (Bash & Crash - not recommended!)...unfortunately we completely missed out street (two blocks from the station!) and went on a bit of a morning tour just as La Paz was waking up. We eventually checked in and met a guy who´d just completed Huayna Potosí (6088m) & who recommended Travel Tracks for the climb.

We spent the rest of the day organising tours and getting (re)acquinted with La Paz and the tourist areas. Later on we caught up with Josie & Luke and headed to dinner at a mexican restaurant, it was a very relaxing birthday for Lawrie.

Monday we planned to organise the Huayna Potosi climb with Josie & Luke but Luke had taken ill with a stomach bug. Lawrie booked a three day tour starting Tuesday with travel-tracks, meeting his guide and a fellow climber at the same time. That evening we met up with the rest of the group from our Salar trip, for a few quite beers. Lawrie left very early to get prepared for the next day...

Bolivian Border to Uyuni

Sunday 17 - Thursday 21 April 2011

First thing Sunday morning we grabbed a taxi to the bus station, who decided to take us the long way there, costing us extra and making for a grumpy start to the day! The bus left at around 5:30 bound for La Quiaca, on the Bolivian border. We arrived around 2pm in the afternoon, which, due to time differences, was only 1pm in Bolivia. We started the trek to the border crossing, meeting up with Josie & Luke in the process. The border crossing was fairly painless, with Lawrie sticking to his ¨No Entiendo¨ method of crossing.

We walked up to the bus station, spending some time searching for an ATM to get Bolivianos before getting our first taste (eww) of Bolivian bathrooms near the bus station. The chicken bus cost us around 15Bs (just over $2) each and took around 3hours to reach Tupiza, along a bumpy dirt road.

Arriving in Tupiza, we started the search for a tour company to do the loop up to Uyuni, starting at the hostel where Josie & Luke were staying and finishing up along the road where our friend Andy had just booked. We decided to go with the same company so we had a group of 8 (Andy, Rob, Tim, Mark, Josie, Luke + us), two 80 series cruisers and four days to travel together to Uyuni. We finished the night with a massive feast at a vegetarian place, as we were starving from missing lunch.

Monday we left early, after a quick stop at the markets to get some sun glasses (just over $3) and gloves and started our 4wd adventure. Our trip headed past a few small towns before we steadily climbed through mountains, taking in some amazing vistas. It was a very long day, arriving to our refugio (located in a small town) around 8pm. The food was excellent and the veggie soup did a good job of warming us up! We layered up the thermals, put all the blankets (6 total) onto one bed and spent the first cold night squished in a single bed.

The two 4WDs loaded up for the trip

The first of many sweet looking mountains.

Looking down into the valley.

Cacti with a great view.

Llama!

We continued to climb up into the mountains.

Cute little Llama.

Vegetation gave way to plains studded with mountains.

Town wall where we stopped for a stretch.

Climbing still, temperature dropping rapidly!

Ruins of an old mining Spanish mining town.

Targets...

Ammunition.

Spectacular colours.

The snow capped peaks became more frequent

Sunset at altitude.

JAWA

Tuesday we headed off early (again) to get to Laguna Verde, to see the colour change. The water level has dropped so much since Kitty was last here, that you cannot see the full reflection of Volcano Licancabur in the water before the colour change. It was still awesome to see the lake change colour! Next up was the thermal pools, where we had a swim/shower before a very tasty lunch. We continued across the Desert of Dali, with weird rock formations before reaching around 5000m at the Gyser field. After a brief stop we made our way to Laguna Colorada, getting the best rooms in the refugio before checking out the lake, flamingos, volcanoes and dead lama smoking a cigarette.

Laguna Verde

Hot Springs

Frozen algae.

Ice skating.

Laguna Colorada

Another 'lake with mountain in background' shot

The night was quite cold but we spent some time outside playing hackey sack & inside playing card games. Accoring to the iPod, the (full) moon was meant to rise around 6:18pm, but didn´t make it until half way through dinner! The refugio was around 4600m high, meaning another cold night!

Wednesday we started on our way to Uyuni, passing many lakes and volcanoes before heading through the Valle de Rocas (due to the salt flats being flooded). We made a stop at the train graveyard, where the steam trains which used to run to Chile now lie. We arrived in Uyuni with enough time to explore the town, sort out buses, washing and to get some much needed gloves! Our hostel had three showers: one cold, one zappy and one nice...thankfully a fellow traveller passed on this information, however Kitty still got the cold one!

Valle de las Rocas

Some amazing shapes

Lawrie the (dead train) engineer

Trapped!

Thursday morning we left before sunrise so that we could make it to the salt hotel (now a museum) on the salar for sunrise. Whilst there were heaps of people here, we enjoyed the sunrise and got some cool group action shots. After breakfast in the hotel we headed out to our own patch of salt to partake in the shooting of many weird perspective shots! Luckily for us our guides had some great props, see below!

Flags at the Salt Hotel

Sunrise

Hanging around at the Salt Hotel

Mountain in the background

Dinosaur attack!

Looove perspective shots

Watch our for Kitzilla!

Getting revenge on the dinosaur...

Salt love hole

Trucks for mining salt...

...so Lawrie can snort it

We finished up around lunchtime and had lunch before burning DVDs of our photos, relaxing with a few beers & chatting before a quick pizza dinner and then a mad dash to our bus, bound for Potosi.