Chopicalqui (21.07.2006)  

© Hannah Vickers

The summit of Chopicalqui

Taken from my diary, the last peak of a 4-week trip to the Cordillera Blanca region of the Andes, in Peru. I forgot how much detail I noted! :-)

Friday, 21st July 2006: Huaraz to Chopicalqui base camp

Breakfast was at about 7am and the weather was looking very fine, stable and clear. We weren’t going to have any mules to carry our kit in to base camp for Chopicalqui so we had to try and minimize what we brought with us down to a single rucksack. Just before we left Olaza's B&B in Huaraz at 9.15am, Richard, Simon, Jan and I all wished Matt a safe journey back to the UK and then bundled into the minibus to head off back into the mountains for our last time. The road was the same leading north-westwards out of Huaraz to Yungay. Yungay is a town previously devastated by an avalanche or rock fall of some sort on Huascaran back in the 1970s but when we drove through there wasn’t much evidence of its past. The road through the town led up the hillside in the usual series of zigzags and gradually, the huge bulk of Huascaran began to loom over us as we drove up the valley on the northern side of the mountain and up to the Parc Nacional Huascaran gates where we had to sign a register.

The journey continued along the bumpy, stony track for another hour or so, past the Llanganuco lakes (very blue and lying at the foot of some highly impressive rock cliffs that plunged straight down to them) and to the road head to access the base camp for Chopicalqui. We did stop for about 15 minutes in between the park lodge and the road head though whilst Elias got out and disappeared for a while. We later found out he’d arranged for some donkeys to help us carry kit and equipment in to base camp – bless him! The journey took 3 ½ hours in total, and Elias produced some bags with a packed lunch in for us (containing unidentified juicy fruit, a pear, the usual ham roll and assortment of chocolate and sweets) whilst we waited for the donkeys at the road head where we’d been dropped off. The walk-in was hard work with full, heavy rucksacks and hot sunshine but it was a pleasant trail that wound its way through some trees beside a narrow stream and then continued across some open grazing land.

It was about 2.30pm when I came to a stop at the site of what we thought was base camp at 4300m. Unfortunately it also happened to be a popular grazing patch for cows, and where there are cows there is also poo which of course attracts masses of flies. So I wasn’t really that keen on the site of our new base camp. A tasty supper of soup (some sort of orange vegetable soup) was dished up not too long after the kitchen tents were pitched, and the breaded chicken and chips with salad made its second appearance of the trip during the main course of the dinner. Unsurprisingly it initiated a good response to Elias’ offer of “poco mas?” and Richard, Simon and Jan all had second helpings of it! It felt distinctly colder than it had been at previous base camps when we left the mess tent to go to bed at 8pm, but at least the flies had disappeared and weren’t being a pest to us anymore!

Saturday, 22nd July 2006: Chopicalqui base camp to moraine camp

It had indeed been very cold overnight (either it was very cold or I had got too used to our warm dry beds in Huaraz!) and I crawled my way out of my sleeping bag – which required a lot of determination – at 6.40am to respond to the call of much-needed hot drink! Eggy bread and some plain bread with butter was on the menu for breakfast, and after we’d finished there was a bit of chaos on-site as we pulled out all our kit and left it strewn around for sorting out and re-packing. We only needed to pack for three days and had become reasonably efficient at all this stuff by now; we were packed up and ready to leave by 9.15am, with Jan having decided to get a head start again.

The path out of the campsite ascended up to the ridge crest above the valley and then followed the ridge line over grassy, vegetated and rocky ground for what seemed like forever, until it finally descended down a short way to the boulders of the glacial moraine below. A lot of climbing parties attempt the ascent of Chopicalqui in only two days by ascending straight from the base camp and climbing direct through to the high camp in one day, and from there of course going to the summit and back down to the road. It seemed a crazy idea, and recently a group of South Africans had tried to do it but with only one making the summit – it had simply been too exhausting a climb to do. Hence the reason we were going to sleep at moraine camp, which was situated at 4900m between base (4300m) and high camp (5600m).

The moraine ridge itself sloped very gently upwards, and the path was quite sandy so it was a comfortable walk up, gaining height gradually and steadily – which was nice as it was sunny and hot again, even this early on in the morning. The views over the Ancash valley to Chacaraju, Pisco and Huandoy were absolutely breathtaking; all were very spectacular, pointy peaks. The southern, fluted snow face of Chacaraju, in particular, took on a characteristic trapezium shape and really stood out. Richard had been in front of the rest of us, but waited along the trail about 10 minutes from the camp, and after going on ahead, I passed a group of (Belgian?) climbers on their way back down from the moraine camp. One of the guys spoke English and said they’d only ventured a short way above the moraine camp before deciding that the route was plagued by risks from rock falls and deemed it too dangerous to go any further, and returned back down. We all continued anyway to reach the site of the camp by about noon, and started pitching tents. Jan volunteered to find some water, and the nearest stream happened to be a 10-minute journey from the camp site, over a mess of huge boulders - picking the best way across them (some were stable, some moved or tipped up when you stepped onto them) wasn’t an easy task.

When she came back, she reported there had been one or two rock falls near to where the stream was located. I later went out, about 3.30pm to investigate the stream and collect some more water, and slipped down about 2 metres on some gritty ice, but fortunately I only grazed my hands a bit. The only obvious source of water was from a waterfall, formed from melting ice from the glacier above. I got quite heavily splashed and eventually resorted to collecting the water from a flow which was trickling over a boulder to the side of the waterfall, a little lower down. On my way back, I coincidently happened to look back at the waterfall at the same time a massive boulder, at least the size of a dustbin came flying over the edge of the glacier and crashing down into the gully running alongside the waterfall. I’d have certainly crossed the gully earlier and the thought that a similar rock fall might have happened when I was down there immediately sent an immense shudder through me. Now I knew exactly what Jan had been talking about when she’d returned from the water run. I was a bit in shock when I got back to the tents, and most definitely had not intention of doing any more water runs at this camp, not even with a helmet on!

We cooked dinner later on, a chicken casserole with rice and tinned fruit cocktail for dessert. Whilst poking our heads out of the tent and gazing at the fine sunset on Chopicalqui from our tent door, several groups of climbers strolled along – one was the German climbers we’d met on Urus, earlier in the trip and they’d made a successful attempt on the summit of Chopicalqui that morning having left the high camp at 1am. We were a bit surprised that the summit day was going to be that long – and they weren’t even sleeping at base camp either that night. Jan and I boiled up another pan of water to fill our water bottles for drinking and then retired to our sleeping bags some time between 6.30 and 7pm.

Sunday, 23rd July 2006: Moraine camp to high camp

Pelayo and Andres had told us they’d turn up between 8 and 8.30am the following morning to help carry loads up to high camp, by 8.50am there had still not been any sign of them, so Jan and I decided we’d get a head start and leave Richard and Simon to wait for Andres and Pelayo to make sure all the kit we wanted carrying was packed up. They would catch us up anyway. The trail away from the camp was marked by a couple of cairns placed on top of boulders, but they seemed to disappear after a while; after gaining 150-200m in height above camp, we arrived at a levelling out of the moraine, and the trail traversed beneath what appeared to be some unstable-looking rock cliffs which took us up to the start of route across the glacier where we roped up. After an initial couple of metres of ascent we were firmly on wet glacier territory where the snow was very deep and soft – and deteriorating beneath the blazing sunshine. A sloping field of peaked snow structures, known as snow penitentes (formed by melting and re-freezing processes) led up to a lip, which we climbed to gain the main part of the route.

We’d made good progress up the glacier by 11am, but there wasn’t a breath of wind around and the cloud seemed to bypass where we were on the glacier, so there was no respite from the heat. Two Austrian climbers we’d met at the moraine camp had set off a little while before us but taken a break at about 5400m, and we joined them for lunch. We could hear avalanches being triggered by the heat every now and then, but fortunately they weren’t too close by. We stopped for about 15 minutes altogether and then pushed on again, contouring around small seracs and over fractures in the glacier, but there weren’t any major crevasses lying along the route.

It was immediately windier and chillier when we arrived at the col, the site of high camp, the weather seemed to have changed in an instant and it was important to get the tents up as soon as possible. Richard, Jan and Simon cleared a platform in the snow for the tents and pegged them out using an assortment of snow stakes, ice screws and trekking poles. Meanwhile, I was busy getting the stoves fired up for melting down snow which proved much more difficult than it had been at moraine camp. It seemed they really didn’t like working at cold and at altitude! When I’d managed to keep the stoves burning away, I chucked in a load of snow to melt. Within about ½ hour Jan and I had enough hot water for a mug of hot chocolate or cappuccino each, but it was necessary to keep the stove fired up for the rest of the afternoon, given how much water we needed for drinking.

Apart from the two Austrians who’d arrived only a few minutes before us, we were the only parties at the high camp that night. Richard suggested a 1.30am start the next morning, which meant we’d have to get up at midnight, at the latest, to allow enough time to wake up sufficiently (although I had a feeling the sub-zero temperatures would do that quite easily!) and get ourselves some drinks and breakfast, as well as putting on all our climbing gear. We threw a couple of boil-in-the-bag meals into the pans at about 4.45pm to make sure we got dinner out of the way well ahead of going to sleep and shared a Spotted Dick for pudding (also a boil-in-the-bag creation) As 6pm drew on, there was the most extraordinary sunset over the other side of the Llanganuco valley. The atmospheric feel was enhanced by the cloud lying over the surrounding valleys, but we hoped it would have cleared by the morning. I shovelled in some more snow to fill up our carrier bag before clambering, very inelegantly with my plastic boot outers on, back into the tent and making a dive straight for the sleeping bag. If there was one thing I had got out of this trip, it had to be never to take a kettle for granted ever again – now that I had witnessed just how precious even 1 litre of boiled water was up here, with only snow and stoves to produce it!

Monday, 24th July 2006: High camp - Chopicalqui summit - base camp

I had a shocking evening trying to sleep; it had been a very cold 5 hours and the ground underneath our tent was very uneven, and despite the discomfort, I showed little enthusiasm for getting up when the alarm went off at 12am. We had hot drinks made up by 12.30am; we’d used boiled water from the previous night to re-boil and was sufficient to supply us with hot water for porridge as well. It did wonders to get me warmed up and by 1.15am I was ready to emerge from the sleeping bag and start getting my climbing kit on, and it was probably at least 1.45am when we were all roped up and ready to go. I was wearing a thermal top, fleece jumper and down jacket but was still cold – Simon’s altimeter registered -10°C and the wind was exceedingly bitter.

From the col, where we’d camped, the route crossed a couple of crevasses to approach the initial climbing pitch, a 20-25m pitch of fairly steep ground. The snow wasn’t as frozen as I’d have expected it to be, and at the top of the pitch, the slope levelled out and we began weaving our way around a number of crevasses again. The ground tended to alternate between some steeper stretches and longer, more level terrain for a fair distance, eventually leading to a traverse across a steep slope on unconsolidated snow. Above us, I could just about make out the silhouette of serac wall about 10 or 20m high and about the same width looming over us, which was pretty intimidating - even though we knew it would be at its most stable at night when it was cold. A small field of icy boulders proved awkward to clamber over on the other side of the traverse as we were all roped up together and coordinating each other’s movements wasn’t very easy. Once that section was negotiated however, we ascended a short gully to the foot of an extensive and broad snow face of about Grade II ground again. We reached it just as the sun was beginning to make an appearance on the horizon – and we were all more than glad to see it after nearly 4 hours of extremely bitter cold and dark climbing.

Shortly after we’d started ascending the slope, we had a brief stop to drink; I was very thirsty despite being so cold but couldn’t seem to stomach much more than a cup before feeling sick. Richard had also had some drink but threw up about 2 minutes after we’d started climbing again. He didn’t look too good afterwards but insisted on continuing anyway. As the sun rose over Huascaran behind us, there was a gorgeous hue of purples and reds, forming a fine streak across the sky. I couldn’t wait to finally get up to the top of the face, where I could see the sunshine gleaming down with its warmth! It had been a real enemy over the past few days but now I was ready for it with welcome arms…..

A narrow snow arête followed once we’d gained the top of the face, to a plateau where we stopped for a good break. It was about 7am; still windy, but plenty of sunshine and simply stunning views on both sides. A blanket of fluffy cloud tops sat over every valley around us, revealing only the peaks of the highest mountains of the Cordillera Blanca and beyond. Chopicalqui’s summit ridge was in full view now, which was also an amazing sight itself - a broad, very elegant fin-shaped ridge. Richard admitted to feeling queasy and Simon, who was on the other end of the rope, took the lead for the final part of the climb. There was an easy slope to access the short snow wall which in fact turned out to consist of a couple of large steps cut into unnervingly soft snow, but it was only about 2-3m long, and above this the summit slopes. It was comfortably warm and sheltered from the bitterness of the wind, and for the first time in about 7 hours I actually felt warm; by 8am we had reached the 6354m summit of Chopicalqui with glorious views everywhere.

There were some quite distinct storm clouds – cumulonimbus ones – poised on the horizon and towering way above the extensive blanket of cumulus cloud below. We took several summit photos and it would have been nice to hang around for a bit longer, but we had a huge amount of height still to descend to get back down to base camp before dark. Retracing our ascent route, we all took care down-climbing the steep summit slopes - however, despite the care I took I was unfortunate enough to tread into an unstable step in the steep wall. It promptly collapsed, and I took a tumble a couple of metres down the mountain! The experience felt slightly surreal – I didn’t know whether I was going to stop but strangely wasn’t much terrified either. Luckily, Jan and Richard broke the fall early on from above and after re-composing myself I crampon-ed my way back up to the trail in the snow at the bottom of the snow wall.

Two abseils from the far end of the snow arête got us down the long snow face and toward the end of the second abseil, a giant gaping bergschrund plunged deep into the mountain below us, requiring a bit of a large jump over and downwards to avoid being swallowed into it…..…it was hugely daunting to peer down into. Nevertheless, we’d soon reached the safer, gentler slopes at the bottom of the face and roped up again to progress back down the trail in the glacier to high camp which was fairly quick now that we’d bypassed most of the obstacles. Visibility deteriorated quite rapidly as we descended and it was really murky by the time we’d reached the last steep slopes above high camp, in huge contrast to the sunny, clear conditions we’d been in on the summit ridge of Chopicalqui. Pelayo and Andres had spotted us coming down off the last abseil to the col and had put on the stoves whilst waiting for us as we arrived at camp, about midday. It was nice to just plonk ourselves down for a while, albeit in the snow, before having to pack away all our kit and begin the descent back down to the moraine. We were practically frying under the heat of the sun as we made our way back down the glacier and really energy-draining. We made surprisingly good time though and were back down at the top of the moraine by 2.30pm, and from there it took roughly another 40 minutes to fight our way back down over the unsteady blocks of rock to the site of moraine camp.

By the time we left there it was nearly 4pm and I wasn’t in any rush to get back down base camp; I paused every now and then along the sandy ridge to take a quick sip drink. I didn’t have a lot left so was trying to ration it. Richard and Simon were way ahead, keen as ever to get back and Jan some way behind me as she was very tired. Persevering with the tough work of re-ascending from the glacial moraine (at the bottom of the moraine ridge) to the crest of the grassy ridge above base camp at the end of what was turning out to be a very, very long day took a lot of concentration but I was still feeling relatively lively and kept at it. I knew it wasn’t too far up and the path would be mostly level along the top anyway.

It was 5.30pm when I skipped, relieved (but not merrily) into base camp and Simon was in the mess tent on his own having a cup of tea with pâté and crackers. Elias greeted me within seconds with a steaming hot bowl of water - just what I needed for a good refreshing wash and teeth-cleaning session! Freda the chicken, unfortunately, was clearly absent from the camp and by supper time we’d discovered why……..we had supper of rice with chicken in an onion gravy. Everyone was quiet at the table and seemed more than ready to get tucked up into our sleeping bags - no one was even prepared to stay up past 7.30pm except me! Even after 17 hours of climbing and descending back down to camp, I was still feeling perky, although I think it may well have been the effect of 3 mugs of decent quality caffeine when I’d got back!

© Hannah Vickers

One of my earlier attempts at making a panoramic view from the summit of Chopicalqui. Huandoy is the mountain at the left edge of the photo

I was quite impressed that I’d managed to sleep till 6am the next morning, even after having had a strong dose of coffee the previous evening. It was unusually cloudy this morning – the first time I’d seen cloud at this time of day during the whole trip, and they actually looked like they would burst and dump a load of rain. They did just that about the same time we’d started to pack away. Both Simon and I quoted Richard from the previous day when we’d arrived in at the high camp; “we could do with a really good storm tonight……I don’t even care if we have to run for the bus in the rain.” His wish had become true! And it didn’t matter now that the weather was so poor, as we’d finished climbing and there was no need for perfect weather any longer……It was an excellent end to our mountain activities and even though we did have to walk from the camp to the road carrying everything we’d brought (no mules this morning) in the rain, our bus was ready and waiting for us. In comparison to what Elias, Pelayo and Andres were carrying though, our loads were pathetic. There was no way we could complain.

Tuesday, 25th July 2006: Chopicalqui base camp - Huaraz

It was very warm and dry as we drove down into the Llanganuco valley to reach the main road again, with no sign of the misty, damp weather we’d had only a few hours earlier up in the mountains. It was 2pm when the minibus pulled up at the entrance of Olaza’s B&B; we said unimaginably big thank-you’s to Elias, Pelayo and Andres for all their hard, and much-appreciated work. Tito, the B&B owner, helped to translate our message into Spanish, as there was no way that our Spanish was that good! Since tipping is customary for the kind of work they did for us, we each contributed some money to share out between the three of them which they seemed very thankful for. We dined out in Huaraz again in the evening.

Our final two days in Huaraz, before we were leaving to return to Lima were quite relaxed but satisfying. There were constant dark rain and snow clouds over the peaks which could only mean we’d managed to escape poor weather during the four weeks we’d been in the mountains, quite by chance! We made several more mandatory trips to Café Andino, and did some last-minute gift shopping in the town; even though we were all keen to stay around and climb more mountains, I think thoughts of home also appealed to everyone as well. Jan came down with a dodgy stomach the next afternoon, and spent the following evening mostly parked on the toilet; she’d brought some strong antibiotics with her from Kathmandu though which settled things down after about a day. Whilst in Café Andino, we also bumped into a couple of people we’d met at Ishinca base camp. First there was Ben and Tristan, two Scottish lads who had been climbing Tocllaraju and Artesonraju, a very aesthetic peak which had dominated the view from Alpamayo base camp; then we spotted Andrew (the Canadian guide, Andy’s mate) and Dave who we’d last spoken with at Cashapampa. It was quite nice to catch up with them and find out what they’d been up to.

No one could quite decide on a place to eat out at for our last dinner in Huaraz, so I suggested the pizza restaurant we’d been to on the night we’d first arrived in Huaraz. It was a lot busier than usual, being the start of a national holiday weekend (like Independence Day in the US I was told) and the menu also seemed to have been adapted especially for busy times with a more limited selection of dishes as well as a price increase! Nevertheless the food was just as good as before, although Richard and Andy came to the conclusion their Lasagne wasn’t sufficient and started a discussion on where to eat next! It was a pleasant evening out though, and the lads as usual followed it up with a trip to a well known nightclub called El Tambo’s. Needless to say, Jan and I didn’t join them; we went to bed! Our final morning in Huaraz was quite laid back, and Julio drove us down to the coach station at 10.30am, and when we’d checked in all our kit we regrettably said our goodbyes to him. I felt quite sad as our coach left at 11am and drove through the network of streets, past the colourful shops, markets and craft stalls and the women in their big, vibrant skirts and hats. I was definitely going to miss it all – as well as the climbing.

© Hannah Vickers

Two very exhausted climbers: Simon and Richard while we were in transit through a US airport (I can't remember which one though!)