Vallunaraju

After Pisco me and Reynolds headed back to Huaraz and Andrew stayed in the national park to do some more hikes. We decided to recover and do some bouldering near Huaraz. The owner of cafe Andino has been bigging up this rock climbing place a couple of hours from here so we are thinking of paying that a visit too. Slightly disturbed/amused by the fast food joint next to our hostel.

Met up with Andrew again a couple of days later when he got back to Huaraz. Decided to do another peak together. The weather forcasts are too dodgy and not enough time to do huascaran, which was the peak i originally wanted to do and fit the rock climbing in. Also have been told it is not the most interesting mountain to climb by people who have done it.

I really wanted to do a 6000+ m mountain but andrew is leaving huaraz in 2 days and will be hard to find a peak we can do that quickly. decide to climb Vallunaraju (5780m) which is the biggest mountain that overlooks Huaraz. It has twin peaks. We will do the south peak in one push rather than camping half way up. We´ll also take a more technical route to the standard one and include some ice climbing.
Reynolds decided to stay in Huaraz for this one. We got a taxi up to the end of the valley and camped by the road. Set alarms for 2am but this time I slept really well :) The first few hours hike were the hardest, just because it is dark and I was sleepy. When we reached the glacier everything seemed to get going and we made really good progress. Met several people coming back down who had to bail due to altitude sickness.

A few hundred metres below the peak we left the trail in the snow and went straight up the slope. A peruvian guide at the bottom of the mountain told us that it was 70 degrees. Did a swinging lead type thing. Using the axes was really good fun. Had to cross a couple of crevasses and then traverse along the ridge at the top to the peak. It´s a cool way to reach the top as you really feel you earned it. Was still full of energy when we got to the peak so I legged it up the north peak too :)

Defo want to try some higher peaks in the future but I guess no rush. I have all the gear now and a bit more experience.