Pisco

Just got out the shower in the morning and the hostel owner says there is someone at the front door for us. Turns out to be the guy I was mailing, Andrew. He just flew in from UK yesterday and wants to go up a mountain called Pisco today... nutter. Still feeling ill but gotta go for it.

So we have to mission off to get permits and food etc. Had to lie on the permit form and say we were going trekking round the national park rather than climbing cos otherwise you have to take a peruvian guide.

Got a taxi up the LLanganuco valley, which we are convinced was named by a Welsh bloke, to base camp (3900m). At the entrance to national park we had to sign in, saw a real stuffed condor. Think the birds we saw in the sacred valley weren´t condors after all as this was massive. Down the valley are huge cliffs and lakes of bright turquoise water.

When we arrived at base camp we figured we had just enough time to hike up to the meadow camp (4600m) before sunset. No idea how the ¨meadow¨camp got its name as it was anything but a meadow, ¨swamp camp¨or ¨marsh camp¨would have been more appropriate. Set up tent and ate and set the alarm for 3am.


Didn´t get any sleep that night. Apparently it´s an altitude thing. Got up at 3 feeling really rough. Had some porridge and set off for the summit. The first few hours was hiking through the dark. When the sun finally came up it was stunning. All the mountains around us reflected the colours because of the snow. They changed from red to yellow to finally white. Got to the glacier and met some American guy there who was doing science, researching glacier shrinkage. He roped up with us to cross the glacier.

From here it was really hard work. I felt so unfit, breathing heavily all the way. It took us the best part of the morning to reach the summit. Towards the end I was feeling nauseous and exhausted. The whole thing was really just a steep hike through snow apart from the last 50 metres or so where I got to get the axes out >:) Was pretty emotional reaching the summit (5760m !!). The view was incredible combined with the relief that we made it to the top was great.

Going down was a different story, crampons give you super powers going downhill on snow it seems. You can just take massive steps on really steep slopes and remain pretty stable. When we got back down to the meadow camp me and Andrew both collapsed and Reynolds actually cooked for us (Hope you are reading this Jan) ;)

Put my mat outside the tent and just lay down in my sleeping bag looking at the stars. You can see so many here. I tried to take photos of them but don´t have the required camera sKiLLz. Played some tunes on my ipod and a song came on with some pan pipey style music, which went down really well. Cheers Vlad.


This day was the highlight of my holiday so far. Check out the pics here