After one night in Huaraz the gang of gringos named "the naughty boys" flagged a colectivo for Ishinca. From left the right the banditos are (Mario, Nacho, Pedro, Pepe).
Once in the amazing Ishinca Valley we set up a base camp (14,600 feet) for our climbs to the four peaks that surround the valley. Tocllaraju captured my imagination the most and I decided I must try it.
First... The entire gang attempted Urus (17,789 feet) to aclimatize.
Pepe had a bit of Altitude sickness and was forced down but the rest of us made it. Here is me posing at the summit curtesy Pedro.
The next day Pedro and I set out for an attempt at Tocllaraju (19,550 feet). We acsended to high camp at 16,924 feet in time to catch the sunset on Toclla.
That night the temp dropped below -5 F as we cacooned in out down bags. Pedro shivered all night in his summer bag and I battled a headache. We finally rose at 2 am and began the climb up the gracier. About three hours of climbing around crevasses brought us to the upper bergshrund (18,547 feet) where we encountered a 150 foot pitch of 70 degree snow and ice. This is not usually a problem with a couple tools, a long rope and some pickets. Not expecting this problem we only had a long axe each and a glacier rope, no pro. Our options were to acsend the shrund with no pro and risk a fall into a bottomless crevass or abort the climb. We decided the later was more agreable and descended 4,000 feet to base camp completely exhausted. At base camp we called a "board meeting" to decide what to do about a food shortage and the fact that Ishinca was still unclimbed by the members of our group. We all voted for an atempt of Ishinca knowing that we would have no food and must also hike the 12km out of the valley to catch a taxi in the late afternoon back to Huaraz. This was risky as the colectivos only arrive in the mornings to drop people off and would likely not be in the small pastoral village to recieve us. Here is our last dinner in the awsome Ishinca Valley. Mmmm.....
We began our attempt of Ishinca (18,180 feet) at 2:20 am. Me at the ice bridge again courtesy Pedro.
The final 100 feet was the cruz of the peak with a mandatory 50 degree ramp to the summit(pedro).
Everyone was feeling great and at 8:05 we all toped out on Ishinca with a huge grin on all our faces. The Wisconsin boys completed their usual summit ritual of stripping to the nude and posing for the wind. Since I would like to keep this blog G rated for the fam. I will omit this photo.
One last shot looking north.
The hike out was miserable. Dehydration, Hunger, and over 50 lbs. packs transformed us to zombies as stumbled dizzily toward civilization. Once we finally arrived in the small village of Collon, Pedro out officail interpreter and master negotiator set out to score us a ride to Huaraz. He succefully bargined a ride for us with a lady using all tactics including flattery, trickery and finally an apeal for a student discount won her over. Although none of us are currently students. While we waited the local women staged a soccer game while some children placed marbles in the dirt. The men slowly showed up and began to play there trupets, tubas and bass drums randomly. This all made for a strange experience in our condition. We finally arrived in Huaraz to and proptly celebrate with beer and pizza! esta bien...
I am off to climb in a remote part of the park for a week so expect more pics then.
Audios!
