Saturday, July 07, 2007

 

Cordillera Huaywash, 25th June - 6th July 2007 - ENGLISH

Huaraz, 8th July 2007
After a week spent in the Cordillera Blanca we decide to move to the Cordillera Huaywash, perhaps the wildest and less climbed of the main South-American ranges, for about twelve days.
Hereafter there is a brief description of the eleven days we spent in this remote range, the resume of what has been on itself a small epic.
Climbing in the Cordillera Haywash was really hard time. Our plans were perhaps too optimistical, may be over our abilities. Also the conditions of the snow and the ice were not as we hoped. The mountains of the Cordillera Haywash are climbed very rarely, and for rarely I mean a few times in a decade. We planned everything, from the gear to the food with a structural lack of informations but this was the unavoidable part of the game.
We leave Huaraz on June the 25th knowing that we are going to perform a kind of exploratory alpinism. The whole range sees not more than three or four expeditions in a year and we are absolutely aware that we are going to be alone there. This of course amplifies the risks and the commitment.
Our initial plan is to climb Jirishanca - one of the most difficult 6000m mountain of the entire Andes - by the "Cassin route", a snow ridge climbed the first time by a team of the Italians including the legendary Cassin and Ferrari.
We realise very soon the objective danger of climbing in the Cordillera Huaywash. The third day, while we are hiking up on the moraine of a glacier in order to estabilish our second camp we hear a strong noise from a nearby mountain. A massive powder avalanche has just happened; any climber being there would be killed doesn't matter how tightly anchored. It is going to be compulsory to choose a climbing route the less is possible prone to this kind of problems (easy to say).

Valanga

As soon we estabilish our second camp we realise it is impossible these days to climb Jirishanca by the "Cassin route". In the last seven years the glacier retreat distroyed the most of that classic route. Now hard blue ice and rock stand on what before was an elegant steep snow and ice line. In order to avoid bjective dangers (mainly avalanches and seracs' fall) we decide to climb the mountain by the Anglo-American route, a snow and ice route of about 70 degree inclination that is still in good condition. After two days spent navigating across the crevasses of the glacier sourrounding Jirishanca in the vain attempt to get to the base of the mountain we give up. It is clear the moutain is now totally crevasses-locked and accessible only with major effort and big means wich are excluded by our light alpine style.

Il Jirishanca e' totalmente circondato dai crepacci

Our plans move then to climb Yerupaja, a 6600m mountain (the second tallest of Peru)and possibly an even difficult target than Jirishanca. In less than a day we get to a safe spot on snow at 5650m and there we set-up our high camp.

Yerupaja, campo alto (5600m)

The day after at 1am we move with the intention to climb Yerupaja by a direct route laying on its West face. We negociate a difficult berschrund, cross it and around 3am we start to climb the icy face with an inclination of about 70 degrees. The ice is hard but flaky, we take three times more time than usually to place our ice-screws. We are slow and with the sun rising up the risk of avalanche gets high. In the last days we have observed several avalanches on the right and the left of the narrow ice coulouir we are climbing. Our route seems free of objective risks but the issue is that at our current speed we have small chances to get to summit before sunset. Just before getting to 6000m under my pressure we agree to turn back, there are more than fiftheen 15 rope-lenghts to climb and all the down-climb. Really too much.
Under the light of the dawn we can see the grand show of the abyss laying under us. Perhaps 99% of the people I know would get a stroke only being here for a few seconds.
The time to rest and two days later we start a new climb, the broad mountain of Rasac. The climb is rated in our guides as AD (fairly difficult) but very soon we realise it is much more difficult than this. After a long and laborious climb on a precarious ridge we get to summit, albeit late and taking big risks climbing overhanging cornices with no rope nor ice protection. The ridge is made-up of snow compact but very thin; so thin that during the climb I manage inadverntly to pass it from a side to the other with my ice-axe showing up the view of the valley standing eight hundreds metres below. Immediately I take a reasonable distance from the end of the ridge trying to compromise between the necessity to progress on the ridge and the risks related to it.

Procedendo lungo la cresta verso la vetta del Rasac

Everything gets fine but on the way back things worsen. On my suggestion we decide to rappel the mountain along its rock face down to the base of the glacier rather than downclimbing the exposed ridge we climbed on the way up. It is 4.30pm and we need a fast way-out from there. It is 6pm when we got at only 30-40m from the glacier. Only 30-40m to get out of this damned wall made of rotten rock! We can't find a safe anchor to rappel down and the unavoidable happens. It gets dark and we find ourselves totally stucked on a narrow terrace with no possibilty of movement. It is night and we got no food, no water, only light clothes and we are at about 5700m with no other possibility than waiting the sun to make the round of the earth and return back to shine on us.
We can't sleep, because the space at our disposal is just enough to sit and there's no solid place where we can anchor. If any of us got asleep he would fall along the rock face.
The longest 12 hours of my life. In 12 hours there are 720 minutes, in 720 minutes over 43,000 seconds. Every second is spent begging for dawn, praying this bitter night at 5700m to finish. We are cold, thirsty and hungry and need to stand up on this "terrace", wide only a few feet, every half hour to re-activate our circulation and avoid our extremities to freeze (what happened, even if ar minor degree, to my left foot).
But there's no night long enough not to end and at 7am the Sun is there again, feeding us with its energy. Mike climb a rock spur and find a safe anchor, I descend as a spider the rope now safely anchored, along the overhanging rock face. We get on the glacier and finally can move freely again; the camp is only three hours down and from there in about three days we will back to the closest village.
Being normal persons we would declare our adventure finished here but there are still nine days before our flights leave from Lima and we want to climb at least another mountain. Tomorrow we leave to climb Huascaran, the highest mountain of Peru (6770m). We want to climb it by a difficult route, "The Shield". Everything (food, gear, informations on the route, transportation) has been sorted out in the last two days. We hope to complete this climb in the time of four days, in a week or so you are all going to know if we will have been succesful.

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