Near death experience on Huayna Potosi
Trip Start
Jan 26, 2000
1
20
30
Trip End
Jun 14, 2000
Huayna Potosi,
Bolivia
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
After spending the afternoon going around the agencies I found one with a really nice guide, Edwin. He was in his forties with lots of experience and he had a bit of a motor mouth with which he was happy to share his views and stories with us.
The next morning I met up with the two other people who were going to climb with us, a Canadian, Geoff and a German, Martin. We took a minibus to are starting point, the 4700m Zonga Pass. It was here we picked up another guide and had a hearty lunch cooked by some little old round Bolivian woman who couldn't have been over 4f 6'. That afternoon we hiked up to base camp at 5000m where we ate our evening meal before getting into bed for 7pm. There was a good reason for such an early retreat, one it was bloody cold and two, our alarm was set for 1am! We woke dressing in plenty of layers and putting on our safety harnesses and mountain boots. After a cup of tea it was on with the crampons and the safety rope (I was roped up with Edwin and Doug). Ice axe in hand we started up the steep slope by our camp. Two hours later we had reached Campamento Argentina, a site often used by people wanting to climb the mountain. It was the perfect morning, no clouds or wind, to the east we could see the lights of El Alto (a suburb of La Paz) and to the south we could see the clouds over the rain forest with bright flashes appearing every few seconds from electrical storms which were happening down there. Up above we had a perfect view of the stars, the milky way and shooting stars which appeared to be around in large numbers this morning. All the signs were good and I was on a real high and looking forward to reaching the summit. Just after the camp came our first real technical part, we had to cross over a crevasse, Edwin who had been Mr. Nice Guy up until now gave me a huge bollocking for letting the rope go slack in between us, I think the stress must have been getting to him. I slowly started to get a headache as we continued upwards, a sure sign of altitude sickness. At 6am we were about 300m from the summit and the sun was just starting to rise. It was a magnificent sight watching the mountain light up from it's dark state to a grey/blue and finally to a shining, blinding white. It took a further 2 hours to reach the summit from this point and all I could think about doing was stopping where I was and waiting for the others to come back down, I just didn't care that we were so close. The altitude had given me a corking headache, I felt ill and on top of that I was feeling totally physically drained. The last 50 metres in altitude was probably one of the most demanding things I've done. We had to traverse a snow ridge for 300m which was not even wide enough to walk on in parts, to the right of this ridge, which was overhanging was a vertical drop of 1000m and to the left the drop was steep enough and far enough to ensure a fall would have not had a happy conclusion. All I could thing for the last 15 minutes was why am I doing this and I know, whether it was consciously or not, I did not look over the steep edge once. When we finally reached the top I knew exactly why I had put myself through all that pain, I was emotionally and physically drained, but this feeling together with the views brought tears to my eyes. We could see all the major peaks in the Cordillera Real, the lowlands of the rain forest, Lake Titicaca and the flat expanse of arid land which stretched out from La Paz.
After a short while on the top we had to make our descent. Descents are apparently where most accidents happen and with the fatigue I felt I could see why, we really needed to keep our wits about us. We took another route down from the summit, our guide had felt part of the ice crack on the precarious ridge as we were coming up (although he never told us this until the bottom). The route was very steep, I felt absolutely shattered and half way down while trying to knock the snow off the bottom of my boots with my ice axe, which had clogged up my crampons, I lost my balance and went tumbling head first down this slope taking Edwin and Geoff with me. I saw Edwin come flying past me and at that point I thought were were really screwed. After about 200m I managed to get my ice axe wedged and stop us. It turned out that it was actually Geoff and myself who managed to stop us, guide who was meant to be protecting us had dropped his ice axe and was therefore no use at all!
I really didn't feel conscious from that moment onwards, I physically couldn't eat or drink anything and I has a headache like I'd been out and drunk 20 pints of lager the previous night. I found it extremely difficult to concentrate enough to make it down safely. After what seemed like an eternity we arrived back at base camp. I could hardly muster the strength to dismantle the tent and pack my rucksack. When we made it down to our starting point the nice little old Bolivian lady was there with a hot soup waiting for us. I was feeling so crook I refused to eat any, but my guide forced me, the transformation was like a miracle and within 15 minutes I was back to my usual self.
The trip up Huayna Potosi must have been one of the most difficult, yet most rewarding things I've ever done, before the trip I had ideas of other mountains I would like to climb afterwards, after the trip I just couldn't face any more high altitude trips. Now after forgetting about the worst parts I'm ready to go and climb some more high peaks.
