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Climbing El Misti 21-22/6
It took us a while but we found a place with people paid and ready to climb El Misti as it requires 2 or more people and Sarah was not keen. After some quick preparations and watching Miami win game 7 of the NBA finals, it's bedtime ahead of the climb.
We drive to the starting point of the El Misti assent, with Sarah in the car too to take some photos and see more of Arequipa. I fill the bag with a tent, sleeping bag, roll mat, cutlery and a lunch bag on top of the 6lt of water, snacks, the camera and all my warm clothes. I think it will be around 15kgs till I eat and drink more. We say goodbye to Sarah and leave her speaking Spanish with the driver, who was really nice and stopped many times on the way back to point out the sights.
We Started the walk at 3450m and it's reasonably uneventful. Walking on horrible ground of pumice scree where you take one step and slide back a half. The way got steeper and steeper and it alternated between the pumice and large moving rocks to climb. We arrive after many hours to the campsite at 4600m around 4:30pm. We set up the tents and get told to rest while the guide starts dinner. Around 6 we eat and head to bed after a briefing. Both of the French couple have a headache and are hoping it will go away during the night.
It's hard to sleep at 6:30 normally, to make matters worse at 4600m in our location it's about -5 with a big windchill.
We are camping In locations with ice and snow everywhere on the ground, so the ground is freezing cold to touch.
About and hour or two later and wearing a lot of clothes I get warm but it's so hard to sleep. When you get to sleep you wake yourself up by accident as there is not enough oxygen. It's really odd, even sleeping in certain positions makes it harder to fill your lunges and you have to change. If all this sounds too easy, add the camera and my phone into the sleeping bag too, and you have the recipe for a great nights sleep.
We 'wake' at 1am for breakfast, matte de coca and a bit of bread. We were told its not much because at altitude with less oxygen food digests very slowly, so we will still be getting through dinner. We paused for a long time and I wasn't sure why, I headed back to the tent as it cut out most of the windchill. Not long later the reason presents itself, headaches are one of the signs of altitude sickness. I came out to the French guy vomiting and i could see it was the fourth location.
The result of the events of the early hours of the morning, it was to be only the guide and myself attempting the climb to the top, a private tour.
We left around 2:30am, in the dark and bitter cold. I was wearing all my clothes other than the spare pair of underwear, and if there was an easy way to get them on and stay warm I would have wore them too. I was wearing a beenie, scarf and buff around my head, a waterproof, polo fleece, two shirts (one with a hood), quickdry walking pants and thermals top and bottom on my body. Also two pairs of socks under my boots, explorer socks and alpaca socks, next time I will attempt a climb like this with real gear. Under the jumper was the big camera, and my iPhone to save them and the batteries from the extreme cold and a third pair of gloves (another inner pair to swap with the ones you had on to regain feeling in your fingers). Within 10 minutes we were climbing through knee deep snow and ice and scaling boulders.
On the hike we hiked across and up ice, falling through thigh deep regions, with walking poles disappearing into the ground half the time rather than supporting. Sometimes the ash and rocks under the ice would slip and we both slid backwards. We picked places that were sheltered from some of the wind to get liquids and try to regain feeling in your fingers. Three techniques existed, step one was to remove your fingers from the finger holes and make a fist inside the gloves, second was to exhale into the gloves and try warm the fist inside the gloves and the third was to remove the gloves from inside your jacket and swap them. Your toes were just frozen, you just keep trying to move them but we didn't get the feeling back until just after we started coming back down the mountain. The liquids i had were frozen, all but a full powerade which was a slush. This would have to do till the bottom. The climb was difficult in the cold, slippery, unstable boulders and the dark didn't help.
From 5100m the rocks we ducked in and out of finished which ment we were hit with the full force of the wind and there were only two spots from here to the top that was protected. Luckily for us the wind was only medium strength, bitterly cold but not too strong. Just before this point and within the next 100m is where a large number of people quit. I really could see why, it was hard not turning back.
The section from 5400 to 5600m was very interesting. In this area there were many falls through ice, rocks moving from under your feet and most interestingly, we had to double back 5 or 10m twice as I don't think there was really a defined path. we walked a thin, deep snow section across to 5600m. From here we sat down and put our crampons on. This is the first time i have ever walked/climbed with crampons on and they are interesting. The freezing fingers made it harder to get on but they really are amazing. If you don't know they are metal soles you add to the bottom of your shoes with big spikes. This made walking on the very steep snow or ash slopes possible. We both still slipped through at times but mostly just small slipping and sliding until we got traction. We made it up to the base of the creator, the part that was blown out from an old explosion pre colonial. This was a nice place to sit where we were protected from the wind. There is a photo of the creator with the cross on the peak in the photos, this is where we stopped. The trek had taken 4 hours instead of 6 so we had to wait for the sun to rise. From 5600m, every step was hard, very hard, and from the creator it was even harder. The altitude took its toll and the small amount of oxygen you got was being used to keep you warm. Somehow it was even colder every step, maybe altitude and exhaustion, with the unsheltered peak so cold it hurt your teeth.
As you can see in the photo, the cross at the top is huge!! It was erected here for the start of the 21st century, and a small service was conducted. At the end of the service, mirrors were used to inform the cathedral in Arequipa of the success.
It was such an achievement to make it to the top, I am so glad I persevered through the cold and all the doubting on the climb up to get here. There were many times I almost turned us around (with only the guide and I, we would continue until we succeeded or till I quit).
The way down was much faster, almost skiing in our crampons through the thick snow, many times falling waist deep. We packed up camp and picked up the French couple and from the camp we could slide down the ash slopes. It made it so much easier on the knees than the way we came up, and it was direct. In just over an hour we reached the base, ready for bed.
Success!!!
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