Autor: M&M
5 people and 10 llamas live in the place called Arma where we have spent the 2nd night. Nevertheless, a local guy has fried the best trout we have ever eaten for us here. On the following morning, we are waiting for transport to fetch to take us to the place called Visca Grande… without success. Loaded with backpacks of more than 30kg we set out on the foot fo the long trk. After 2 hours of walking, salvation comes from the heaven in form of a pick up with three priests inside. They load us in and give us a ride and some mandarinas for refreshement…
of the Solimana masif from the north, a view we have not seen before that astonishes us. We are choosing the ascent route and are carving the curves into the snow in our minds… The day before the ascent, we move the camp to 5100 and carry the equipment to 5400.
6 lengths of rope with strong support of snow anchors and we are almost up… The declination of the slope lower together with the speed of our ascent and at 14:30 we are at the top. We are happy and our dream has come true. Wonderful views of altiplano and surrounding mountains make it up for the efforts. Couple of pictures and some camcoder shooting and we attach our skis for the descent. Summit ridge has some good snow that allows us to really enjoy some nice turns… later on in the culoir, the snow turns into mixture of crystalised pieces mixed up with some icy spots… Precaution makes us go slowlier and later on take off the skis and rappel down the icefall… We get to the camp in the darkness, assisted by Garmin Vista GPS, falling asleep immediatelly.
It is the 8th of September and we are in Cotahuasi – a village almost in the bottom of the deepest Canyon of the world enjoying hot springs and resting a bit. We already made up our plans for ascent of Coropuna -a huge glaciated volcano that we will approach today. So next week, some more photos and a new article from Arequipa.
M&M
