Apart from smashing a traffic light we arrived in La Paz safetly and settled into a nice hotel near the valley of the moon in the posh part of the city. Though their idea of a camping ground was not ideal as they showed us to their stone courtyard out the back.
Spent one day climbing here on weird conglomerate rock (large pebbles stuck in some muddy mudstone) but it gave fantastically fun and pumpy climbing just 3km from the city centre. We then felt the need to sort stuff out for climbing the 6088m Huayni Potosi which seemed the best objective in the time frame we had. Illimani will have to wait. Everyone in the town seemed to want to give us tours up the mountain when all we wanted was some white gas and a map. Having sorted these and snubbed the idea of paying 70 quid to cycle down a gravel road that is supposed to be the road of death we returned for a cook duty in the mother of all storms. Huw and I got soaked cookin up our pasta meal before some kind souls set up the kitchen tent around us. By then however my wonderful meal was ruined with rain water!!
Next day all I remember is buying a huge chicken, driving for a long time (all the time wanting to eat the chicken) arriving in the cordillera occidental and walking into the rock refuge through the mist. The refuge was at 5000m and though we had dragged tents up with us we thought the refuge would give us a better chance of a good nights kip and therefore a better chance of summiting. We spent most of the night melting snow for drinking water and to cook noodles which took ages and the MSR filled the hut with noise.
Woke up next morning at 1am and started marching up the snow slope following in the footsteps of the Germans who had left an hour or two before us. It was ages since I had had such an alpine start and I really loved walking by headtorch. We weaved through countless crevasses and saw dangerous seracs (ice cliffs) overhanging snow slopes we had to ascend. Saw La Paz in the distance all lit up. At about 5600 m we started to suffer, Simon turned around and headed down feeling sick, Tom spent a lot of time with his head in his hands and I adapted a strategy of walking 10 yards and then stopping for about 5 minutes. Alys was a trooper and marched on seemingly unaffected by the altitude. We got on to the steep north ridge at 930 am and then the summit at 10am. Was a bit too knackered to show any emotion but enjoyed my summit chocolate none the less! Descended down and rested in the hut before bribing a taxi man to take us back to La Paz instead of the Germans he had come to collect (we werent organised enough to arrange transport). Got back in time to have one more lovely afternoon of climbing on the beautfiul conglomerate rock. It was Calums last night that night so had a few drinks to say goodbye to him and welcomed two newcomers on to the truck, one from France one from the states.
Photos are below
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