We are back safe and sound from a wonderful and successful
trip to the Ishinca Valley. We left on Tuesday, July 9, for the small
field at the valley entrance (technically a town) where we met our
arriero (donkey driver) and loaded up four pack animals with our various
items. Michael was like a race horse waiting for the gates to open,
and, once released, he and I practically ran up the valley and to the
summit of the most accessible mountain, Urus (elevation of 18,881 feet).
However, I’m fairly certain that there’s some kind of genealogy hoax in the Kittell family and Michael actually descended from an Andean or Himalayan bloodline. He’s truly built to climb mountains, inside and out. I reached the snow about 800 feet shy of the summit or Urus and was feeling pretty faint, so I decided to take it easy (relatively) and head back down to camp before dark. I arrived at camp at about 2pm and told Matt and Kelsey that I expected Michael to be back around 4pm. He arrived at 2:30. How? I have no idea. He blew through the last 800 feet AND made it all the way down to our camp in the valley in only 30 more minutes than it took me just to get down. Other than some poor nights of little sleep, he showed no sign of feeling the altitude (Taylor: “Oh my gosh, I am so lightheaded and I might throw up right now.”; Michael: “Really? Why?”; Taylor: groans and complains to Kelsey instead).
We had a lovely evening of Juan 2’s cooking and playing 4-person cribbage in the cook tent. Then the next day we tackled Ishinca, elevation 18, 138 feet. The views about half-way through the climb were BEAUTIFUL. Michael found an ice cave with crazy icicles and, of course, climbed inside of it to take some inventive photos. All four of us summited and had a great time together.
On day 3, we had a relaxed morning and then backpacked all of our stuff up to high camp on the moraine just below our final mountain, Tocllaraju, elevation 19,785 feet. Matt, Michael and I had been really wavering between doing the normal route up the mountain’s ridge, or the West Face Direct, a steep and alluring snow and ice climb. We decided we would head up to high camp and decide from there.
We had heard from Juan 2 that an Argentinean couple had died on Tocllaraju earlier that week, but it wasn’t until our hike to high camp that Kelsey and I met an Austrian climber who told us that he had previously met the unfortunate couple and that they were experienced and avid climbers. They had been trying the West Face when weather came in and, while no one knows for sure, it looked like a serac (large piece of ice) broke from the top of the face and took them out. Either way, the bodies were still up there, one of which was very visible. Apparently (we learned later), a different guy tried to sky down the West Face about two weeks ago and also perished. Not a good season for the route.
After hearing this, I was pretty adamant that we do the normal route. Michael and Matt didn’t take much convincing and I think we had all come to the same conclusion on our own. Kelsey wasn’t feeling very good at high camp and opted out of this climb.
So, at 2:30 a.m. the following morning, Kelsey looked on enviously as the three of us departed into a moonless and breathtakingly beautiful night filled with the brightest milky way I’ve ever seen, while the three of us looked enviously at Kelsey as she crawled back into her warm sleeping bag.
We made good time following the well-traveled trail through the glacier until we came to a headwall to gain the ridge. It was so dark that all we could see were other climbers’ headlamps in a vertical line above us like fireflies slowly making their way up. It was longer and harder than I expected at about 85 degrees, and we passed a slow-moving team on the way. At about the steepest section, I was in close quarters with the leader of the team we were passing, which is stressful, when I accidentally hit my head lightly on the ice and knocked off my own headlamp. I caught it with my knees against the ice, but hadn’t realized until that moment how absolutely dark it was. Michael had me safely on the rope and I managed to retrieve it and get it back over my helmet without too much difficulty, but lost a lot of energy in the process. By the time we were done with that section, I was beat. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold and windy, so stopping and letting Matt and Michael go ahead wasn’t an option. I couldn’t go down by myself either. So we carried on as a team, with Michael and Matt being incredibly patient at what felt like a Grandma Barbara pace.
For the record, I wasn’t actually that slow, but it sure felt like it. We ended up passing a few other teams as we followed the winding ridge and were the first to make it to the top. We didn’t hang out at the summit – it was frigid and uncomfortable. We descended the same way we came up, now with the sun up and great views of the beautiful ice caves, icicles, and glaciers on the mountain. Unfortunately, we also had a clear view of one of the bodies on the West Face, which was pretty surreal. He looked like he was just going to get up and climb down at any moment. Pretty freaky and humbling. Like a car wreck, it was hard not to look.
After a snack, we packed up camp and descended all the way to Huaraz – a total of about 8,000 feet lower (6,000 feet of which we walked). We celebrated with a large dinner and decided to take two full days off before heading to our next adventure – a 9-day expedition in the Santa Cruz Valley with the four of us and Sam and Bill, our Colorado friends. We have several peaks in our sights, some popular and some less known, but we will see how everyone does. The time is flying by.
However, I’m fairly certain that there’s some kind of genealogy hoax in the Kittell family and Michael actually descended from an Andean or Himalayan bloodline. He’s truly built to climb mountains, inside and out. I reached the snow about 800 feet shy of the summit or Urus and was feeling pretty faint, so I decided to take it easy (relatively) and head back down to camp before dark. I arrived at camp at about 2pm and told Matt and Kelsey that I expected Michael to be back around 4pm. He arrived at 2:30. How? I have no idea. He blew through the last 800 feet AND made it all the way down to our camp in the valley in only 30 more minutes than it took me just to get down. Other than some poor nights of little sleep, he showed no sign of feeling the altitude (Taylor: “Oh my gosh, I am so lightheaded and I might throw up right now.”; Michael: “Really? Why?”; Taylor: groans and complains to Kelsey instead).
We had a lovely evening of Juan 2’s cooking and playing 4-person cribbage in the cook tent. Then the next day we tackled Ishinca, elevation 18, 138 feet. The views about half-way through the climb were BEAUTIFUL. Michael found an ice cave with crazy icicles and, of course, climbed inside of it to take some inventive photos. All four of us summited and had a great time together.
On day 3, we had a relaxed morning and then backpacked all of our stuff up to high camp on the moraine just below our final mountain, Tocllaraju, elevation 19,785 feet. Matt, Michael and I had been really wavering between doing the normal route up the mountain’s ridge, or the West Face Direct, a steep and alluring snow and ice climb. We decided we would head up to high camp and decide from there.
We had heard from Juan 2 that an Argentinean couple had died on Tocllaraju earlier that week, but it wasn’t until our hike to high camp that Kelsey and I met an Austrian climber who told us that he had previously met the unfortunate couple and that they were experienced and avid climbers. They had been trying the West Face when weather came in and, while no one knows for sure, it looked like a serac (large piece of ice) broke from the top of the face and took them out. Either way, the bodies were still up there, one of which was very visible. Apparently (we learned later), a different guy tried to sky down the West Face about two weeks ago and also perished. Not a good season for the route.
After hearing this, I was pretty adamant that we do the normal route. Michael and Matt didn’t take much convincing and I think we had all come to the same conclusion on our own. Kelsey wasn’t feeling very good at high camp and opted out of this climb.
So, at 2:30 a.m. the following morning, Kelsey looked on enviously as the three of us departed into a moonless and breathtakingly beautiful night filled with the brightest milky way I’ve ever seen, while the three of us looked enviously at Kelsey as she crawled back into her warm sleeping bag.
We made good time following the well-traveled trail through the glacier until we came to a headwall to gain the ridge. It was so dark that all we could see were other climbers’ headlamps in a vertical line above us like fireflies slowly making their way up. It was longer and harder than I expected at about 85 degrees, and we passed a slow-moving team on the way. At about the steepest section, I was in close quarters with the leader of the team we were passing, which is stressful, when I accidentally hit my head lightly on the ice and knocked off my own headlamp. I caught it with my knees against the ice, but hadn’t realized until that moment how absolutely dark it was. Michael had me safely on the rope and I managed to retrieve it and get it back over my helmet without too much difficulty, but lost a lot of energy in the process. By the time we were done with that section, I was beat. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold and windy, so stopping and letting Matt and Michael go ahead wasn’t an option. I couldn’t go down by myself either. So we carried on as a team, with Michael and Matt being incredibly patient at what felt like a Grandma Barbara pace.
For the record, I wasn’t actually that slow, but it sure felt like it. We ended up passing a few other teams as we followed the winding ridge and were the first to make it to the top. We didn’t hang out at the summit – it was frigid and uncomfortable. We descended the same way we came up, now with the sun up and great views of the beautiful ice caves, icicles, and glaciers on the mountain. Unfortunately, we also had a clear view of one of the bodies on the West Face, which was pretty surreal. He looked like he was just going to get up and climb down at any moment. Pretty freaky and humbling. Like a car wreck, it was hard not to look.
After a snack, we packed up camp and descended all the way to Huaraz – a total of about 8,000 feet lower (6,000 feet of which we walked). We celebrated with a large dinner and decided to take two full days off before heading to our next adventure – a 9-day expedition in the Santa Cruz Valley with the four of us and Sam and Bill, our Colorado friends. We have several peaks in our sights, some popular and some less known, but we will see how everyone does. The time is flying by.
