The two Chinsee guys alarms go off. It"s midnight, we"re at almost 5200 meters and the sound of the alarm meant that today was do or die! It was the dinner bell for the summit attempt. We would lace up our boots, strap on our crampons, zip our jackets up tighly against the nipping wind and attempt to summit Huayana Potosi at just shy of 6,100 meters.

So, the 2 Chinese guys head down the wooden ladder to the floor below. Along with them comes the girl from Holland, the Isreali, and me, the tall gangly gringo.

We pretty much woke the guides up. As soon as they heard us preparing our gear, sipping tea, and eating bread, they came stumbling out of their rooms: groggied-eyed, yet with cheery grins. "Are you ready?", they question. YEah I"m ready man. I could tell they slept past their alarms and they we"re trying to play off like they had been waiting up for us to get up.

We all put our gear on. And on me/with me I had 4 pairs of socks, a pair of crampon boots, 3 pairs of long-underwear pants, and then a layer of snow pants. On top of that I had on my lucky Che Guevara t-shirt, my other lucky blue t-shirtthatI had previously nicked off of a good buddies x-girlfirend, one long-sleeved t-shirt, 2 wool sweaters, a water-proof snow jacket, 2 beanies, 2 pairs of gloves, a head-lamp, a backpack full of sugary drinks bread, 2 liters of water, 3 snickers bars, and of course that camera of mine. I mean I sorta did need proof to show whoever I would tell in the furture: that I summited a 6100 meter peak in Bolivia. Now what, biatches! Bring it! Well, to me at least, that was a feat, if completed, would need some much need bragging leverage.

WE walked out into the night. All that could be heard was the gust of wind rushing over the top of freshly powdered snow. The moon was full and the air had a crispness never experienced before. We took in some extra gulps of air and walked through pilings of rocks to the beginning of the snow. With our crampons in hand, and after 3 minutes of walking we reached the snow and trapped our spiky crampns on. For the sake of my future self, as well as others, a crampon is a flat metal plate of spikes, which one straps to the bottom of their snow boots. The crampon is used to scale ice, and snow, a pretty much a vertical angle. They we"re like ice picks under your feet. One felt like one was walking on the moon. An experience one had never felt, over-came one. Along with the altitude and that fact it was 1230 at night, it all made for quite an interesting experience.

The guide handed us harnesses. We put them on with our icy fingers, and then looped a rope through a metal clamp which was attatched to the harness, looped the rope through the Isreali guy, and then the guide raped the rope a couple times around his small frame. And if we fell, this little man would be catching me from a fallen death? We turned on our head-lamps and set off determined as ever to conquer the peak.

The dutch girl set off with her guide just ahead of our 3 man team. The Chinese guys were behind us with their guide. And so it began...

THe first part was a steep bank of snow. We hiking straight up it. If you could imagine: stand a sea-level with a blind blond on, a sock in your mouth, and walk just fast enough to put one foot in front of the other touching each heel to each toe, on each step. Thi is the pace and feeling we were going at.

I had my head down, staying calm, trying to focus on my breathing. The guide led quite a slow pace. We would thank him later that day for saving our asses from crashing and burning before we reached the summit.

We continued up the snowy bank. The only horizon we had was simply more of snowy peak. We could see no peak or summit, only more, much more, of almost vertical snow bank.

After an hour of walking we finally reached the top of the snow bank. Then a fzoen chilliness tickled our spines as the beast loomed in the distance: there it was, the peak, just waiting for us with open arms and an all invite agenda.

As we began the next part I began to realize I was getting myself into a mess of treacherous mountaineering. We arrived at a couple crevices: large icy hoes rangin from 20 meters deep to 50. Some of thm even looked bottom-less. The guide would jump over a crevice, say about 2-3 meters wide. He would be on the other side of the hole, giving the Isreali guy and I an encouraging tug on the rope. "Jump", he"d say in his broken English.

You gotta be out of your F%$&-ing mind man!!!!!!! Jump? Yeah, and I"m Jesus. He"d continue looking at us seriously and say, no really jump. The first one had one praying if one wasnt religious, sweating out of nervousness, and loosing all laws of logic, reason, and thought. One just had to act off of instinct and do the thing!

Soon we were hopping over crevices every 10 minutes and the slope took on a steepness that one felt like one was crawling on one"s hands and knees. The guide instructed us to have our ixe-axe in one hand and dig it into the slope at every step. The other hand held the rope we were all connected to. We always held the rope on the down-side of our slope and the ice axe in the upper-end of the slope, in the other icy hand.

written by  kipmaddog on October 17, 2009 from La Paz, Bolivia
from the travel blog: adventures from down south
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Wow, your post about the summit attempt was insane! It made my adrenaline rush a little! It reminded me of my own crazy adventures in South America, and how much I loved it! My blog is giving away a free night in Peru or Bolivia, if you're still there or if you know anyone who might be interested. All you have to do is become a follower of our blog and a fan of the hostel! If you have the time, check it out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com. Continued fun on your travels!

Heather :)

written by  Heather on May 13, 2010

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