Hi everyone, its been a while – let me give you some updates. Since my last post I stayed sick with this damn cold that I can’t seem to kick; only really going yesterday/today. Yea so that went on a good week and a half – at least. Most of the days blended together as I was not riding, trying not to get others sick etc. Also bike is temporarily out of commission. Kept my act clean and didn’t go out drinking or anything for a long time.... but.... Saturday (the 29th) I was still feeling pretty sick but was up early and took a couple from Saskatchewan, Canada up to the top of Maliga for the road ride down. I thought heading up to 15,000 ft and doing a casual 60 kilometer road ride might help me kick the cold a bit. Pretty mild up at the top of the pass, however, we went through periods of showers throughout the ride down – pretty usual. Really cool couple once again, pretty funny. Definitely not the types that would usually be on bikes, they even stopped for multiple cigarette breaks on the way down. They had an awesome time though and I rather enjoyed it as well. They have been doing a ton of traveling all around South America to escape the ridiculously cold winter they have at home. I told them of my grandparents short time in Moosjaw and they got a good kick out of it, they did inform me that no one leaves their door unlocked anymore, but they still frequently have events of drunk people freezing to death while walking home/getting lost walking home/passing out while walking home. I think the ride actually helped a little as I got some good exercise/deep breathing and decongested a lot.
Chilled Sunday popping decongestant, crushing emergen c’s trying to get better. Sam leaves in 5 days, thinking we should do a little road trip or something. The weather has been crap and tours/business has significantly died down (February is the deadest month of the year) so I’m good to get out of here. Sam who I have mentioned works as a ranger, rescuer, climber etc. in Yosemetee and Olympic nation park He is really into climbing/trecking and the pain that comes with it and wants to get somewhere high, really high, before he leaves for the US. He has climbed a ton of tall peaks throughout the west and Alaska but 18,300 feet is the highest he has been. He throws out the idea of taking a bus to the city of Arequipa in the south of Peru to climb one of the many Volcanoes. I have always felt that life is built up of experiences; good or bad it is what defines a person, builds ones character, shapes their views, actions and ultimately pieces together their one life to be lived. I have had some pretty interesting and defining experiences which I feel have had significantly shaped my life and me as a person, some have been amazing, some have been downright shit. With this being said, I had no idea what I was getting into, I said Fuck It, and followed Sam to Arequipa. This trip was certainly a defining few days in my life in both amazing ways and downright shit.
We began by doing the usual and piecing together collectivo cabs from Ollantay to Urubamba to Cusco. Once in Cusco we found that we could not take a bus till 9pm. Its all good, mid afternoon, beautiful day so we did some exploring and hiking around the mountain streets of Sanblas, a very cool area (in Cuzco) – their arty type cultural area if you will. Pretty tired we head back to our much liked indigo lounge for some awesome spicy curry and a bunch of happy hour/night mixed drinks - kill the next few hours before our bus. Caught some winter X games, 8:45 we better hit the road. Feeling pretty good we get to the bus station for our 11 hour bus ride to Arequipa. We went with the “cama” section, basically first class. Only 9 seats per bus (bottom level) but it was only a difference of like $5 and a total cost of $20 for our overnight bus so what the hell. This was awesome, big plush leather seats which recline a ton and have a foot thingy and a blanket; basically a bed. Watched some pretty cheesy movie with Robin Williams and John Travolta in sub titles, had some drinks and passed out. Woke up at 6 am to the movie “Taken” blasting. Alright awesome, some hard core ass kicking no plot, no messing around to get me all jacked up to climb a volcano. Pull into Arequipa just after 8am, of course I managed to leave my driod on the bus. We made a great team and accomplished many things together. RIP buddy. We cabbed it to the Plaza de Armes (city center.) First and lasting impression; for Peru - a beautiful city. Palm trees, much more developed and cleaner than Cuzco, lots of cool places to eat and little corner bars with character. Checked into a hostal, found an awesome Turkish joint doing authentic kebabs mmm brought me back to Hungary. We ended up eating 75% of our meals here. Huffed it around the city checking stuff out for a while, I headed back mid afternoon to nap, still feeling pretty sick.
Sam comes back early evening all pumped up on finding this real authentic guiding company that he wants to use to climb a volcano and I need to go talk to them with him. To be honest when going on this trip I was not sure we were even going to climb a volcano, I thought maybe we would just get down there and end up going out, having fun and kinda brushing it off. Ok well I feel like shit, lets go chat to some perky Peruvian mountain guides. Once we get there we meet another guy, Andreas, from Norway who is interested in climbing with Sam and I. So there is three of us and the guide talking over the options; we could climb “Misty” the most famous (as it is overlooking the city) or Chichani; a taller less hiked volcano. Chichani weighs in at 6,138 (and change) meters – about the whopping 20,000 ft mark. Sam and Andreas seem pretty pumped on this option, I’m pretty sick but not about to act like a doosh and split to go with some other lamos up Misty, so lets do it. I did however refuse to pay till the morning just in case I was actually too sick to give it a shot. Walking out of the office - I am straight to the pharmacy for medicine, Turkish place for dinner and bed by 9pm. Up at 7am I am feeling pretty good. Hit the Turkish place for breakfast and guides office at 8. We gather up all our gear; tents, sleeping bags, mats, boots, cramp ons, poles, ice axes, many cloths and snacks and pile into the 4 wheel drive. Along the 2 hour drive up pretty deserty volcanic rough mountain roads I was really only thinking 2 things; god damn I love gummy bears so much I have killed 2 huge bags and also this is really happening. We drove until we could go no further and we were kicked out. Andreas, Sam, Ignacio (our guide) and I were on our way to base camp. We hiked for the afternoon with our huge 60 pound packs on our back, something I had never done. It was tough, but looking back I laugh at how simple those first couple hours were. We make it to basecamp; 16,400 ft. YES, I have made it to the first step. No idea this was simply getting my feet wet. For those of you that are curious and climbed mount Monadnock with me this past summer, that mountan is about @3,200 ft.
We get to basecamp about 4:30 pm and set up our tents. Immediately starts pissing hail, pretty descent sized like little pebbles. Once the tents are up we jump in for shelter till about 6:30 when it changes to snow and we cook dinner. Ignacio whips up some soup and pasta with tuna for dinner, then its back to the tents for sleep till mid night. Its snowing pretty hard. The next six hours were honestly almost as bad as the following 6 hours (but not in a good bad way as the following 6 hours would be just a bad, bad way.) I don’t know what it was but I did not sleep a second, neither did Sam or Andreas. Maybe it was the nervousness, possibly the excitement or curiosity of what I was going to experience. Maybe it was I was on a paper thin mat at 16,400 feet at 10 degrees in some Peruvian sleeping bag which came up to my nipples with a head cold. Somehow through my relentless coughing and taking off/picking up my huge pack I had pulled some muscles in my chest which went up to my collar bone area making pretty much everything lying down (including breathing) very uncomfortable. Alarm finally went off after what seemed to be a day. Ok, midnight, time to eat some apples and get this show on the road. We suited up and transferred what we needed into smaller packs, put on the headlights and it was time to roll. This was awesome, this was true adventure. It was midnight, I am over 16,000 feet, it is snowing hard and I am climbing a mountain. It seemed serial, exciting, almost unreal. For the first hour or two I had a smile, getting a kick out of what I was partaking in. I could go into a lot of details; basically we climbed until we hit the summit at 7am. Honestly it is somewhat hard to explain but I think I will keep the memories of those 6 hours to myself as explaining will do no justice and really just would not work. As much as that experience is now ingrained in my blood, I don’t really want to write about it. I will summarize by saying that this climb put a lot of things in perspective. People find it hard to breath and exercise at 10,000 feet. At 15,000 feet you are gassed, anything sudden that happens which includes a surprise or adrenaline rush makes you black out in a way for a split second and perhaps see stars. 16,400 I laid in a tent sometimes having difficulty calmly breathing when feeling claustrophobic or stressed out. I will say this, as you get higher and higher things exaggerate rapidly. Each 300 feet you climb up all the way up to the final 100 feet at a time, things get exponentially harder. I seriously mean that. I can say with complete confidence the last 2 hours attacking the summit (and the whole experience in general) were the hardest, most trying 2 hours both mentally and physically in my life. Physically I could barely move, I could barely breath, my heart was beating so hard and fast that every 15 seconds it would straight up skip a beat which makes you very nervous. It was basically putting one foot in front of the other for 10 steps and then resting for 20 seconds. Mentally, my god it was a mind fuck, mind over body but so difficult. In the last hour and a half the sun came up and we could see where we were going and what we had done. 80% of that time was spent switch backing up a bowl/canyon where every 40 feet you walked at a horizontal angle you raised about 4 feet. I will also add that the entire climb was in snow, once closer to the summit you were sinking each foot into a solid 1 to 1.5 feet of wet snow. This went on for an hour, I remember swearing out loud and grinding my teeth a lot, getting mad to try and boost my will power. I did not spend much time trying to hold back tears as I was too preoccupied with focusing on breathing and holding back the vomit. Of course I thought I got to the summit not 1 but 2 times before I actually did. You eventually reach it the third time – but what mountain doesn’t do that. Right when you think you are at the top, just another half hour, nope just another half hour, oh just one more half hour.
I feel you push on for two rather broad reasons. The first is comradely and teamwork. You leave the city with 3 others to climb a volcano and this is what you will do. No one except the guide really knows what you will experience or what you are in for. The sense of companionship, team work and peer pressure that you will all make it as equals, everyone will succeed, is seriously a driving force keeping you moving. If one someone is ahead of you, you can do it too. If someone stops to breath, you stop. The next major factor is the pure essence of failing or succeeding. Each step you take, each exhausting vertical meter you get closer to the top is one vertical meter closer to the top. Are you going to give up after so much effort? So close? I think not. The farther you go the more impossible to give up. Throughout history man has pushed the limits, raised the bar, done what was once unthinkable. You want to give up on climbing a 20,000 foot mountain when people have done 8,000 ft higher? (Everest). Doubt it.
Reaching the top was a moment of bliss and relief. I will be honest I collapsed, I do not remember much at first I think I blacked out and according to others just lay for 5 minutes. Once I stood up it was a moment hard to put into words. The most beautiful sight I have seen. Above the clouds, blue bird sky and sun, shimmering snow, absolute silence without any footprints but our own. We took pictures, laughed, celebrated – we had conquered Chichani… It was one of my prouder moments.
Jesus, the descent. Well once you summit a mountain it is only half over. Yes you are no longer going up but I literally used every ounce of nerve and strength I had to get to the top. The decent of 3,600 ft down to base camp I managed in about 2 hours. We decided not to retrace our steps which would have taken hours and to just drop straight down the canyon which actually lead to base camp. We started of taking giant steps with our metal spiked cramp ons, leaning back it is somewhat like doing lunges, but into feet of powder on a 45 degree slope. Eventually Sam made the discovery that the snow pack was hard enough and it was steep enough that simply sitting down and raising your feet allowed you to slide on your ass all the way down. We did this – for a good part of two hours. Of course it wasn’t all simple, we had our ice axes tied around our arms for safety and you were digging that axe into the snow and lying on it with all your body weight like your life depended on it. That was your only means of slowing down. Scary but honestly I did not care. I looked like a tomato with my sunburn, had an intense head ache from altitude and dehydration and simply wanted to get to the bottom. Finally in a drunk stumble returned to basecamp at 10 am. I pounded ibuprofen and water to dull the headache which was so bad I could hardly keep my eyes open let alone bend over to pick anything up. We slept until about 1pm. Packing up base camp was miserable. It was just miserable. We threw on our packs and began the hike back to where the 4 wheel drive would meet up. The hike was hard and you would think it was the final button to press but after what we had done it was simply paying the check. Late afternoon we began our 2 hour drive on trails back to Arequipa. It was seriously over, I am seriously still alive. I slept most of the way back to the city with a Peruvian driver on a twisty bumpy trail with my head banging off the back left window.
Back in Arequipa we return our stuff – Andreas, Sam and I go out to celebrate for the 3 hours we have before our 9pm bus. Had a great meal, some pisco sours, some tequila, some happy hour drinks. We celebrated our success as there was a group of German dudes at Andreas’s hostel which tried and failed the climb hours before us – sorry guys. Get to the terminal in time for our bus, I guess it’s the weekend and things are way busier. Out of the 15 bus companies going to Cuzco there is only one with seats, and only one seat. Well Sam has to catch a flight the next afternoon so looks like I am staying in Arequipa. Headed back to find Andeas – no luck, think he had passed out early. Booked myself a room at a cheap hostel and bounced around by myself - did somewhat of a little bar walk having a drink or two in a few places, saw some cool live music. It is very interesting going out to bars on your own, especially in a foreign country and strange city where your language is at best broken. In bed by 2am, up by 6am, bus to Cuzco by 9am, Pavitos street corner by 9:45pm, Ollantay by 11:30pm. See ya never Arequipa (unless someone who visits wants to go down there then I totally will to travel, just not to climb anything.) Fingers and hands are back to normal, some toes still lack feeling.
