Urus and bad weather

So, having just about recovered from our hiking in Huayhuash, (¨just about¨ being the words to concentrate on here!), we nursed our sore legs, blistered feet and bruised shoulders with copious amounts of juice, food, coffee and beer here in Huaraz.

We had ideas of trying to climb a mountain, so after a little bit of research we settled with the one that Paramount Pictures borrows as their logo "Artesonraju".You may know this one as it flashes up before your film with a collection of stars forming a near circle above it. We calculated the daily food and rented additional equipment needed and as one final check before we leave we drop into an old friend who runs a mountain guides shop, here in town.

Poncho tells us how he had two distressed Spanish climbers show up in his agency yesterday back from our proposed route. They had tales of waist deep snow and how they had fallen down several crevasses and this he explained with a smile was only on the glacier. They did not make it near the mountain! Hmmm. There´s only one thing to do we think.

We ran to a nearby coffee shop, ordered beers and strong coffees and figured out where else to go. Leafing through reference books the coffee shop keeps in their library, we found a nearby valley with a couple of accessible peaks. Everything is back on track! Without further ado, we organised a lift and walked for five hours with heavy bags up the Ishinca valley. Sue had climbed a peak in this valley eight years ago with a friend of ours, Donal. On that trip the only people they met were two young boys below the age of ten herding cows on the high pampa. After several hours hiking we turned the last corner into the valley, exhausted and delighted to reach the campsite. To our shock we discovered 63 tents, an "Andean climbers hut" and several plastic sheeting stalls run by campasinas selling beer and coca cola. Wow we thought, we are not the only ones who think this place is special! We retreated to our tent while the mob outside talked about their "Andean exploits" and we muttered about the good auld days! We later discovered that this has happened to two valleys in the range "to improve accessibility to some of the easier peaks" while the others have been left for the more adventurous, ie hardly anybody.

The next morning, we rose early and climbed the nearby Urus (5430m). Its a relatively easy peak and as we shared the summit with a girl from Slovenia, we wonder where the 63 tents full of people were! As we reach the edge of the moraine on the way back down we meet 30 odd people roped to their various guides all struggling horribly with the altitude. I encouraged them by saying its only an hour or two to the summit and their guide shakes his head and tells them its going to take a whole lot longer!

There was a long climb down scree to get back to the tent and we were delighted to get out of the sun by the time we get back. The afternoon is spent lounging and eating!

The next morning we had hoped to hike up to a higher camp in preparation to climb Tocllaraju, a couple of hours up the valley. By the time we had woken up most of the 63 tents were packing up and loading onto herds of donkeys; the clouds were down. Not only were the clouds down but we noticed that the snow had come down too. It had snowed heavily during the night. According to the donkey men, the weather was down for the next few days too! We certainly were not going to go up while everything else was coming down. So, we lay in bed, somewhat relieved, because the last thing we wanted to do was pack up everything and hike up another 500m of altitude. Besides, camping on the snow is never comfortable.

We waited for a few hours, thinking the weather might get better but it got progressively worse and soon it was lashing rain. We celebrated Sue´s birthday a day early, by eating her chocolate bar cake and playing endless games of dice. Our tent is too small for spending days in, waiting for better weather, so we packed everything up and headed back to Huaraz getting thoroughly soaked en route.


In Huaraz we met back up with Brid and Jim and the birthday celebrations continued in somewhat better style as the rain continued to fall for several days!