by Frederic Crampe, Sebastien Galisson, Javier Gonzalez and Eric Wintenberger
The four of us had decided to go in June 2000 to Bolivia to climb a few peaks over there. We left on June 22nd with Javier to meet Seb, who was flying from France, in Miami before our connecting flight to La Paz. Fred had taken off a month before with Erika to do a bit of tourism in the country before heading off to the Cordillera Real with us. After Fred greeted us at the airport, we stayed in La Paz for two days for acclimatization purposes (La Paz is at 3600 m altitude), enjoying the opportunity to visit the pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku, near Lake Titikaka. Once acclimatized, we were ready to tackle our first objective in the Condoriri group, Cabeza del Condor (5648 m).
We hired a 4-wheel-drive for the transportation between La Paz and Tuni, a small village accessible by dirt roads and located on the side of the lake of the same name. From there, after hiring mules to carry our heavy gear bags, a short 3-hour hike brought us to Base Camp (4600 m). The Condoriri Base Camp is nicely located on the side of a lake, and the views from there are pretty awesome. Looking east brings views of the little-crevassed glacier leading to the summit of Tarija, behind which lies the famous Pequeño Alpamayo. But the main view of course is above us, where the majestic Cabeza del Condor (litterally "the head of the condor") is surrounded by the impressive face of Ala Izquierda ("the left wing") and Ala Derecha and its steep gullies ("the right wing"). Underneath the central peak a massive glacier flows down the mountain, forming huge hanging seracs. In overall, the scenery is breathtaking, as was the view of the summits during the approach to Base Camp. As soon as we arrived, we picked up a campsite for our tents and undertook to build a wall to shelter the tents from the wind. My awkwardness with big rocks soon resulted in my finger getting cut, but fortunately not very seriously.
Next day was a rest day. We were giving ourselves some time to get acclimatized to the altitude before trying any serious climb. So we went for a short walk to the bottom the glacier, and then we climbed the Cerro Mirador (5000 m) above the camp. We took the opportunity to explore the Cabeza del Condor with the binoculars, in particular the Directissima of the South Face that runs straight up the face. This route was our main objective and consisted of mixed climbing with snow/ice slopes up to 70 degrees and two 5.7 rock bands. Javier and I had put in some special training for that by practicing rockclimbing with plastic boots at Williamson Rock.
The following day we went to climb Pequeño Alpamayo. We left early in the morning to start going up the wide glacier east of the camp. The slope goes gently up until below the summit of Tarija (5300 m), which is accessible by a 40 degree slope. Once up there, we enjoyed the beautiful view on Pequeño Alpamayo (5370 m). We could gain access to the bottom of the summit by downclimbing some loose rocks for a few hundred feet. We were able to admire the summit ridge going up sinuously to the top. It looked sharp and airy. However, our objective was to climb the southwest face, a 60 degree slope some 200 meters high. While going to the base of the face, we noticed the snow was not icy at all, on the contrary it was a kind of sugar-snow. Javier arrived at the top of Tarija after us and waved us to start without him. Fred led the first pitch and passed the bergschrund in horribly deep fresh snow. Then I took over the lead in the second pitch to climb on a mix of fresh and harder snow, where it was easier to protect. After going up in a narrow gully, I set up a belay station and the others joined me. Seb led the last pitch leading to the summit ridge and had to deal with a mix of icy parts and powdery parts. He eventually reached the ridge after an acrobatic move at the exit, where we had to go over a small schrund. Once on the ridge, we stayed roped up to climb the last few meters to the top. A few summit pictures later, and after having enjoyed the magnificent view on the west face of Huayna Potosi, we headed down by the ridge line. We were all happy to have done this climb which was not in great condition at the time but had a nice special atmosphere.
The next morning, instead of resting, Fred, Javier and I went to climb
an icefall we had spotted next to the glacier. After 45 minutes of hiking,
we were ready to climb the vertical ice. Well, the conclusion was obvious:
vertical iceclimbing at 5000
m is much tougher than at 3000 m ! It took us the entire afternoon
to reach the top of the single pitch icefall... And eventually, as I was
preparing the belay station before going down, some idiot New-Zelander
sent us his girlfriend to take care of,
arguing he had no means of going down. The inexperienced girl was not
very confident and I had to lower her down with Javier, while her boyfriend
was getting impatient. Eventually, the guy lowered himself down on an ice
piton while I was
freezing my balls up there ! He did not even thank us... at least the
girl was more friendly with us and thanked us before leaving. Because of
all that mess, Fred and Javier did not get a chance to climb the entire
pitch....
