Climbing Vallanaraju (5688m)

From Vallanraju

When we arrived in Huaraz and met up with Tom and Dave we had a bit of a chat about what we´d get up to. As it was most definitely still rainy season with regular afternoon downpours hiking one of the 4 to 8 day circuits didn´t sound like a good idea as after day 2 all our clothes would be wet and the hiking might not be so enjoyable. We´d all wanted to summit a decent sized mountain so we asked round and settled on what looked like the most reputable agency to hike one of the peaks that could be summited year round.
At the hostel there was an english girl who´d done a bit of hiking and seemed at a bit of a loose end, so Dave invited her along on a day hike we were doing to a glacial lake for some acclimatisation. I guess we had our doubts about her being able to hack the summit hike but she seemed to be able to cope well enough with the hike to Lake 69. A bus dropped us out to the start of the hike and we made the lake in two and a half hours, two Chinese lads came along with us and despite their suffering a bit with the altitude were a good laugh, hiking in jeans and wellies with their golf umbrella. I´d have to say the scenery wasn´t too spectacular on that hike, we´d seen more impressive glacial lakes in Patagonia.
Next day we went to the tour agency´s office, collected our gear and then travelled in a minivan to the base of the mountain, 90 minutes away in a remote valley. For some reason the guides wanted to camp right where the bus left us off and add 5 hours to the next days hike, we were immediately suspicious, the plan back at the office was to make the base camp at 4000m that day and then start hiking at 1am so we´d get up and down the glacier on frozen snow before the sun made going difficult or at worst dangerous. The summit hike was supposed to take 7 hours up and 4 to 5 down so leaving this extra bit of hiking to be done in the same day would mean we wouldn´t have time to summit before the sun rose and started making the snow on the glacier melt. We insisted on making base camp that day rather than sit around doing nothing for the day.
We hiked up a steep path, everyone well loaded down as we were all sharing the load of food, cooking gear, tents and our own clothes. After 3 hours we reached the base camp as the end of the glacier moraine. Unfortunately the weather was closing in and it had started to rain, sleet and then snow, along with the snow melting this made the base camp extremely cold and we all rushed to put our tents up on the sodden campground among the rocks. Unfortunately I´d sent my good mountain tent home in exchange for a bigger, better vented tent that was more suitable for hot climates so Paul and I were relying on the agency´s tent. It turned out to be a leaky piece of crap more suitable for a summer in France than a cold, wet night at 4000m so we didn´t have the greatest nights sleep. All the floor of the tent was wet and we had to watch out so our down sleeping bags didn´t soak water and lose their insulation. The girl that was on the hike with us pitched her tent in a puddle and ended up bawling at the guides. We were all pretty cold with the usual white fingers and toes, it was a bit early to be losing the head but she eventually got sorted out. Our genius guides were using our stoves as they were better than the agency´s but had forgotten to bring matches and had to ask myself and Paul if we had some. The guides even ended up cooking in Tom and Dave´s tent as it was better than the guides. Hardly confidence inspiring seeing as we were relying on these guys to guide us across a glacier to the summit the next day. I´d have to admit I had a good think that night about whether it was wise to go ahead with these cowboys leading us. I figured in the end that we were only a 3 hour hike from a road and weren´t in any danger at the moment and would give it a try the next day, keeping an eye on the guides and being prepared to call a halt to things if they got too hairy next day.
After some hot food we warmed up a bit but because of the altitude we weren´t that hungry. It was an awful nights camping with the leaky tent, and even though our down sleeping bags were well warm the damp of the tent and water on the floor made it really uncomfortable. When the guides called us for breakfast at 1am we were glad to get going and not really sure if we´d slept much at all.
We packed light, leaving the sleeping and cooking gear behind and once we hit the glacier we put on our crampons and were roped up into two teams of 4 and 3. The first team was one of the guides followed by the English girl then Paul and Dave. The next team was a guide, myself and then Tom who was some distance back on a long rope. It seemed harsh on the English girl to be second in the line up as she kept falling over on the fresh snow tracks and might have had an easier time further back on the rope but when we complained to the guides they did nothing. Was this a tactic to slow us down or was it a safety measure to put the weakest climber second on the rope so if they slipped the team would have a better chance of halting the fall?

Luckily there was a full moon out and cloud cover had dropped so we could see the rest of the peaks beside us. It was magical to see all the peaks around us, such epic scenery. Add to that the fun of trudging up the snow on the 40 degree slope, picking your footsteps and testing that the snow would take your weight. Some times the snow would hold your weight, some times the powder would collapse to knee or waist height and you´d have to haul yourself up and get going again. The fact that I was the heaviest of the group meant I had to tread carefully, taking shorter steps. What might support the lads would give way under me.

Heavy Going on the way up From Vallanraju

Over the next few hours we trudged along at a slow pace, taking breaks, and each snow hill we crossed on the glacier led to another before after about 4 hours we could see the twin peaks of the summit rising ahead of us. Excited to see the summit, but I guess realistic as even at home the last bit to reach a peak could take hours and with the slow pace of the snow making heavy going and the altitude it would take a while. Plus it was really cold. My gore tex jacket and rucksack, both wet from the night before were frozen stiff on me, everyone´s water bottles were icing up and it was hard to drink the icy water even though we were thirsty. Too much cold water would lower your core temperature and could even push you towards hypothermia.

Thankfully though my trusty old boots were still dry, keeping my toes warm and safe from frostbite and the alpine mitts I´d hauled on my bike since the start of the trip were keeping my hands nice and toasty. Everyone bar the English girl were in good spirits, Tom joking about being so far behind our team of 3 as his rope was so long and Dave keeping a bit of banter going. Despite Tom and I having dose of the peru belly we were keeping on trucking.

From Vallanraju

After another 5 hours climbing it was 7am, beginning to get light and we started to cross some crevasses and wound our way up towards the peak. It was hard to see where we were actually going to end up summiting from but we had to trust the guides to lead us along a safe route. Some parts were really steep, one snow hill was about 60 degrees so it was a lot of work to crunch steps into the hill and even harder work if the step went as you stood on it and you had to flounder your way back to your feet using the powder round you.
One really annoying thing the guides did was to lie to us about how far we´left. As we neared the summit there was about 4 times when they told us we only had a hour or half hour left only to hear the same or more the next time someone asked them. We could have coped with being told the truth as we only needed to know how much we had to pace ourselves, it certainly didn´t improve our confidence in the guides and I guess was to play a major part in the decision we made later on in the day.
After about 5 hours climbing in the snow we were tired but all the lads seemed good to go. Tom and I had sick stomachs and were nauseous, not sure from altitude or from the guides crap cooking. Paul and I had altitude headaches as we´d spent a few days down at sea level surfing and weren´t as well acclimatised as Tom and Dave who´d cycled along the spine of the Andes to get here. But our biggest problem was the English girl who was getting emotional, occasionally crying, saying she couldn´t go on and looking wobbly on her legs.

We climbed some very steep snow hills to reach a set of crevasses over two hours, unfortunately at the crevasse the bridge of snow that normally spanned the crevasse was gone, leaving us with two options to make the summit, a tempting 300m above us. The guide, myself and Tom went right to investigate a route to the right of the crevasse but the ridge we were travelling on narrowed too much for it to be safe, two crevassess either side seemed bottomless, plus the snow on top was very powdery and liable to break off so we retreated back to where the other rope team was trying to climb an impossibly steep slope of powder snow and not making too much progress. The english girl was crying again and in a bit of a state and with the lads struggling to make uphill progress it looked like we were stuck.

Even if we managed it up that snow hill they way back down would be treacherous because at the bottom of the hill, to the left and right of the 3 metre wide bridge they´d used to cross a crevasse were two steep drops into nothing. If anyone took a tumble on the steep powder slope doing down, it would be hard for the rest of the people on the rope to dig their ice axes in enough to stop the fall into the crevasse. Id climbed a volcano in Chile over ice and we´d done a half hour´s practice of falling on our ice axes to arrest a fall but it just occurred to me that the rest of the group had done no training the day before as promised by the tour agency, base camp had been too cold. 80% of accidents happen on the way down a mountain.
I asked the guides how long it would take to summit as at 9am the sun was rising and starting to melt the snow on the glacier, we were going to be tight for time to make it back down before we´d be taking a big risk on the snow not caving in on some of the trickier bridges we´d crossed.
The guides gave their standard answer of one of them saying a half hour and the other an hour. ´

I´d heard this all before, these guys either didn´t know the time it would take or couldn´t give a straight answer, the sun was getting hotter, a bank of cloud was edging its way up the mountain and would soon be at our level so I decided it was time someone called a halt to the climb, it was getting too dangerous and the english girl looked like she was going to struggle to make it down. The rest of the lads seemed up for climbing the rest of the snow but I could see they all knew that the girl was in no state to continue and then make it back. I think we all knew that by bringing her along we had a responsibility to get her off the hill, even if it was her decision to come.
The guides were gung ho to try the steep slope but at this stage we were beyond having any respect for their advice.

So we took some pictures, ate a few sugary sweets and then started trudging down hill along the increasingly soft snow in silence, we were all fairly dissapointed and tired.

From Vallanraju

Meanwhile with tired legs after 7 hours of climbing we trudged downhill. The snow had meted considerably and it was warm enough to hike in a base layer. The going was tough, we were glad we taken the decision to come down as the snow would have been absolute mush 2 hours later. One the way up my jacket was frozen stiff, now it was warm enought to hike in just a base layer.

On the way up one of the guides had led us to the right of an ice cliff along some snow and I´d noticed, being 2nd last on the line of climbers that one footstep had revealed a hollow underneath, we´d crossed a thin layer of snow and if someone went through we were in trouble so I´d told the guide leading our rope team and marked the snow after this section to indicate danger ahead.
Unfortunately I was so tired on the way down that I must have walked past the marker and over the hollow. But when Tom behind me sunk his boot into snow and shouted that he couldn´t get it out even digging with his ice axe I realised where we were and that Tom might slip through. I went back and freed Tom with a lot of careful digging and then told the second rope team to go take a wide berth of the dodgy area, in hindsight the guide on our rope should have had someone from the other rope team rescue Tom as if Tom and I were roped together and fell through to the drop below there was no way the guide on the other end of our rope was stopping the weight of the two of us falling. Even though it wasn´t that big a drop, only 2 to 3 metres it made me realise how stupid and badly trained the guides were.

By mid day we reached the bottom of the glacier, took off our crampons and walked slowly into base camp where the tents were still up. We´d been on the go for 10 hours with no more than 5 minutes break at a time and we all fell into our tents for a nap while the guides cooked something up.
I was woken by the guide and the english girl outside our tent, she was in tears and shouting at him in english and he was trying to talk to Paul and I. In an unbelievable mess up the guides thought we were going to stay at the base camp for another night, they thought when we booked a days rock climbing as well as the summit attempt that we were going to stay on the mountain for rock climbing and had no transport arranged for later on in the day at the bottom of the hill.

Plus their mobile phone had no credit so even if they could get some coverage they couldn´t call a lift. The nearest village was 12km from the base of the mountains and everybody was too wrecked to walk that far. This tour company, MontTrek was really living on their past glories if they had gotten good reviews in the lonely planet as this expedition was an absolute shambles.
Luckily I´d brought my mobile with me so I said we´d call a lift and get off the mountain as none of us had enough dry clothes and I didn´t fancy spending another night lying in a puddle at 4000m. We calmed the english girl down, told her to stay in her tent and the guide and I went searching for signal, eventually after the agency weren´t answering their phone he managed to call two other people to send a car.
We ate some hot food and then packed up to get off the mountain, as we started our descent with wet and heavy packs a cloud hit the mountain and it started to snow, making the path treacherously slippy and with the big drops at the edge of the path we all edged down cautiously. We each took a tumble on the way down, thankfully the only casualty was the knee of Paul´s wet pants which he ripped, a testament to how slippy it was and how tired we were as he usually never slips.
We reached the bottom at around 4pm and to my surprise the guide insisted the two of us walked out the valley to get phone signal and call again for a lift home as he wasn´t sure if a minivan was en route or if the villager who manned the gate on the way in would let the van in if it arrived. There was no way we´d be able to stay where we were for the night so I hiked the 5km out to the village with him leaving the others at the base of the mountain, trying to get phone signal on the way and eventually getting through and meeting the van at the village gate.

We were all wrecked by the time the guide and I returned with the van, I´d been on the go from 2am till 6pm without much of a break and was glad we were heading to civilisation, everybody in one piece and bar some tears from the english lady the rest of us were in good form. It had been some adventure, we´d enjoyed the climb despite being disgusted with the agency. We dropped the gear back to the agency and headed to the comfort of hostel churrup, all we wanted was a hot shower, dry clothes and a feed, Monttrek would get an earful tomorrow.

If you´re reading this article and thinking of climbing I´d recommend the climb, it was a great experience but I´d definitely be wary of the agency you go with. Don´t go with Monttrek who weren´t very professional and talk to the lads at the churrup hostel who regularly hear reports of people in their hostel using agencies and know the good companies. Make sure they give you registered mountain guides not just porters trying to work as guides, ask to see their certs as they should have them and insist on some training on the glacier before the day of the summit attempt.

Roll on the next peak, we´ll be passing loads before we hit the Caribbean for some sailing!