I started walking from the car at 6.21 am. After one hour I arrived at a lake. After another hour I reached the low end of the glacier, which ended almost to another lake at 4870 meters. This lake has some sandy beaches that could be nice for camping.
The climb certainly looked nice from the beginning of the glacier, and the snow was perfect. The slope was not too steep, but I think over 30 degrees all the time, and the steepest section was around 50 degrees. Of course in the pictures it looks less steep.
Here I took the right side, climbing close to the rocks on the right. The middle of the picture would have been steeper, but this time after a difficult climb on Serkhe one week earlier, I wanted to avoid all difficulties. The right side also looked safest; there were some crevasses on my left although right now after the rainy season is over they are mostly filled up with snow. That's why this is the best time to climb, especially alone, and also now there is less ice on the mountains, which is good.
After the steepest section, it was quite long snow field at about 30 degrees. The last 50 vertical meters to the top were a mix of rock and snow at a steep angle. From the start of the glacier until the beginning of the mixed rock and snow it was about 490 vertical meters that I covered in 60 minutes (not including one short stop) which I think is really fast. I didn't think the last part would have been difficult, but at first I climbed up a little bit, but had to go back down because it was too difficult. Then I tried another route, but had to come down again. I traversed more to the left and tried and failed again, thinking that maybe I could make it if I took my crampons and boots off and tried in running shoes, but I was not going to do that. Finally, I went back close to where I did my first attempt, and found a way through to a steep and narrow snow couloir that leads to the top. The top was rocky with a little bit of snow. I'm glad that this time it was not foggy I had good views.
Serkhe Kollu zoomed from Hati Kollu:
Mururata zoomed from Hati Kollu:
On the drive back to La Paz, on a narrow one-lane road, 3 men were doing maintenance. They had a tractor and a truck on the road and I had to wait about 15 minutes. Then they wanted me to give them "at least 30 bolivianos" (about 4,5 dollars) to buy soda. I didn't pay, and only had 20, but they insisted. I still didn't pay, saying I had nothing. They left saying they wouldn't let me pass until late in the evening because I didn't pay, and got back to their work. I drove closer to the tractor that was working but blocking the road, keeping the engine running, and after another 15 minutes they let me pass. Soon, the back door of my car just opened, and I stopped. This was closer to the city, and police appeared in a pick up truck. They talked to me a lot and then found out I was missing an inspection sticker, and that they could give me a ticket of 80 bolivianos, or I could just pay them 20 bolivianos. I kept saying that nothing was missing, everything was ok with the car, and they could just give me a verbal warning, etc. A lot of talking, but a long story short, eventually I kept insisting I wanted the ticket of 80 bolivianos, and not pay them 20 bolivianos, and they just left. So they just invented the whole thing to get some money for themselves.
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