Illimani Climb

I had wanted to climb Illimani since 2012. It is the most well known mountain in Bolivia because it dominates the view from La Paz, although not visible from all parts of the city. It's very much a symbol of La Paz. That's why for me it was the most important mountain to climb now that I'm back in Bolivia. It's the second highest in the country. One of the peaks, 6130m/20,122ft high was first climbed in 1877 and was the highest climb in the world by that time. The climbers were a Bolivian, a French, and a Peruvian. It's crazy to try to think about what was the world like in 1877... The highest peak of Illimani was first climbed in 1898 by a British and two Swiss climbers, and the second highest 6403m peak was reached by two Germans in May 1950. So the history of climbing on Illimani goes way back. 8000 meters in the Himalayas (Annapurna) was first reached in June 1950.

 In 2011 when I spent 8 months in Bolivia I was a little bit curious about climbing mountains, but I didn't like the idea of spending several days in the cold, didn't want to pay an agency, didn't have my own transportation, and didn't have any experience, so I didn't do any climbing. Normally it takes 4 days to climb Illimani with a guide arranged by an agency and I think it costs between 300 and 500$. I paid around 15$ for gas and already had the equipment needed.
   I also had put off going to Illimani many times during the past couple of months for various reasons, but on Saturday evening I finally decided to go the next day, even though mountain forecast website said it would be partly cloudy and snowing a little bit on Sunday and Monday. For the past 4 months I've been working 20 hours a week with pretty good flexibility, so I've been able to choose when to climb.

This is how the mountain looks like from the direction of La Paz. The right hand side peak is the highest, 6439m/21,122ft

So, on Sunday I left before 7am and it took almost 3.5 hours to get to the group of houses called Pinaya. It looks like the mountain is really close to La Paz, but it's about 38km away and by roads the distance to Pinaya is about 80km. Altitude at Pinaya is 3870 meters or 12,700ft. I started walking and asked a man with three sons which would be the best path to the mountain, but I don't think I found the path he talked about so it took a little longer. There were plenty of people out on the fields with or without animals, so it was a different experience than in other mountains because they were watching. Even when I was quite high just at the bottom of the mountain face, there was a boy watching his animals, and even higher a girl with horses. Quite nice views to work. High above I saw 3 climbers on a path, going down. The route I had taken was rocky and difficult. When I joined the path I was hoping to encounter climbers going down or up, but it turned out there was nobody else on the mountain. I was thinking of the reasons why I climb mountains; I thought it's because I can see them and wonder what's it like to climb and experience them. I used to look at some mountains, and after I climbed them they became real. The views are also important, and taking photos too.

 The route to the high camp is a narrow rocky ridge that is quite steep too and not easy to walk. At 6.20 it was getting dark and I took a spot just below where the high camp "officially" is, because it had like a little wall to protect the spot from the wind at 5410m. There was not much space, and the drop was steep and high on both sides. I put on all my clothes, ate one bread and got inside my sleeping bag at 7 p.m. The top of the mountain had some clouds, but other than that the sky was clear and the moon was full. Full moon was one of the reasons I wanted to do the climb now. It would have been spooky to be alone on the mountain ridge had it been foggy or clouds down to the camp.

I was really afraid of getting cold in the night but I was warm the whole time, sleeping a little bit on and off

until about 3.15 am when I got up and ready, took my smaller backpack and at 3.31 headed 60 vertical meters up the rocky ridge until a flat area where the snow begins, and put on my boots and crampons. On both side of the ridge there is snow and glaciation down to maybe 5000 meters. The moonlight was so bright that I barely needed the headlight. Some sections of the climb were quite steep, up to around 45 degrees for a while, and other parts were flat. Only one little wall was a little bit difficult to get over because it was soft snow. For some reason I hadn't really been able to eat anything since Sunday afternoon, had zero appetite, and soon didn't have anything to drink. That's probably why I slowed down a lot after about 2 hours. It also got cloudy and really dark until the sun came out on the other side of the mountain, and it was really windy higher up. At 6250 meters I wanted to go down because I was so tired. I sat down on top of my backpack and wanted to sleep but after 5 minutes got up thinking that it's now or never.

I literally had to rest after every 3 steps to get to the top but it was awesome to get up and see the summit ridge that leads to the "real" summit which didn't seem to be any higher than the first summit. I was at the top at 8.15. From the camp it had taken about 4 hours 12 minutes to get to the summit excluding breaks. So in total I rested over 30 minutes on the way.

Going down was very very slow. Sometimes I have been able to almost run down a mountain, but now I had no energy and it took over 2 hours to get back to the camp, and then came the hardest part of the whole trip: going down the rocky ridge with a huge and heavy backpack. Like on many mountains in Bolivia, it's slabs of rock of all sizes on top of each other so it's very slippery. And I got off the path and down a steep section and saw that there was no path anymore. I couldn't go up, and had to do a terrible traverse to my left to find the path again. All in all it took another 5 hours from camp to the little village. In the first 1 hour 30 minutes of the drive back to La Paz I only saw one vehicle on the road, which was a motorbike. There were people walking on the road, villages and houses here and there, and a few cars parked on the side of the road, but no traffic.