A mountain climb in Bolivia.

In Novermber-December La Paz ran out of water because the year had been so dry. This year has been very snowy in the Bolivian mountains. In early March I happened to ride bike outside (I almost always ride an indoor trainer) in the highlands and noticed that all the mountains that usually don't have snow were now all white. Since then I have gone up from La Paz almost weekly for different reasons, and the mountains are still covered in snow.

At the end of May I decided to climb a mountain after about 9 months. Even in April and May it rained a lot and snowed in the mountains so it was a bit difficult to find the perfect time to go. Cloudy and rainy weather is not very nice for climbing, and there could be avalanches after it snows heavily. Especially around the last weekend of April it rained very much and it was cold. I usually don't watch the Bolivian news because there are so many bad things happening, but once during that weekend or the next Monday I saw the news and there had been a tragedy on Illimani due to an avalanche.

The last weekend of May was supposed to be partially sunny, so I made the decision to go to the Huayna Potosi area to try and climb Pico Italiano. I woke up early and left home at 3.48 in the night (morning) even though it was raining and foggy. I hoped it would clear up by sunrise. The drive was quite slow and on the small dirt road that rises from Autopista towards the mountains I could only see about 10 meters because of the fog. Higher, close to Chacaltaya I surprised myself by getting surprised by the snow that was on the road. After Milluni checkpoint it started to snow and the road was covered in about 5 cm of snow.

I started the walk towards the "normal" route on the rarely climbed Pico Italiano while it was still all dark, at maybe 5.40 A.M. Once on the glacier, there was a lot of soft snow. I had been on that glacier various times before, but this was the first time that it was covered in snow. The crevasses were covered in snow and it was difficult to see where they were. For some reason I experienced some mild snow blindness a couple of times: everything seemed just white. I proceeded slowly trying not to step in crevasses, but also the soft snow made walking there quite tiring. As it got warmer, my crampons started to ball up with the moist snow that made walking even more difficult. I don't know about the more modern equipment, but I once weighed my boots and they are 2,0 kilos or 4.4 pounds each with the inner boot, the boot itself and a crampon. That is quite heavy at least at the end of a long climb. I got my boots used from an agency in La Paz that rents equipment for guided climbs.

For a moment it was sunny, but soon extremely heavy clouds rolled in.

It took too long to get to the beginning of the narrow and steep couloir that rises 100 meters from 5400 to 5500 m. It also looked loaded with loose snow. It would have been very slow, tiring and also a bit risky to take that route so I decided to abandon the plan and just climbed to a very minor peak that was 5410 meters high.

 On the way down it snowed heavily the whole time. It had been so cold the whole day that I was only barely able to start my car. I got a bronchitis after the trip and spent 8 days resting.