Climbing Charkirini (Charquirini, Ch'iyar Qirini) with a lot of snow

Sometimes I leave home by foot, go down a little bit and then walk up 35 minutes along a steeply rising water channel. The angle is around 30 degrees. This walk is good training, especially before doing a real mountain climb. Sometimes I do this two times, but usually I run 40 minutes up at 4180 meters where there is a flat path and no people. From there I can see the Chacaltaya area, and of course Illimani, Mururata and Hampaturi area. Almost always the Chalcaltaya is all brown and free of snow, but this year has been totally different. To the north-east of Chacaltaya there is a peak that looks like a pyramide. Since it is now covered in snow, I wanted to climb it.


On Sunday, June 25th I woke up quite late at 8.15 but that was ok because the route I had planned did not include glaciers. I drove up some roads that I was familiar with because I had been riding mountain bike around there multiple times. I took about 1 hour 10 minutes to get to the end of a road at 4580 meters. From there I started the walk at 10.40 A.M. and after 50 minutes I got to the beginning of snow at 4905 meters. The snow was quite good and firm, the weather sunny and calm. The angle was around 30 degrees, but at times 40 degrees. There was only one section where it was a bit steeper, and where a fall would have been bad because there was a cliff below. After that the angle was mellow again and the snow slopes were pretty.

After enough time plodding up, I got to the top at 5370 meters. That doesn't sound like a lot, but still it was a decent climb with 790 meters of elevation gain and it was on snow from unusually low elevation, especially considering that normally there is no snow on these mountains!

It took 2.25 hours of moving time to get to the top, maybe 3 hours total. From there I went down 70 meters and then on to another peak that was a bit lower. From there I found an interesting route to go down. It would have been an excellent route to climb up: a couloir with firm snow, 350 meters gained at steady 40-45 degree angle.

All in all this took only 5 hours 50 minutes car to car and the drive home took 1 hour 4 minutes. Nice!