You never know what you are going to get in the backcountry, our first trek into the Central Andean mountains was a great reminder of this.
Day One: Aside from starting at 4600m, the day was a breeze. We were both acclimatizing well and had a ton of energy to spend as we'd not been hiking for too many days. We were fortunate to have relatively light packs, having parred down our gear to get on with the altitude better. Our rented tent was especially light, as the inner walls were made of mesh. Perfect for the Grand Canyon in summer but the Cordillera Real? The day was like this: Beautiful scenery, stark landscapes, crappy dinner, llama's and warm sleeping bags.
Day Two: (1 am) Pitter patter on the tent fly and a sudden awakening to a cold breeze which effortlessly found its way under the tent fly and through the mesh. The pitter patter became a soft but steady drum roll. It was snowing. Hard. We were warm in our bags but surprized at the mini blizzard that had seemedly come from nowhere. We woke up (picture below) to snow drift up the sides of the tent. The drift closed off all drafting wind and created an igloo effect, keeping us warm through the night. The rest of the (long) day went like this: Soggy Musli breakfast, Pass #1 at 5000m, llama's, down the pass, more llama's, through a boggy area full of....llama's, a little route finding in a whiteout, a field with 20 million caterpillers (Kori took an almost Tibetian Buddist pride in not stepping on one of them...not an easy task), Pass #2 at 5000m, down the pass and finally to our campsite on a lake with views of the surrounding mountains. Not that we could see them because it was still snowing. But we could see the five dozen llama's grazing around our tent.
Day Three: More of the same. Every 30 minutes or so the snow and whiteout would break and we would get a view of a mountain called Huayna Potosi looming at 6088m above us. A mammoth peak in the mist. We essentially walked around this mountain for the greater part of the day, the crux being our third and final high pass at 5100m. We ended up making it to our high mountain refuge (a "hotel" of sorts) in the late afternoon to Mate de Coco tea and a warm fire.
The next day was a rest day, then the climb of Huayna Potosi. The rest ended up not happening and in order to start climbing sooner. We'll post those pictures soon.
Thanks for checking in,
Kori and Brent
Condoriri in the Cordillera Real
Snow in the morning
Llama's...
We were cold, the llama's weren't
Kori at 16,500 ft
Llama Cam
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