I'm Alive, yes!

The summit, the climb, the altitude, the cold, the moon, the view, the exhaustion, the happiness.

So yes, the 3day trek to the summit of Huayna Potosi, was one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.

Day 1 , arrive at base camp (4600m), a very nice little cottage on the side of a dam. Had beautiful views of the mountain. In the afternoon, rob my climbing partner and myself went to practice climbing the glaciers with the full equipment. Ice-axe, crampons, harness etc. It was lots of fun....i actually like this type of climbing then rock climbing. I think its because i have weak little arms and you need strong ones for rock climbing. Anyways after about 6hrs of practice we head back down to base camp.

Day 2, Leave for 2nd camp in the afternoon. Spend most of the morning just eating eating eating. takes about 3hrs to 2nd camp, quite a hard climb because we were carrying all our gear in 50litre packs. Arrive just before 7pm. Notice the amazing full moon and beautiful sunset. We have dinner and then about 8pm try to get some sleep for our 1am wakeup call.

Day 3, Wake up at 1am in the morning, its freezing inside the tin shed, but oh how warm my sleeping bag is! We get changed eat some bananas and head of in the complete dark. The weather is perfect though and the moon reflects off the snow and allows us to see our feet. It was breathetaking in more ways then one. We make very good time.....though its rediculasly totally up hill for about 3hrs...with one 30m proper climb up a verticle ice wall. We have a break....but we all get cold so continue on. Reach the last 200m verticle ice wall at 5amish. Its crazy the hardest part is at the very end, when your the most tired.

Takes us a good hour to climb the ice wall. We are all tired to eachother with harness's, but realistically if one falls we all fall. Because we dont put in any ice screws.......

Whilst climbing the sun is coming up. I look to the left and see the sunrise ever so slightly. Then it hits me that im on a wall of ice with 2 people above me, hanging on with nothing but an ice-axe and crampons. If one falls, we are fucked. Eitherway i dont ever look down once, only up a few times. Every 5meters i need to stop and catch my breathe.

Reach the summit at exactly 7am, the sun has just come up, and the tempreture changes dramatically. The sun warms everything up. You see you need to make the summit before 8am, as the sun makes the verticle snow wall very soft and alot more dangerous.

We all are breathless because of the climb and because of the shadow of the mountain. It casts a perfect pyramid shadow. And at the apex of the shadow is the moon!!!!!!!! We spend about 30mins on the top before the long and just as hard decent to 2nd camp and then base camp. As soon as we reach the 2nd camp, we all just sleep, unintentionally....we all fall asleep for 30mins before waking up and having enough energy to change and repack our equipment for base camp. Arrive base camp at about 1pm, eat and then take a bus back to La Paz.

Adventure over LOL!

Feelings about it:

• Hardest thing ive ever done
• Out of 15 ppl who attempted when we were there, only 5 made it to the summit including myself
  
• They will find ancient ruins on the mountain soon, as the alignment of the Shadow, Moon and direction its pointing (to the lake), is was too conincendental. Also Rob found some carved rocks in the shape of the inca cross on the way down
• Happy to be back and eating lots of food lol!!

I hope you enjoyed this post and the photos, a group email will come when i get to Argentina in about a week!

love

Joely