The Cordillera Blanca!

The town of Huaraz is definitely well known around the world for its proximity to the Cordillera Blanca, a mountain range in Peru that has some of the most amazing looking peaks on the planet. Paramount pictures actually chose one of the mountains in the Cordillera Blanca to be their emblem; it's called Artensonraju which combines the spanish word artesa (reservoir) and the Quechua word raju (ice). I knew coming here from the beginning that I needed to try and get up into the mountains and see these beautiful peaks. Luckily, some of my friends that I had met here were doing a group trip and they invited me along. Of course, I said YES!

We're all packed and ready to go, including almost 3 yr old Andrea!
(Left to Right) Jhon, Juanito, Scotty, Chato, Eloy, Belinda, and Andrea

We met at our friends David & Marie's outdoor agency, QuechuAndes, to talk about logistics and figure out what food we needed to get. Jhon and Juanito insisted that they buy the food without me there so that they could get a better price since I'm not a native; I definitely let them do that. Our plan was to take 4 days and head up to the peaks Mururahu and Pongos, both summits at 5688m and 5630m respectively. I definitely had never been that high and was worried about the altitude, even though that I've been living at over 3000m for almost 3 weeks. I rented a bunch of gear from QuechuAndes since I couldn't bring all my stuff down myself (too much weight). In total, we ended up being a group of 7, including Juanito's little girl Andrea who was only just 2 years and 10 months!!!!!

One of multiple river crossings... we even had to fill them in with rocks at times!

The morning of, we all met at QuechuAndes to pack our gear, divy up the group stuff, and head out to the collectivo station to get a 45 minute ride to Catac, a town just south of Huaraz. Then we got taxis to take us east into the mountains for about 1.5 hours across some pretty gnarly backcountry roads. There were multiple river crossings or washed out sections where we had to pile up rocks in order for the cars to get through! This one took us over 10 minutes to fill in... The hike in to base camp was a good 6-7 miles in so I knew I had my work cut out for me. My pack was pretty heavy already! We were walking through some pretty beautiful countryside; lush green meadows with streams running through them, mountains on all sides, lakes here and there, blue sky with picture perfect clouds rolling through, and not too hot... couldn't have asked for better hiking weather.

Psyched to be camping in the mountains...

The first night we actually stopped short of our goal because Juanito's wife was feeling pretty tired (so was I) so we made camp in a beautiful green field with tons of lupine and a rolling creek nearby. Little did I know that Jhon was a master chef in the backcountry; he made delicious soup, rice, vegetables, you name it. I could tell that I wasn't going hungry on this trip! The following morning, we packed up camp and headed up hill to our targeted base camp closer to the mountains the first half of the day. That afternoon, we headed up the beginning of Mururahu to scope the route and make sure we could find our way the next morning in the darkness; gotta love alpine starts! On the way up, I could tell my knee was acting a bit funky but I didn't pay much attention to it; I should have though. On the way down, it hurt a bit more and I knew I needed to rest. Hopefully it didn't hurt too much on the way up the climb in the morning. We all went down to camp, made dinner and prepped our gear and went to bed by 8pm.

Why were our packs so heavy? Because we brought BOMB food... :-D

That next morning, we woke up around 2am, ate breakfast, and started hiking up around 2:30 am. Belinda and Andrea stayed in the tents sleeping all nice and warm. The first 150 m were all on rock; easily scrambling but sometimes wet and slippery... scary with huge boots on! We finally came to the snow field leading up to the headwall of Mururahu, so we put on our harnesses, crampons, etc and roped up. I was in the middle of a team of 3 with Juanito and Jhon. Eloy and Chato made their own team of 2. The snow field continued to increase pitch until some of the sections reach more than 65 degrees. We were glad to have ice tools and not just an ice axe to get up these. We stopped at the eastern edge just around sunrise, hoping to turn northwest up the spine of the mountain to the summit. Unfortunately, instead of finding a snow field to the top, we found a route that was way too technical for any of us to climb with the gear that we had. We had to find a new way to get up.

Sunrise in the Cordillera Blanca at 5300m

We came back down a little ways to the middle of the main face in hopes of traversing some rocky sections into more ice. It proved to be too too sketchy again because we didn't have adequate rock protection to get up. We needed pitons and cams that we just didn't bring... :(  The view from 5300 m though was breathtaking; so many jagged mountains just wanting to be climbed, a slight breeze that wasn't too cold, the sunrise seemed to take forever. To the north was our other objective, Pongos. It was the perfect perspective to scout a route to the top. It looked pretty treacherous; the glacier that we were planning on going up was completely broken up with crevasses everywhere. We couldn't see a clear path to the top from this far away... we'd have to wait to see what it was like when we actually got up there.

Looking north to Pongos from the ice field below Mururaju at 5300m

At this point, my knee started hurting immensely. I had slipped on scree the previous day with my huge pack on and didn't think much of it at the time. My knee was hurting so much that I could barely walk down the mountain. I told the rest of the guys that I needed to go back; I could barely stand. On the way down, I had to scoot on my butt sometimes because I couldn't bare weight on my right leg. It was incredible how much energy was needed to get my body down the mountain without the use of my leg. I was pretty worried at the time; not only were we 6-7 miles in from the trailhead, I still had to get down snow/ice and a 5.4 rocky section back to camp. At camp, I started thinking about all the possible things that could be wrong with my knee; tore something, hyper extended something, bruised the bone somehow... I've never had that much pain in my legs, let alone not being able to put weight on it. I had to keep my right leg straight at all times while coming down. I needed to rest so hopefully I could hike out the following day; climbing Pongos was definitely not in the cards for me.

Looking up the snow field to Mururaju's 600m face... next time!

After a hefty dose of pain killers, massaging, and sleeping, I awoke the next day hoping that my knee felt ok. The other guys had gotten a very late alpine start to try and climb Pongos; the super early hour of 5am. Their plan was to get up at 2am. They came back unsuccessful around 11am and we packed up our stuff and started the hike back out. My knee felt fine until maybe 1 mile to go and the intense shooting pain came back. I limped my way the last mile, super worried. A family was able to take all 7 of us down to the main road in the back of their super ghetto Chevy pickup truck. The ride took over 1.5 hours while breathing exhaust but I was just glad to not have to weight my leg anymore. I talked to David about my knee and he was not worried about it; it wasn't swollen and there were no signs of internal bruising/bleeding. We had a 4 more days in Huaraz before our flight to Brazil so some days of rest would be good for it.

Alex back in Huaraz climbing some sweet boulders...

I kept up on the pain killers and used a brace on my knee everywhere I went. Over the next couple days, it did feel a lot better. We tried climbing the last 2-3 days of the trip and I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't hurt to climb. Walking felt more natural everyday so my spirits increased as well. Currently, I'm sitting in the airport in Lima super happy that my knee is still improving and feeling better everyday. :) For our last night in Huaraz, we went out to dinner with our friends David and Marie at their favorite pizza place, La Comedia. They are just about finished with their guidebook of Peru and it's climbing areas. We were hoping to purchase a copy before we left but it looks like we'll have to get our copies a bit later. I feel super lucky because some of my photos made it into the guidebook, including a picture of me climbing! It is pretty small but still... I made the cut!

Our next stop is Iguazu Falls in Brazil/Argentina for a day, then Sao Paulo and Rio for some climbing before the World Cup craziness starts. We've got one more month in South America... let's see what Brazil can deliver!!! Tune in next time as the climbing adventure continues!

Thanks again to all of our friends in Peru; David, Marie, Roosevelt, Andrey, Rodrigo, Chico, Juanito, Jhon, Javier, everyone at Hatun Machay, Camille, Julia, Benji and the brothers at Alkilpo (your hostel is legit!), Chase, Ben (We're comin' Germany!) and many more... the trip to Peru wouldn't be as rad if we hadn't met you all!!!!!!