At the end of the valley is the Chachacomani group of mountains. We saw them from a distance and were very tempted; after doing a little exploration some days later a group of Englishmen were to its base. The plan was to climb but bad weather prevented climbing the following days.
Now I had an opportunity, as teammate and friend from Denmark, Michael an excellent climber, wanted some do some challenging climbing.
We set up our base camp at the end of the valley, where we had fresh, clean water. Far above was not possible because the water, running down the moraine, was dirty and full of minerals. The other option was to make a high camp on the glacier, but we decided to stay here.
The next day we set off from base camp at 04:30 am, after two hours of scrambling up the moraine, we reached the base of the mountain. As the two mountains in mind were unclimbed, we had not decided on a route, but from here we had a better view of the possible routes. Michael asked me, have you climbed this mountain before? And my answer was no, this will be the first ever ascent, so which route do you want to take Michael? Michael replied…along the ridge seems a good route but long, so lets make a direct ascent up the steep part.
Building small narrow tongues of snow on the rock we approach the steepest part, when Michael says, hey Eduardo that looks “Little K2″, really this mountain the we saw between the mountains looks a lot like the famous mountain K2.
Definitely that mountain was called “Small K2″, there are many mountains in the area about 5500 meters that still have no name.
We continue our ascent, we had small sections of mixed climbing and finally Michael reached the Summit «Eagle Peak», this being the first ascent he is first to conquer this peak. The panoramic views from here very spectacular and beautiful, Lake Titcacca can been seen in the back ground and beautiful mountains all around.
On our descent we went down another route, and in the base saw the second peak that interested us. We look after a route for the next day, the steep path to that may be fine, I said, and Michael said looks good but I prefer the direct route straight up the steepest part to the summit!
We return to our camp and the end of the morraine, wheere Don Andres was waiting with a good soup.
We made jokes about our ascent and on one occasion Andres asked Michael, how do you say “Eduardo” in English?, he looked at me and replied «Loco» and we all laughed.
The next day we set out much earlier, as after climbing the mountain «Chacha Gregorio» should return to the city of La Paz.
The snow conditions were very good, much of the rise was free up to the wall where we rope. It was a good climb, after a rest at the summit we looked for an easier route for the descent but could not find one. So we returned by the same route, at the base of the mountain we met our porter who helped carry equipment to our campsite.
Michael and I really enjoyed these challenging ascents, this is one of the most beautiful and interesting memories.
The videos and photos accompanying this article are from both climbs.
As always it was a pleasure climbing with you Eduardo, and great to see your expression when I said «directo» on our first ascent in the Chachacomani region.