Summiting Huayna Potosi
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A lot of my friends had attempted Huayna Potosi before this trip. They always talked about it in a particular way that I never quite understood. They said it was tough because of the altitude, but I think until you’ve experienced higher altitude you can never quite imagine what it’s like.
We spent a while in La Paz which is at 4,000m to acclimatise before starting Huayna Potosi. Though we never went for any hikes which could have been quite useful. I think a lot of the people in our group had done Pico Austria (~5,300m high) as a warm up to hiking in altitude. I got a bit worked up on our hike up to the high camp (~5,270m high) on day 2 when I was finding it tough and it looked like others who had done Pico Austria were finding it a breeze. I think it gave me motivation on the summit day knowing no one in the group had experience at elevation that high, so it was fair game!
We ended up choosing South Treks as our tour agency who had a lot of great reviews and offered us a good deal. We got to the office on day 1 at 8.30am where we then tried on all our gear and packed our packs. We started heading towards base camp at about 10.30am and got there about 12.30pm for some lunch. Base camp was at 4,800m. After lunch we put on our gear and hiked up about 45 minutes until we got to a glacier. This is where we learnt to put on our crampons, how to walk up and down on snow with crampons and holding an ice axe, and we did some ice climbing. The ice climbing was more for the experience as we didn’t have to do a climb like it for the summit.
We had a group of 12 of us for the 3-day tour all from various places including Japan, England, Israel, and Netherlands (majority). We all got pretty close by the end of it! 8/12 of us made it to the summit.
We came back down and had dinner and pretty much just went to bed. The next morning we woke up for breakfast at 8am, before getting back into the warmth of our sleeping bags for another hour or so, and then started packing and got changed for our climb up to high camp. We had lunch about 11am and then set off straight after that.
I think everyone was feeling the altitude a little bit, some worse than others, we just had to do everything slowly. Not the best sleeps either.
The hike up to high camp was quite tough. Only 2 hours, but I think with our heavy packs and the altitude it made it tough. It was a bit of a concern finding this part rough knowing what was to come later on in the night.
Side note: these Cholitas women were our cooks at high camp. Cholitas are indigenous Bolivian woman, and they all wear similar outfits with similar plaited hair etc. The colourful material around their shoulders are how they carry things around, including small children. They wore these outfits on the mountain in rain/snow/shine. Also, they overtook us on the way down to base camp, getting there long before us!!
We got to high camp about 2.30pm where we took off all our gear, found a bunk and had some coca leaf tea. We got back in our sleeping bags for another hour or so before dinner, but had strict instructions by the guides not to sleep! I’m guessing so we had a better chance at going to sleep at 7pm.
We had dinner about 5pm and afterwards had a briefing from the guides on everything we needed to know for the summit attempt. Our guide Valerio was drawn out of a hat for us, which was quite fortunate because he was English speaking. He was quite quiet but I enjoyed his company, and he certainly helped me a lot at times with taking my water, helping me add more layers on the mountain, and carrying my boots back down to base camp on day 3. Appreciated his help a lot!
I ended up getting about 4 hours sleep which I think was definitely on the higher end. Though I did have some pretty whacky dreams. I think Lucas had about 2 hours sleep, so not so fortunate.
12am on the dot and the hut started stirring! We got into our gear, had a quick breaky of bread/butter/jam and coca tea, went to the loo, and met outside at 1am where we put on our crampons and other safety gear. The guide did a quick check of the gear and connected us by rope. Valerio was at the front, then me, then Lucas. Ice axe was mountain side, and the rope was on the opposite side.
It was all going well, until about 45 minutes in haha. My stomach started stirring and I felt like I was going to need to go to the toilet. This then turned into feeling nauseous and almost needing to vomit. I think if it was not pitch black, my face would have been pale white. A couple groups went past us at this point and it was not feeling promising. The fact we would have still been able to see the hut if the sun was shining. We pushed on slowly, and after about another 45 minutes it died down a lot. The guide asked if I wanted to go back and Lucas go with another group but I was determined to keep going, especially feeling much better. Within about another 45 minutes I wasn’t feeling any of the symptoms anymore, just the usual fatigue of not much oxygen. Phew!!! That was a close one. The guide asked me once more on the trip if I wanted to go back and my response was, “NO, gracias”. He never asked again.
We saw a few people dropping out after this, some who were sick, and some who were just too fatigued. We got to the “ice wall” section which at the top marks about halfway. This was pretty tough. It wasn’t fully vertical, so we didn’t need two ice axes, just needed 4 points of contact on the wall with one being our hand. The guide went up first, hooked the rope in using his ice axe, and once he gave the all clear me and Lucas begun. The rope was kept taught throughout. We made it to the top and both collapsed in a heap on our backs haha. We probably laid there a minute before we sat up. We probably sat there another minute or so before we started moving again.
The guides had a few rules/tips for summiting:
- Try to keep moving slowly, one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t going to be possible to keep stopping for breathers, etc. We needed to go 30-45 minutes between each break.
- The breaks could only be a few minutes long or else we would get too cold. Definitely agreed with that one.
I knew after this point that unless something went wrong, or one of us suddenly started feeling very sick, we were definitely going to make it. I felt better on the 2nd half of the ascent than the 1st half, something I’m very happy about. I think Lucas had a small headache that came and went, but nothing that concerned the guide. I knew I was feeling healthy when I reached for some food at one of our stops.
One of the things I remember most vividly was the beautiful sparkle of the snow under the moon light, I can’t even explain how special it was. We had a clear night with a sky of stars, and we could see the city lights of La Paz/El Alto in the distance.
On and on we went until we made the summit just in time as the sun was rising! Man it was an amazing feeling. We had 360 degree views and the weather was perfect, barely any clouds and no wind. We got photos at the top, but had to start descending within about 15 minutes so we didn’t get too cold.
The down was surprisingly hard! I think we only ever mentally prepared for the up hill battle, but the altitude was definitely hitting us on the way down. I think we both felt a bit nauseous (me not as bad as my little episode on the way up). And strangely enough it was SWELTERING! It was only 8am but something about the sun that had us sweating. At this point we were only in our fleece and thermal too. No gloves or balaclavas either.
It was cool seeing where we had walked in the dark. We walked past an unnervingly large amount and close proximity to crevices which I wasn’t aware of. It certainly was a mountain in that aspect. Even getting belayed down the ice wall we both ended up puffing in a heap at the bottom. Everything was just 20x harder. Some context for how it felt for me on my lungs. Think back to the feeling of doing a really hard cross fit session, or doing sprint trainings on the field (anaerobic training) when your lungs are heaving to get oxygen in. Now imagine that for the 5.5 hours it took to make the summit, with a few rests in between. That is a seriously long anaerobic training session if you ask me! The squash coach will be proud.
We made it back to high camp about 8.30am and had some warm soup waiting for us. After about an hour of downtime we packed up all our gear and headed down to base camp, taking us just over an hour to get down. When we got to base camp we waited an hour or so for the vans to arrive to take us back to La Paz. The vans showed up with Saltenas for everyone which was nice. I think a combo of the altitude and not much sleep meant everyone was utterly exhausted by the end. I didn’t admit I actually enjoyed the trip until the next day once I had recovered a bit. It is definitely type 2 fun considering how much pain is involved. So proud to have summited with Lucas, an epic memory for the books.
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