An Incondite Adventure: Bolivia

Seven years ago I came down to Bolivia to climb two mountains. After completing the first mountain (Illimani - 2nd tallest), I was pretty destroyed, distraught, and depressed. I opted not to go for the second mountain (Sajama - tallest) and instead flew home, with my dream of Everest on hold, if not extinguished.

Now I have returned solely for the purpose of climbing that missed peak. It is the highest in Ecuador, and due to unforeseen circumstances on this trip, the highest I will have ever climbed thus far. Seven years is a long time to think about redeeming yourself on something that maybe you should have done the first time if you had just been stronger, tougher, more focused.

Like everything on this trip, the plans changed quickly. Upon arriving in La Paz, I was told by my guide that instead of driving to the park and climbing to base camp on the first day we would instead drive to the park and stay in a "hostel." Then we would climb directly to the high camp the next day. This would mean one less night in a tent and instead sleeping in the bed. However, it would make the climb longer on the first & last day, which considering we go for the summit at midnight is essentially the same day. I was cold all day and the ride took 8 hours to get there. I was not pleased and when we found our hostel, I learned it was just an adobe hut that had a toilet but no running water so I had to flush it by dumping a bucket of water in it. It did have electricity and there was a weak cell phone signal if I stood outside. Chilled to the bone I went to bed under four blankets with everything warm that I brought.

Sajama morning, afternoon and night

Morning was not much better. 6:00 a.m. breakfast and pile into the car to head to the start of the climb. It was cold but like all climbs it warmed up in time. We hiked from the road out to the base camp and then up the ridge. It was easy walking and did not take all that long. However, once we started up the Northwest Ridge, things got more difficult. It was all volcanic ash and scree and for every step I took I lost at least 50% of the distance sliding downwards. This was energy draining and frustrating. However, the climb that was supposed to take 7 hours was done in under 5. The problem for me was that we had porters and had not seen them the whole day. This meant that my climbing gear and warm clothes and the tents and food were with the porters hours behind us. I laid on a rocky plateau for 4 hours waiting for the porters to arrive, tired from the hike, wind, and sun. Our guide had to hike back down and help them. It would be after 5:00 p.m. before our tents were set up. We'd climbed 1000m to high camp (5650m) and still had more scree and scrambling before the snow ridge. The climb began after midnight.

Dinner (and the next day's lunch) of champions

High camp looking up 100m to the summit

This mountain is best viewed in about five parts.

Part 1: The Scree

Even though most of the way up the mountain to this point had been scree, after a short rest at high camp we are greeted with another patch of disgusting, slippery, ash. For 1 hour we worked our way up this scree field, in huge mountain boots, sliding all over the place. The beginning of a climb is always tiring and you need to establish a rhythm by putting your head down and just moving up the mountain. This was impossible here.

Part 2: The Gully

After 1 hour, we hit crampon point and put on the crampons to climb a steep snow gully. Normally this would present no problem but the ice on this mountain was pretty crusty. We roped up for about two and a half pitches and made it to the top. It would be the best part of the climb up.

Part 3: The Ridge Traverse

At the top of the gully the snow stopped and rock resumed. Unfortunately, we were in our big mountain boots and crampons at this point so, while a little bit of scrambling over rock walls can be fun on a climb, it was torture at this point. The crampons made eerie scraping noises as we worked our way across rock, up cracks, and around boulders.

Part 4: Penitentes

Spanish for "huge pain in my ass," the next part of the climb were the dreaded penitentes. These are knee, often hip, sometimes even shoulder-high pinnacles of ice that have formed from the wind and the melt on the ridge. They're incredibly difficult to climb through, and my guide kept hacking the tops off these as we went. At first, I thought this was to make it easier for me to go through when I was following, then I thought it would be easier for us to climb down by having a clear route. At last, I decided that he wasn't doing this for any logistical reasons and was instead pounding the crap out of the mountain out of pure frustration.

The dreaded penitentes

Part 5: The Dome

The last part of the climb is the prominent snow dome that can be seen from all sides of the mountain. This should be an easy portion of the climb, but the ice was particularly bad making for slippery a sand and descent.

Sajama is known for three things: the wind, the penitentes, and the scree. While the latter two were prominent, thankfully, the wind was down for the first part of our climb. It was an incredibly frustrating first hour up through the screen, constantly slipping off the trail, sliding backwards, and just not having any purchase in our footholds. It was incredibly draining to start a climb this way. My hands were cold immediately and I was concerned that this was the mark of more bad things to come. However, my guide swapped me gloves and using the mittens he provided and a hand warmer, my fingers soon came back to functionality and stayed that way for most of the climb.

Climbing up the gully and traversing the rock ridge went fine early in the climb although not easy. When we hit the penitentes, our patience was minimal. This section of the climb is incredibly hard to navigate because you can't just keep moving forward. Each step requires careful foot placement and a lot of navigating around the obstacles. Not only was it challenging on the surface, but to this point we had seemingly gained very little elevation. My watch was showing that we were moving at just over 100m per hour, which is incredibly slow. I was willing to give up some pace for the technical difficulty, but this was ridiculous.

The penitentes are supposed to end by 6,300m, but by 6100m we were out of the danger. Later, I would find that this was because my watch was not reading accurately. However, at the time, we still had quite a ways to go and I was growing increasingly tired of the pace my guide was setting. He was stopping often, which left me getting colder and colder. My mantra was to just put my head down and plow forward. The wind had now picked up and chilled me to the bone. Just as I was about to lose all of my patience, we hit a huge crevasse. The guy suggested we go sit in the bottom of it to get out of the wind and think about what to do. It was obvious his hands were freezing so I offered him a hand warmer. We started up the crevasse again and decided to work our way around it, safely passing. From here we continued up the dome, albeit much slower than I would have preferred.

After trudging forward for a while, the slope lessened, and we were on the top of the mountain. At first I did not believe it. My watch was reading at only about 6,300m. All of the peaks around us looked just as high, if not higher. But as the sun began to rise, it became obvious we were on the summit; there just was nowhere else to go. It was very flat (they have even played a soccer match up here) and there was nothing reachable within miles, reinforcing that we were in fact on top of mountain. After taking the summit photo, we warmed up a little bit with the dawn, and then started back down. It would be one of the worst climbing experiences of my life. I have been very cold, I have been in bad wind, and I've been very tired. However, none of those factors were an issue this time.

Summit 6,542 m (21,463 ft)

The mountain casts its shadow just after sunrise on our way down.

The route down was just a frustrating mess. Starting with the dome, the hard ice made down climbing particularly dangerous. We had to go much slower than I would have liked in order to not risk a slip and fall. After a long slog down one step at a time, we reached the dreaded penitentes. Navigating through these going down was 100 times worse than it was going up. Every foot placement had to be carefully calculated as the ice formations would crumble the slightest step. The height of the ice pinnacles made stepping down over them particularly challenging. If the ice broke or you slipped, you got an icicle the size of a toddler up your butt. This went on for far longer than I would ever wish upon anyone. When the awful section was over, we had some dangerous down climbing on rocks. Again, with crampons on, this was much harder than it should have been. All necessary rock technique was called upon to skirt this section of the ridge. Nearly exhausted, we hit the ice gully, and again, what should have been a simple down climb was far more challenging than expected. We alternated belays, not wanting to risk a fall so close to the end. What could have been 5 minutes of down climbing or 15 minutes of rappels was more like 30 to 45 minutes. Finally, we took off the crampons, but the work was not done. I still had to navigate the scree field and this became the crux of the climb. In all of my heavy gear I was sweating, tired, and frustrated with this peak, but it would not let me go. I hiked down with rocks sliding out from underneath me and I fell numerous times, covering my sweaty body and gear with silt and dust. After climbing all night, it is quite debilitating to fall on your ass repeatedly.

We finally made camp and I had a few choice words for this mountain. We packed hastily, and thankfully the porters were there to take my bag down. However, it may have skipped my mind (or likely been blocked out) that we now had a huge down climb in the scree field. Again I fell repeatedly as any given step could send hundreds of pounds of rock sliding, not just a foot or two, but tumbling down the mountain. Not only is this incredibly frustrating and energy zapping, but it's very dangerous too. Huge rocks can tumble hundreds of feet and take out anyone that was hiking ahead of me. Rocks, dust, and dirt all seeped into my shoes leading to more discomfort than had already accumulated. The scree section lasted for long enough to drive me absolutely crazy. As the sun beat down, we struggled further and further away from the mountain eventually reaching the flats again. However, we still had several miles to hike out and although the trail was much better, it was hot and it was a long climb and I was very exhausted by the time we hit the road. I had been on the move for 14 hours and was quite ready to be finished. The climb had been about 900m elevation gain to the summit, and then about 2,500m down to the road.

View from near base camp (which we didn't use). High camp is on the ridge to the left.

Whenever you're on a mountain you're probably alone somewhat, no matter who else is around. It's just an isolating thing to be in such a huge space with so few people, sometimes confined to your tent alone or walking solitary along the trail. I was flabbergasted that on the country's tallest peak we were the only ones there. There was not another team going up or coming down. Only when we came down from on high past the base came did we see people heading up. I felt sorry for them, knowing what lie ahead.

I was pretty exhausted, dehydrated, and disappointed. I'd been climbing for half a day (essentially all night) with nothing but a mad packing job at high camp as respite. A quick trip to the hot springs post-climb was probably the highlight of this endeavor. This may be the highest mountain in Bolivia, but that's all it has going for it. I would definitely recommend skipping it as there are far better climbs out there. However, at the end of the day, I summited, knocked off a peak that had sent me home earlier 7 years ago, and I'd also reached my highest altitude yet.