Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of identification, go home and report the car stolen. Choe was about to fill in the
insurance claims when the phone rang.
'We've found your car, sir.' It was the police. 'Can you come down to Winchester
to pick it up?' And off Choe went armed with a two-by-two timber knowing he had
some design and building work to do. 'And when I asked the mechanic whether I
could rebuild the sub frame with wood, he just laughed and said it wouldn't work,
but he would say that, wouldn't he? He wasn't a joiner.' Choe rebuilt the sub frame
with wood and drove it around for another year.
Ironically, Ranrapalca was situated in one of the valleys where there were no
roads to service mines or hydroelectric projects. That was probably why such an
obvious face had gone unclimbed. We hired a local Indian with his pack llamas
and set off with his two sons for the winding journey across the high plain dotted
with farms. Men and women worked the fields together in colourful skirts and
ponchos and massive hats. It took us two days to reach a lovely camp among trees
and flowers at the toe of the glacier. Choe Brooks and Terry Mooney walked in
with us to attempt one of the adjoining peaks. Instead, they spent a couple of days
watching us on the face, and when we didn't return as planned on day four, they
descended to Huaraz expecting to have to send the worst sort of news home.
We had learned on Nevado III and Huascarán Norte not to underestimate the
difficulty of climbing in Peru. Ranrapalca did not disappoint. Apart from a few
places, the climbing was much more Alpine in character with little unconsolidated
snow. We were able to solo ice fields to cover a third of the height, starting on the
right and trending left. These were interspersed with tricky mixed climbing on pol-
ished slabs, leading to ice bulges over rock barriers. There was the incessant worry
of falling rock and ice but we were fit and fast, soloing almost the entire bottom
third of the face and wondering why we had the two V-shaped shovel-like snow
stakes strapped to the sides of our sacks. In a chimney between a detached serac
and the rock behind we had to take these off, and lost time hauling them up.
We spent a comfortable night bivouacked on top of a massive ice tower, shaped a
bit like the Chrysler Building in New York, but set just far enough back from the
face to provide protection from anything that fell from the face above our heads.
We were pinpoints in the sky - safe and able to eat and sleep well. The equivalent
of the Empire State in height still had to be climbed to reach the summit.
The climbing was continuously difficult but there were no surprises. We reached
the summit midway through the afternoon next day having used our snow stakes
only a couple of times. It was a day without cloud and we stood on the spine of the
Andes. Most of the peaks were standing clear of the Amazon cloud. We ate some
chocolate and confirmed our original plan. Thanks to the risk of stone fall, and our
