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Norton

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My first trip there was with my father and a couple friends, after I graduated from college in '96 and we went down, and I had been to the Himalaya a lot before and didn't really know what to expect with Peru, and was just immediately turned on by it. The people were wonderful and very similar, in a lot of ways, to the people in the Himalaya and the mountains were just spectacular. I was amazed at how jagged they were and, at the same time, how accessible they are and just wonderful routes and fun climbing of all different grades.

How do they compare to the Himalaya?

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The obvious thing is they're smaller, but they're much more jagged and rugged and sharp for the most part. Huascarán is the most notable exception to that, being kind of big and lower angle, but the majority of the Cordillera Blanca are just these sharp, kind of, spires of rocks, not quite as jagged as the Karakoram, but huge fluted faces and just amazingly dramatic. And being an equatorial mountain range, the glaciation really blew me away. Rather than like you have in most ranges, these glaciers that just wind for miles and miles down through valleys. All the glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca pretty much end abruptly in ice cliffs at around 16,500 feet— seems to be kind of the disembarkation mark or something. I think just the dramatic nature of the peaks is what really makes them stand out — not that the Himalaya aren't — but they're dramatic in a different way, I think.

Why Toqllaraju?

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We had first talked about doing Huascarán, which I've been on twice before and it would be a great ski route, but for time reasons, time restrictions, it didn't really make sense to do it. So we settled on Toqllaraju, which is a really accessible peak in the Ishinca Valley, where we can do a couple other peaks to warm up and ski those as well. Toqllaraju is just a beautiful peak; it dominates the Ishinca Valley and just looks beautiful, and the route is very manageable from a skiing standpoint. The summit pyramid of that is about maybe 45 degrees or so, so starting to get fairly steep and entertaining, but nothing desperate.

How will you choose which lines to ski?

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I think the snowpack will really be the biggest variable. My first trip down to Peru in '96 was a great snow year, pretty consistent with other years, and we had a great time. But then I was there in '98 and it was a very dry year, and there was almost no snow on anything. This was really wild, and most of the peaks that year would not have been skiable — a lot of them weren't even climbable by most groups.

So that will be a big variable in how the conditions are and what we can climb and ski. But the nice thing about the Ishinca Valley is you're surrounded by peaks. There's Urus and Ishinca, which are 17,500 and 18,200, respectively, and those are both day climbs from our Base Camp. Then there's obviously Toqllaraju and then there's also Nevado Ranrapallka which is about 19,200 or thereabouts, and that's another great potential for a ski trip.

What are some other options if you don't go for Toqllaraju?

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I think Ranrapallka would be the next best bet. We wouldn't be able to ski off the summit on Ranrapallka because it's got a long, knife-edged summit ridge, but there's a huge, steep basin that would be a great, challenging ski and a lot of fun, and it's roughly the same height. So I'd think that would be our next option, and it's right out of the same valley.