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Dispatch: So Where Do You Want to Put the Tents?
Buenos días, Mountain Zone. It is the evening of Tuesday, the 27th of June. This is Moss Patterson of the Peru 2000 expedition, calling with the latest update of our progress on Toqllaraju. Our team of five, now known as the Pisco Cervezas*, arose around 6am to start the day. After a delicious breakfast, we loaded the trucks with all of our gear and bid farewell to the wonderful staff at the Andino Hotel in Huaraz, Peru. A quick, 45-minute commute north of Huaraz found ourselves unloading the gear in a small mountain community called Collon. Eight burros are rented and loaded with the majority of our equipment, each member of the team carrying a daypack as to not feel completely useless. After making sure the burros were to be properly loaded by our Peruvian porters, Manuel and Tarivio, we headed up the trail and embarked on what was going to be a three-and-one-half to four-hour trek to Base Camp. The dry, mountain air, combined with the dust from the commute, enabled me to claim the first nose bleed of the trip—which lasted a total of, oh, five minutes. The trail to Base Camp winds through a rolly patch of rocky meadows of the sub-alpine. Fields of flowers in all colors speckled the grassy hillside as we made our way to the junction on the trail. The meadows quickly turned to a densely forested strip of trail and lasted a good 45 minutes, until it opened up to reveal a beautifully serene valley canyon. Granite walls on either side of the half-mile wide valley floor stood at 600- to 800-feet high, patched with dark lichens and bare rocks that resembled a sandy brown. The canyon closed out to expose our main objective: the summit of Toqllaraju, much more immense and serrated than the photos I’d first seen. My heart jumped at the first glimpse of this massive sleeping giant, caked in the white magic that I thrive to shred. Roughly an hour of hiking through open grassy meadows, and grazing cattle and meandering streams that wound around large granite boulders that speckled the ground left by glacial recession years ago. Just when I thought I would reach the toe of the Toqllaraju Glacier, I’d reached the Base Camp area. Base Camp is basically the size of six football fields. So where do you want to put the tents? Forty other climbers and skiers have already staked their camp and claims and watched in confusion as we sat in our supposed campsite, waiting for the burros to arrive with our tents and numerous other items of vital equipment. Forty-five minutes wanders past and we sleep like babies underneath the afternoon sun. At 14,500 feet, sleeping becomes more like a zombie-like state of unconsciousness. The much anticipated arrival of our gear is upon us at last, to welcome the site of Tarivio and Manuel and their amigos. Camp is quickly constructed to the music of Bob Dylan and Ani DiFranco pumping from Jake Norton's CD player and portable speakers, all the while, Toqllaraju looming over our heads at a distance that seems only a stone's throw away. Porter and a quickly healing Wade head upstream in search of less contaminated water, leaving Jake, Bissell and myself to scope routes of ascent and descent. Oh yeah, cooking dinner as well. Dinner is fat, the night is upon us. Oh yeah, here's a twist— our Peruvian friends forgot their tent. No problemo. As the stars burn like hundreds of headlamps in the night sky, this is Moss Patterson signing off for the Pisco Cervezas in the Ishinca Valley of the Cordillera Blanca. Ciao.
*
Pisco is the name of a peak in the Cordillera Blanca, and it's also the name of the local drink that everyone loves, as in Pisco sours. |
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