Bolivia, La Paz, death road and my first 6000m summit

I arrived in La Paz Bolivia at 2am. Not a great time of night to be arriving in a strange city anywhere. I had prebooked the hostal and hoped despite sending them a reminder, that someone would be awake to let me in at such an ungodly hour.
La Paz is the worlds highest capital city at around 3660m and it clings to the sides of a canyon. The first site of the city literally takes your breath away.  Immediatley, when I stepped out of the hostal in the morning, I noticed  how many indigenous people there were in traditional dress. The women wear multi layered , brightly coloured skirts and bowler hats perched on top of their heads. There was a real vibrancy and buzz to the place that I hadnt felt in the other big cities I had visited so far. I headed off in search of the market and to go and visit some trekking agencies to look at options for the mountains.
Within a couple of hours I had booked myself on a day trip mountain biking down the worlds most dangerous road (the next day) and then the day after a 3 day trek plus 2 day summit of Huayna Potosi a mountain just outside La paz which is 6088m.

The following day I was up early to head up to the start of the death road. There were only three of us in the group, plus the guide. We were kitted out in protective cycling gear and helmets and given our bikes. Not bad by Bolivian standards. The only downside being, as they drive on the other side of the road the brakes are on different sides to what we are used to in the UK. Having been in the situation when someone I was cycling with in Iceland had a really bad accident hauling on the front brake instead of the back and flying over the handlebars, I decided I would not use the front brake at all if possible.

The ride was a really nice and quite exhilarating four and a half hour down hill, through spectacular scenery. Although it was important not to get too distracted by the views! We ended up having lunch at a slighly ramshackle hotel with a swimming pool! Great!

The next day was another early start to the trekking agency to get geared up for the climb and then to set off for the trek. It was just me and a nice young German couple, Constanza and Felix. We were piled into a taxi along with our guide Constantine to head out to Tuni, the starting point of the trek. As it turned out the agency were not so organised and we had to stop many times along the way for Constantine to buy parrafin, rice, chicken.....and what ever else we needed for the trek. We drove up and out through El Alto, which started as a La Paz suburb, but is now a city in it own right. It is high up on the altiplano above La paz, endless dusty streets of half built identical red brick buildings, home to many of La paz´workforce, the streets here hum with almost perpetual activity.

We arrived in Tuni in the middle of a downpour that turned into a violent hail storm. Once the taxi had dropped us off we took refuge in one of the little adobe dwellings to wait it out. After a bit of lunch, Constantine broke the news that there were no mules in the village. They were all in another village about 5 hours walk away. We were going to have to stay the night in Tuni and start a shortened version of the trek in the morning. It all seemed a bit miserable.

Luckily later that afternoon the sun came out again and we managed to fit in a four hour hike to see the main views of the Condoriri mountain range that we should have seen on our day trek. When we got back we put our tents up in a small clay walled compound in the village, had some dinner and settled in for the night. When we woke the mules thankfully had arrived. So we set off. We all walked quite briskly, which I think suprised our guide, and by lunch time, were an hour away from our camp for the night. He gave us the option of extending the days walk by hiking up a 5000m pass and taking a different route to the camp. From the pass we got incredible views of the mountains, including Huayna Potosi, which were were going to climb in a couple of days. It looked so enourmous, almost impossible to believe that we may be standing on top of it.

At the top of the pass we could see, dark cloud rolling across the valley towards us. Thunder started echoing round the hills and it started to snow heavily.  We quickly started to decend a steep scree slope and make our way to the camp. By the time we arrived the snow had settled on the ground and there was a freezing wind blowing up the valley floor. We decided to pitch our tents in one of the little houses.

View from the top of the pass

The next day we walked for about five hours up to the first of 2 mountain refuges. This one was pretty cosy at at 4900m. There we met our mountain guides, Theo and Alex, and said good bye to Constantine. After a cup of hot chocolate, we grabbed all our snow gear and headed up to the glacier for a bit of snow and ice training. It was pretty basic, and I had to translate for Felix and Constanza. Lucky Id done it before!

The following morning we headed up to the high camp, about 5300m. It was freezing cold and after a bit of soup we got into our sleeping bags and tried to get a couple of hours siesta in. There were about 9 other people there.

At midnight we got up forced down a bit of tea and stale bread and jam and once we had our harnesess and crampons on, set off for the summit. We were the first group to leave. It was a long steep trudge up the snowy slopes in the dark. The hardest part is keeping yourself in the right frame of mind mentally. Then it is hard physically. We made good progress. Constanza was struggling a bit with the effort and at one point decided she had had enough. So we split the group. Felix and I continued with Theo and Constanza stayed with Alex, to head back down. The sky was lightening and as dawn broke we had the most incredible views.

As we neared the summit we realised that Constanza had not turned back, and was catching us up at a steady pace. We all reached the summit at 6.30am.