Steve and Emma's Travel Tales

The same taxi with driver Edwin was at the hotel bang on 8am to collect us to begin our next expedition. We rendezvoused on the outskirts of the city centre with Sixto, a boot load full of stuff and our technical guide Theo. Once again it seemed to take ages to leave the city suburbs and industrial zone behind. Initially the scenery was dull, flat open farmland but once we turned off the main road it improved. The landscape gradually began to resemble that we’d been in around Tupiza and in fact, geographically speaking, we were headed back in that direction. After about 4 hours we entered Sajama National Park where we had to register and pay Bob30 a head entrance fee. The taxi drove us another couple of kilometres but it was soon the end of the road. The gear was swapped from car boot to donkey back and moved up to base camp. Before joining bags and beasts we tucked into our rice lunch packets. On the Cordillera trek we’d all been vegetarian (yes, my fault!) but this time there is meat for all bar me. As per usual we were overfed and felt a bit lethargic setting off. Luckily it was only a short (1 ½ hours) easy walk to base camp in dry, warm but quite windy conditions. The route followed a barely trickling mountain stream through a shallow valley. We were walking through a sparsely vegetated area where only the hardiest of plants can survive. At the head of the valley we crested a small ridge from where we could see the top edge of the altiplano. As we continued we passed a couple of groups of vicuna so it’s good to know they’re surviving here too. Base camp is right on the edge of the area where vegetation clings to existence. Immediately in front of us is a bare barren landscape and the base of Mount Sajama. We can see the route we’ll be taking and although it looks tough it looks more doable than most of the other mountains we’ve seen in the last few days. It was howling a gale so we huddled inside our tent for the afternoon where it was actually quite snug. We had to rescue another group’s kitchen tent so goodness only knows how windy it gets on the ridge that forms high base camp. Theo (and indeed most of the guides) would rather not stay up there and we’re rapidly coming round to their thinking. He told us that it is possible to summit from low base camp and return in a day and we’re wondering if this could be the best option. We’ll see but not lurking freezing on a narrow ledge or climbing ice walls in the dark sounds good. Usually you have to summit at sunrise to get the best weather conditions but the summit has been as clear as a bell all day so there’s room for flexibility. All will be revealed. Although Mount Sajama is a free standing mountain it’s on the edge of the Cordillera Occidental. There are some impressive peaks to be seen there too with one in particular being a classic volcano shape. By-the-way, we feel like real mountaineers as we’ve got a bright yellow The North Face tent! Day 2 Strictly speaking today’s events started yesterday when the alarm chirped up at 11.30pm as it was time to get ready to tackle Sajama. In the end it was a unanimous vote that we’d make the bid for the top from lower base camp and we may as well get on with it. So having only had a couple of hours sleep we were back up and shivering our way into layers upon layers of clothing. Before we go any further I have to tell you that we didn’t make it to the top. This was always going to be our last big mountain and we’ve been apprehensive since booking on-line that it wasn’t the right one for us. We were assured that you didn’t need technical expertise or specialised equipment and that’s true. However, it’s not a trekker’s mountain for anyone of our level; a modicum of mountaineering experience would be a huge advantage. Or at the very least be more into that kind of challenge and enjoy wearing all the gear that comes with the territory. I have to say that alarm bells were ringing when they said they’d provide all the stuff but we foolishly told ourselves they were being helpful and safety conscious. In the end we hated wearing all the gear and being roped together and seriously didn’t enjoy one moment on the mountain. I can’t say it was a walk because it was far from it – an uphill slog would be more accurate. Plus we did it all wearing those clumpy, solid mountaineering boots that are bloody uncomfortable and have zero flexibility. Bearing in mind we spent the entire day (all 16 hours of it!) walking on scree, loose thick sand, pebbles, ice pinnacles and glaciers I don’t understand the wisdom of such boots. We knew there was one section where we needed crampons and ice axes but we’d been told it was only for 70m then it was a steady walk across the glacier to the summit. However, since booking they’ve had unseasonably heavy snowfalls (so much for global warming) leaving huge sheets of ice pinnacles that are very tricky to traverse. So we’d already had enough of all that shenanigans long before reaching high base camp. Why on earth anyone would want to camp on that narrow, freezing and incredibly windy ledge is beyond reckoning. In fact the people who were there last night legged I back down to base camp and we’ve seen no one since. From high base camp to the summit is only an 800m ascent and takes about 5 / 6 hours. Our way meant 5 ½ hours to high base camp with already 1400m climbed. I do mean climbed as well – they reckon the ice wall is 450 but we reckon the whole mountain is and the ice wall more like 700. We may just think that because we didn’t enjoy it but on a positive note it wasn’t our fitness or stamina levels that let us down. We could have pushed ourselves since we’d already negotiated the scary, challenging ice wall but what was the point if we weren’t getting any fun out of it? On rounding the corner we were faced with another, steeper ice wall that involved some rock clambering too – in crampons?! It was the clincher and we decided to value our lives and descend. Plus we both hate going down and Steve in particular was dreading it. So at 6000, the second highest point we’ve stood at on earth and having just tackled one of the scariest and most challenging things of our lives we voted to descend the 1400m back to base camp. It might sound defeatist and there’s an element of us that’s disappointed. But, at the end of the day we did a tough long slog up and big steep slope and proved to ourselves that our fitness levels are still pretty good. Besides which we knew we’d be slow going down since we were wearing moon boots that make you walk like an inebriated penguin! If we ever see those type of boots again we will NOT be signing up for the trek. Sixto, bless him, came to meet us with our own boots and some pop – both of which were very welcome. Our boots for obvious reasons and the pop as we’d not eaten much and were feeling rather dehydrated. We’d taken bottles of water with us but it froze solid. In fact my aluminium bottle is bust as water expands when it freezes and we hadn’t thought to leave a gap. Even when the sun had been up for several hours the water was still a solid lump in the bottles. I feel it’s time to move on to somewhere a little warmer and preferably less dusty where we can relax and try to get everything clean. We now have an extra day to play with. Day 3 We awoke this morning feeling some regret that we’d not made it to the top of Sajama. That said we also woke up to extremely cold conditions and were incredibly glad we’d opted not to camp at high base ledge. Once again the water that had been inside the tent was frozen solid and Sixto said his thermometer had read -80 when he got up. Goodness only knows how cold it dropped in the wee hours and how cold would it have been up at high base camp? As he went to prepare breakfast he found that all his fruit and veg including a huge papaya and his oil had frozen solid too. It was time to spend a few nights in a bed with walls, a ceiling and somewhere to get clean. All this lying on the floor in sub-zero temperatures with a flimsy piece of canvas over us has led to me catching a raging cold. While we were waiting for the donkeys to take our gear back out of the valley we pondered how the local communication system works. We knew that Sixto and Theo had done some SIM card shuffling and eventually got a signal to call the taxi driver. But how did Santiago and his donkeys know to come a day early? We had a bit of time after packing up our gear and were wondering how to get warm. Just then I spied on herd of vicuna further up the valley so we approached as slowly and quietly as we could and got well within 100m of them. They were aware of our presence but didn’t appear to consider us a threat. The ones we’d seen on the salt flat tour were very skittish and I can only presume they were scared of the vehicles. Anyway it was such a treat to stand and observe such graceful and rare animals and very close quarters. Once the donkeys were loaded up we wandered back down the lovely valley to our waiting taxi. This time Sajama was behind us so it couldn’t taunt us! We thoroughly enjoyed this stroll and ended up seeing 4 more groups of vicuna. I thought it was late in the day (10am) for them to be coming down for a morning drink. Then I realised that they too had had to wait for the sun to thaw their water supply. Back in La Paz and luckily the hotel had a room for us even though we were a day early. It was great to discard our filthy, dust ridden clothes and have a long, hot shower. No summit so no Bolivian fizz but we did pop to a local’s gaff for a couple of beers and hearty plate of grub. Not that we were hungry as Sixto had continued to feed and look after us extremely well. It was a great chance to reflect on our failings and achievements. In the end we decided that the decision to try to do it all from lower base camp was too much and even hardy mountaineers don’t do that. We feel we could have got to the top if we’d gone straight to high base camp the previous afternoon. However there are other factors to consider with the cumbersome, very uncomfortable clothing and footwear being a major one for us. The boots in particular slowed us down and we feel we needn’t have put them on until high base camp. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing but we have to remember that we still did a 16-hour hike up and down 1400m, scaled at 100m 700 ice wall with no training or expertise and got up to 6000m. At that point we were perched on a knife edge narrow ridge with fantastic views looking over the Cordillera Occidental looking into Chile. As we were debating the wisdom of tackling the next albeit shorter ice wall a strong gust of wind tried to knock us off our precarious perch. That was enough to push the balance and we made the decision to descend. We feel it was the correct, sensible decision to be strong, brave and wise enough to call it a day.