16,000 feet high and rising

Despite being at an oxygen-deficient altitude up the Andes, we don’t really get snow and even less skiing. The world’s highest ski run on Chacaltaya’s glacier has been successfully stuffed by global warming leaving a defunct Alpine-themed lodge with great 1980s photos of Bolivian skiers on the walls.
Club Andino Boliviano can still sort out winter sports here but only just. We packed into a minibus (there’s ALWAYS room for one more) and headed up into El Alto, where we stopped. Those with faith in coca’s ability to halt altitude sickness stocked up at a little shop and we waited. And waited. After a while it became apparent they had forgotten some of the kit.
The boots eventually arrived and we were off again, this time into the mountains. Our minibus headed where tanks would fear to tread: over rocks, and through streams and herds of llama, we crunched, splashed and occasionally got out and walked. It was a magnificent trip until the driver let slip that we were going the wrong way and turned round.
After some time, we arrived at our destination. Not the bottom of a virgin piste but an hour and half’s walk from one. As the guides set off into the distance, we panted behind lugging our gear.
By now we were more than 5,000 metres up and the pace was being set by a petite, coca-less, French girl. She had just arrived in the country and was tactfully not smoking so as not to shame we Paceñas any further.
At the end of the walk, we were eager to get stuck in but came unstuck when it was clear that the equipment was older and in worse condition than many of our party.
When I finally skied again, for the first time in 12 years, it was all worth it. The snow was crisp and for those precious moments I was the highest skier in the world. Later, I snowboarded down and all the nonsense and incompetence was forgotten. A gentle slope, there was no danger, which was just as well because when even if I did have insurance to pay for it, helicopters can’t fly at this altitude. It would have a very painful journey back to the minibus and then the bouncy track to La Paz’s dubious hospitals.
A day of firsts: skiing and boarding in the same day, acquiring reverse sunburn panda marks, and then an evening of karaoke. Also a day of very mixed successes. Karaoke!