This brought new meaning to the phrase ‘early start’. Woken at 1am, we faffed around for an age with porridge, crampons, head torches and Toblerone, until it was time to set out into the darkness. The start was a steady, steep walk in the trail of points of light from earlier groups as they ascended into the stars. To our left was the pretty patchwork of El Alto—during the day, one of the world’s ugliest cities.
As I searched for my water, I quickly developed ethno-tat envy for Nicky’s tourist issue woven bottle holder. Viviana’s knees decided climbing was not for them and she went back down, leaving Nicky, Ola and I with the remaining guide.
The first test was The Wall: a thin ice bridge, over a crevice, leading to a wall of ice. Quite nerve wracking in the dark, but at least we had had some practice of ice climbing unlike other groups that just head straight out there. And so we plodded on until watching the sunrise—a glorious and exhilarating experience.
After further hours of trudging, reaching the peak was a great relief. At that moment I was probably the highest Englishman on earth. I would have loved to lie back, muse on this and have a sleep, but we had to walk back down again. For me, the joyful rush of being at a summit more than 6,000 metres up was rather tempered.
As Nicky pointed out being in Bolivia has ruined our standards of beauty. The gently rolling rolls of the Cotswolds can never compare to the mountains, lakes and planes of the Alti Plano.
Some 12 hours after we had set out we returned to the base camp. My legs were shaking, I was more automated walking machine than man. It was going to be great to return to decent food, beds and loos.
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