into the sun
On Saturday the banks in Huaraz are closed. Consequently the police who guard them are free to turn their attention to civil unrest. It was Saturday, and the noise of the police breaking up a teachers strike outside the hotel roused me.
It was near midnight when we had driven into this mountain town. Now the sky outside the window was a deep blue along the valley that stretched away along the length of the Cordillera Blanca. In the far distance rose a surrealistic mass of glistening ice and snow.
Huascaran, 22,205 feet, the highest mountain in Peru, the mountain we hoped to climb.
The Blanca, as it is called, is one of the finest group of mountains in the world. Superb treks wind their way through deserted valleys, beneath the 20,000ft peaks and glaciers, passing turquoise lakes and wild mountain streams. Access to the mountains is unrestricted and most of the base camps are only a day’s truck ride away from the valley towns.
To try and climb Huascaran as our first snow and ice peak seemed foolishly ambitious. "Stick with what you know" my father would have said, so we looked towards Rima Rima, an 18,000 ft rock peak that lay a day’s walk out of town.