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We spent a few days rock climbing and attempting Vallunaraju with our new friends from New York State — Will, Shawn, Chris, and Monique. We gained some valuable experience, getting turned back less than 100 feet from the summit. With our lack of mountaineering experience, we just didn’t think that the corniced and crevassed ridge looked safe enough to climb — it was late in the day, the snow was getting soft, and we didn’t have a good way of protecting ourselves. Lots of crevasse crossings on the way to keep things exciting.

We descended again, staying roped the whole way, and staying just ahead of the snow that blew in for the next 24 hours. No regrets whatsoever. We’re glad to have gotten some more technical snow experience, and we’re really glad to be back in one piece.

The rock climbing in the valley was pretty good — a lot of granite slab climbing that was reminiscent of Yosemite valley. We had a failed attempt to set up a zip line from one end of the steep narrow valley to the other, but that’s another story.

One huge highlight was getting to meet some of the special forces from the Peruvian military. They were there on a training exercise for 20 candidates for their equivalent of the Navy SEALs. Get this: as part of the exercise, they climb Vallunaraju with their combat gear, and spend the night up there. That’s some serious toughness and suffering. We made friends with one of their officers, Oscar, who is their doctor, and an incredibly nice guy. He let us get a bunch of pictures in and around the huge trucks that they brought up there. They’re giant old Spanish bohemoths that are about 27 years old. I’ll post the pictures when I get back.

We had a blast hanging out with the New York folks. We had a big birthday bash for Chris when we got back to Huaraz, which included a bunch of dancing at the local discoteca, La Tomba. They all left Peru yesterday after 5 weeks here. I’m sure we’ll meet up for more adventures back in the states.

We’re off tomorrow morning for our last mountain excursion, Yanapaccha. This one’s a little more technical than the rest of them (which weren’t really technical at all). It’s also more off the beaten path, so hopefully we’ll get a little more opportunity for doing our own exploring and route finding. Up until now, we’ve had enough to deal with, learning about altitude, basic snow/crevasse travel, and logistics. Hopefully we can have a little fun on this one and throw in a little technical climbing too.

We should be back on the 2nd, which is our tenth wedding anniversary, in time for a night on the town to celebrate. Yahoo!

We’re back in Huaraz after a 10-day trip up to the Ishinca Valley. Basically, we were able to climb two medium-sized peaks there — Ishinca, and Urus Este. Both of them were beautiful and incredibly rewarding, and while neither one was technically difficult, it gave us some some well-needed experience and let us focus on acclimitization.

We opted not to try Tocllaraju during that visit to the valley, since I was feeling pretty sub-par, both in terms of health and acclimitization. Nothing serious, but enough to keep us from wanting to bump it up a notch out of concern for safety.

Since this is our 10th anniversary, we opted to go all out, and hired a cook, Elias, for this particular trip to basecamp. He stayed with us in basecamp, and prepared all of our meals. Let me say that this was one of the best decisions that we made so far! Elias’s cooking was out of this world, and it was such a luxury to have all of your meals prepared and cleaned for you, without having to worry about getting sick because of the food or water (the cooks are very careful). We had a cook tent and dining tent (which we actually just used as a gear tent so that we could hang out with Elias). We got to try a lot of Peruvian dishes, as well as some good old standbys that taste out of this world after a hard day or two.

Speaking of luxury, we hired five burros to carry all of the loads up to basecamp and back for us. Actually, practically everyone does this, but it sure felt luxurious! Climbing in Peru is quite a switch from what we’re used to.

We found out that the 18th was Elias’s birthday, so we turned the cooking tent into la discoteca using a bunch of headlamps on blink mode, and an iPod and speakers supplied by some other Americans. Party!

Basecamp is beautiful, with all of the white mountains surrounding the moraine and meadow. There were probably 50 people there at any one time, but it didn’t feel crowded. Just about everyone that we met was friendly and incredibly helpful, since we’re mountaineering novices.

We fit in a couple days of rock climbing on a granite cliff above basecamp, and on some sweet boulders down in the valley floor. The rock in this valley is amazing, and amazingly similar to Yosemite in some locations. We saw someone on what must be a new route on a pretty impressive overhung wall on the way out.

Still no chance to offload pictures, I’ll post them along with some more details as soon as I can.

We don’t know what our plans are next, but we’ll probably head out to another peak after a day or so of replenishing and reorganizing.

By the way, we did get to go bouldering and mountain biking before leaving for Ishinca Valley. Both were outstanding. The mountain biking here is phenomenal, and getting shown thousands of vertical feet of singletrack by a local was an absolute treat. More pictures and info on the riding when I get a chance, maybe after we get back.

Ieva and I are taking a month off for our 10th anniversary to go to the Cordillera Blanca, Peru to go climbing. If you´re not familiar with the area, this site has a pretty good overview of where we are, and the type of stuff that we´ll be doing if everything goes well.

We just made it in to Huaraz, the small mountain town that will be our home base, and it´s actually been an incredibly easy pleasant trip so far. Despite 24 hours of straight travel, and not speaking a lick of Spanish, all the transportation changes weren´t bad at all.

One of the highlights was the bus ride into the mountains. We got the front-row seats against the windshield on the second level of the double decker bus (exposed!). We followed the coastline for about 4 hours, then crept up to 10,000ft through the mountains to get to Huaraz after another 4 hours. The hotel that we´re staying at is beautiful, and the beer and food are delicious. No stomach problems yet, other than what I brought with me from last week. We´ll probably go bouldering today, mountain biking tomorrow, and then head up to Ishinca (sp?) valley for the basecamp of our first climbing leg of the trip. We´ll stay there for about a week.

While we haven´t run into anyone that we know directly yet, of course we´ve already run into people that we have tons in common with already — one of the nice things about the relatively small climbing world. The people we had breakfast with yesterday are all from New York. A couple of them live in Keene Valley, and one of them grew up and lives in Wappingers Falls (a few miles from Hopewell Junction, where I grew up). They´ll probably head up to Ishinca valley the same time as we will, so we´ll have good company.

More updates to follow!