John Lauchlan Award Trip Report: Peru 2024
John Launchlan Award - Trip Report: Peru 2024
"La suerte viene, la suerte se va."
A John Launchlan Award trip report by Tom Schindfessel
The sun rose on the face, and the sensation in my hands and feet started to come back. Looking up, I laughed with excitement at the amazing rock quality ahead of me.
Leaving the anchor, I climbed a few meters to the base of the steep-looking corner system. I followed a discontinuous crack, switching from stemming to laybacking until the crack petered out.
A few meters above, the crack started again. I rested for a few seconds before committing to the unprotectable section. I enjoyed the focus and rhythm that the climbing required, and soon I pulled through the last move, reconnecting me with the crack system.
As I stemmed in the corner to place a cam, a melon-sized block snapped under my weight sending me flying for a few meters—not so solid after all.
As the rope caught me softly, I heard Mike moaning in pain. The block had hit him in the shoulder. He had been rather unimpressed with the frequency of his encounters with falling objects on this trip. After a few minutes of recovering and a quick chat about the nature of gravity, Mike’s psyche returned, and we kept weaving our way up the northeast face of Cashan Oeste.
A month prior, my friends Mike Bowyer and Aritza Monasterio picked me up at the Huaraz bus station after a couple of days of travel.
We spent the first day walking around town out of breath, eating fried chicken and avocado, trying to get used to the 3,000m elevation difference between Squamish and Huaraz.
Our original plan was to attempt the unclimbed southeast face of Huantsán, 6,395 m. After talking extensively with the locals, we realized that the abnormally warm temperatures that year, combined with the very lean snowpack, made that face quite dangerous and unstable, so we decided to look for other objectives in the range.
After some high-altitude sport climbing and acclimatizing on Vallunaraju (5,700m), Mike and I decided to check out the northeast face of Hualcán 6,122m.
Looking at pictures of the mountain, we found a beautiful unclimbed line in the middle of the face.
After a day of packing and an 8-hour bus ride across the range, we started walking up the quiet valley leading to the mountain with six days’ worth of food and fuel.
It took two days of hiking through meadows, bushes, scree slopes, and broken glaciers, to get to the base of the mountain where we finally established base camp.
We spent the following day resting and staring at the face. Satisfied by the minimal activity and hazards we observed, we decided to go straight up a prominent buttress, seemingly sheltered.
We woke up at midnight the following day and picked our way up the glacier, reaching the base of the face in an hour.
After 4–5 rope lengths of pleasant 50–80° snow and ice terrain, we reached the bottom of the rock buttress at sunrise. The breathtaking views reminded me why the pull to these places was so strong.
As I started climbing toward the more prominent part of the buttress, the sun came up and the temperature rose quickly. By 6 a.m., microwave-sized blocks were flying down the nearby gully.
While picking my way up the granite face, I watched a few rocks shoot into the air above us, making spaceship noises as they flew by me.
A second later, I heard them crash below echoed by Mike’s panicked shouts.
Unfortunate timing for Mike who had chosen this moment to use the alpine privy.
After hearing an “I’m okay,” I quickly put him on belay and brought him up. The sound of his crampons frantically scratching the rock made me realize how intimate he had gotten with those blocks.
We climbed one more rope length toward the most sheltered part of the ridge to get away from the hazard. The rock quality was amazing, and the temperature tropical—I couldn’t believe we were at 5,500m.
Around noon, we found a nice bivy ledge that almost fit the tent. We waited for the temperature to cool down and the face to settle. At 3 a.m., debris were still whizzing by, and we decided to go down, as we didn’t see a safe way up the face anymore.
Back in Huaraz, after a few days of our now-usual
“cruising-around-town-looking-for-the-best-fried-chicken” recovery routine, we made plans to check out an appealing unclimbed line in the middle of the northeast face of Cashan Oeste 5,732m.
A couple of days later, Aritza drove us to the trailhead at the base of the valley, and Mike and I started hiking toward the peak. Four hours later, we were standing at the base of the wall. The face was steep, and the rock quality was outstanding.
After building a bivy platform in the boulder field at the base of the face, we spent a while staring at the wall, connecting lines together.
Most of the crack systems seemed to peter out after a rope length. Tired of rock speculating, we made food while enjoying the beautiful sunset on the snowy peaks around us and went to bed.
We woke up at 4:30 and started climbing as the sun hit the face.
A 60m traversing pitch brought us to the base of a promising corner system. After a few more rope lengths, Mike’s encounter with the melon size flying rock, and a pendulum, we connected with a ramp traversing the middle of the face, aiming toward the top of the mountain. The climbing eased up, and we alternated between pitching out and simul-climbing until we got near the summit.
We rappelled the face through the night with minimal hurdles. We were grateful to find three bolted rappel stations put in by the Pou Brothers a couple of years prior.
A final 60m free-hanging rappel in complete darkness dropped us 100m away from our tent—what a luxury!
As we went to bed, already dreaming of our future bird feasting, I couldn’t help but think about how strangely, Peru felt closer to climbing in Yosemite than in Rockies or the Himalaya.
The fantastic weather, the nearby town, the simple logistics and easy access to the mountains make this destination a perfect practice ground for bigger peaks.
This trip was made possible through a grant from the John Lauchlan Award.
- Richey-Rugo, 1993
- Andrean-Kingdom, 2019
- Pelletti-Secul, 2019
- Cabaza-Fernández, 2011
- La Suerte Viene La Suerte Se Va, Bowyer-Schindfessel, 2024
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