Bolivia Expedition Dispatch

May 13, 2019 – Glacier Practice Day

We had some pretty wild weather on Illimani and here at basecamp last night. We listened to strong thunder, pretty big bright lightning flashes, pretty impressive storm; then it rained a bit and then it got quiet and we woke this morning and we found quite a bit of new snow so that’s the news on weather.

We actually had a great day, we had snow when we woke up, new snow on the route, so what we decided to do was go to an area called little glacier and do some glacier training. As we climbed out the conditions became great, we had a real fun time, did a little ice climbing, checking out some techniques with crampons, jumars/ascenders, just the stuff we use to climb a big mountain, to climb Illimani.

We got back down here around 4pm, the kitchen had spaghetti waiting, which was delicious and now we are going to settle down for our last night at base camp, until after we make our summit attempt. We are moving to high camp tomorrow, we will see how things do with the weather which we are continuing to watch and see how our acclimatization and strength are doing.

We are the only team on the mountain. We had a team here from Jackson, Wyoming, strong climbers, nice guys, they made an attempt and turned back 200 meters before the top and they left today to go back home. We are here just us, our staff and some of the locals who bring mules up here and hang out; it is really a good scene.

Goodbye from base camp and looking forward to climbing higher now.