Climbing

Rebuffat Couloir, Tour Ronde, Winter

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I flew from New York to Milan, arriving at Malpensa airport 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I recollected my duffel full of mountaineering equipment, took the train to the city center, and then walked to my buddy Enrico’s apartment, 30 kilos on my back. He was finishing up work; we pored over avalanche forecasts and trip reports. We asked all our contacts for conditions, suggestions. We scoured the Facebook groups. We ended up choosing the Rebuffat Couloir on the Tour Ronde, a route no one had suggested, and for which we had absolutely zero conditions information.

The weather looked best for tomorrow. We woke up, 5:15 a.m., dragged ourselves to the car, and drove to Courmayuer. Parked, dressed, and just enough spare time for an espresso. 8:30 a.m., first lift up, and we were on it. American country music played through the stereo system on the shiny cable car. 9:00, suited up and ready for action, we stepped onto the glacier at 11,300 feet. I’d always heard alpinism in Europe was accessible, but this was next-level.

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Shaqsha, SE Face

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Shaqsha is an obscure mountain for Peru, despite the fact that it graces the cover of Brad Johnson’s “Classic Climbs of the Cordillera Blanca”, the most popular guidebook for the area.

A great book – exceedingly hard to find these days.

Shaqsha was not on my radar at all until a chance meeting with Alejandro Urrutia and Rodrigo Ramos, a pair of Mexican alpinists. They were sitting in Cafe Andino, a western-style coffee shop in Huaraz popular with climbers, making a topo of a traverse of Chopicalqui they had just completed, from the SE ridge to the SW ridge.

They had been sick half their trip, they said, but had also managed to sneak in Shaqsha, via the left side of the ridge. A good climb, easy. “The right side also looked good,” they said, showing a photo of their tent pitched on the glacier in front of the face.

I wanted that picture. And off we went.

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Climbing Huarapasca, Cordillera Blanca.

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Information about this peak is a little scarce or outdated online, so I thought I would provide a 2023 update. (2024 update: the glacier tongue shrank and technical ice section is now subject to bad rock/icefall. Guided groups are attacking it in the middle of the night to mitigate risk. As you’ll see if you read this post, that was not at all the case last year, we climbed in full daylight. For more on this topic, see my 2024 post, Climate Change in the Cordillera Blanca.)

Huarapasca is a mountain at the southern end of the Cordillera Blanca, in Peru. It is notable for an extremely short approach, by Cordillera Blanca standards, as well as a 100-140 meter section of AI3/WI3 – legitimate ice climbing. It is one of only a handful of peaks in the area which you can do in a day and back from Huaraz.

Although once considered an obscurity, it saw quite a bit of traffic this season (2023), with several agencies in Huaraz promoting the mountain as a guided offering. People who have climbed it in years past say the mountain is becoming icier.

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