I write you from the Moab public library – a remarkably good library for such a small town. Town is for resupply: ice cream, burgers, wifi. The rest of the Fall season we spend in the desert — the true desert: long drives, hot days, cold nights, far from service. A good book is essential. A long and involved one, ideally.
Continue readingMt. Shuksan, Fisher Chimneys (Late Season Ascent)
We snuck in a quick weekend attack on Mount Shuksan, in the North Cascades National Park, Washington. Shuksan was described to me as a “little mountain with big mountain terrain,” which I think is apt. Although the summit is not high, the climb packs quite a punch.
Continue readingShaqsha, SE Face
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.
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.
Continue readingCampsites of the Cordillera Blanca
Some of the great camps I’ve been privilege to over the past six weeks in Peru.
Continue readingClimbing Huarapasca, Cordillera Blanca.
Information about this peak is a little scarce or outdated online, so I thought I would provide a 2023 update.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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