Manaslu images
I drag myself up through something that looks like a riverbed. Just the river is kind of missing. Last drops of water disappeared earlier this morning and i’ll hardly reach the next mountain pass today. There’s a snowfield, you know… Well, at least there should be one. One should’ve been in “Aguas Vicuñas” as well. Are you kidding me? Agua (water) is nowhere in sight and all the vicuñas around were long time dead. Their white skeletons are still visible deep bellow…
Time flows s-l-o-w-l-y. I wonder if i’ve ever walked uphill slower than this. Can’t remember. At least i can see the pass now, but the pile of thick grey clouds overflowing from the other side of the ridge doesn’t make me very happy. There’s a snowstorm coming and in the sea of scree around is not a single flat patch for the tent. Shit! Why on earth do i do this? Shit! 40kg backpack lands among the stones with a thud. I’m grabbing the tent and a few necessities and start running ahead. I’ll come back for the rest after the storm is over. Hopefully… The first available camping place is just bellow the pass. And it’s about time – visibility is at zero and the wind’s picking up as well. The altimeter reads 5500 meters…
I’m sitting in the shaking tent and nibbling pieces of tuna from a can. Breakfast, lunch and dinner at once. Same as yesterday. A piece of bread would be nice… Fuck! What am i doing here?
What am i doing here?
It should have been Aconcagua. But i can’t help it – a month of shitting into the plastic bags for 3000 pesos did not strike me as something particularly appealing. Two nights of scanning the map and the plan is changed. Now it’s gonna be fun! Just the journey – a bus to Paris, night flight to Madrid, never-ending fourteen hours across the Atlantic to Buenos Aires, transfer to the domestic airport, flight to Mendoza, bus to La Rioja, sleepless night at the terminal, bus to the Fiambalá village… That’s it – no more buses from here so the only option is hitchhiking on the lonely desert road to Chile. Some ten cars a day, so those 100km into the middle of nowhere took me two. Oh yes, it would help a bit if i knew some Spanish besides “gracias”. Then four days on foot to the altitudes i only know from books and here we are. I can lie down inside the shaking tent and ask the tuna can what was i doing here… And how did i figure out the piece of metal could answer that when i have no idea myself…
Campo base
The pass is close. Yesterdays storm was merciful, i could even go back for the rest of my stuff and bring it up to the tent. The next stop on the list is the place called El Arenal. Sort of a basecamp for Ojos del Salado from this side. It’s not that far, but the going is slow and difficult. Endless expanses of stone and scree all around me and of course – not a drop of water. Losing the way in here would be fatal…
El Arenal is an unwelcoming place. A vast sand plain, where the only shelter from the Punas notorious winds is formed by the tall boulder in the middle. Aha! Stone barriers! So i’m at the right place at least… I’m building the tent behind one of the barriers and trying to thaw a piece of snow. That’s the first water in two days and my head feels like exploding.
Medusa
The stones are sliding under my feet and i can’t catch my breath again. Just one more pile of rocks and there it is – the way up along the rib. Let’s see – heaps of rubble, a few patches of snow, 500 vertical meters to the top and the weather’s still fine… Yes, that should go.
The previous days in El Arenal were a pure nightmare. I kept lying in the tent, fighting the altitude sickness and trying to make my bloody gas stove work. Up here the Argentinian dirty diesel only burns on Saturdays i guess. I was eating raw pasta, trying to melt at least some water and inhaling the suffocating diesel fumes while cursing the whole world. And then, suddenly, the weather improved and all the pain was gone. I had to continue… Cerro Medusa should be 6120m high, so it looked like a perfect acclimatization peak. I set off immediately…
It would be an easier walking trail in the Alps, but up here i’m barely crawling. The three false summits got me to a state of certain apathy, so i kind of overlooked the fact the fourth summit was actually the real one. I’m taking a few pictures after dragging my heavy DSLR camera all the way up and putting on a jacket. So far i only wore a t-shirt despite the two jackets in my backpack and a full -40°C kit waiting in the tent. Global warming i guess… It’s about time to go down since the descend will obviously be tricky – and not only because i’m so tired i can barely walk. Furthermore, every step requires a lot of attention. Breaking my ankle in this scree would mean certain death in these parts…
The art of giving up
I did feel a bit strange after descending from the summit. I’m waking up into the darkness – 4am and something’s wrong. Fever? Maybe, we’ll see tomorrow… Suddenly i’m beginning to see things that were not there a moment ago. Large shapes and objects dancing over the tent canvas in the light of my headlamp. Fuck! Now, for the first time, i’m really scared. If it has something to do with cerebral edema, i’m finished… It all adds up now – fast ascent, extremely heavy backpack, very little water, almost no food… I’m briefly considering packing my stuff and running down right now, but it’s nonsense in the dark. Dawn is just a few hours away…
A day later and half a kilometer lower i’m building the tent in Aguas Vicuñas and everything is fine. So it maybe was just a fever. Or maybe not, who knows. I’m not coming back, that’s for sure. I was probably one of the first to ever come here all alone like this and it’s not so difficult to understand why. This is the real desert with zero space for errors or excuses. I already suspected something like that back home, while searching the map, and i knew the only possible reaction to a mere hint of anything going wrong would have to be pulling the brake and go back. After all, the opportunity to learn in the mountains is way more valuable than any kind of heroism…
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