On the picture: our track (red), roads (yellow), Refugio 1 at the artificial lake at the beginning of our track, Old Glacier and its lake, Campo Alto Roca on the plateau by the (white) glacier, Refugio 2 at the end of our track.
Eager to be higher that 6000m and to learn some ice-climbing, we decided to attempt Huayna Potosí, a mountain 6088m high and conveniently close (20km) to La Paz.
Organizing HP climbs (i.e. providing guides, lodging and equipment) is one of the main services that tour agencies provide in La Paz. (The others are: Uyuni salt flats, Copacabana/Isla del Sol, jungle trips, world's most dangerous biking, and some more climbing and hiking: Illimani, Sajama, etc.)
HP is considered one of the easiest 6000m-climbs: it's close to La Paz, climbing starts at 4700m which means that one has to gain only 1400m. (Compare to Kilimanjaro where one starts at 1800m and has to gain approx. 4000m.)
Booked the 3d/2n trip with Refugio Huayna Potosí [BUG: check]. Cost: 140 USD per person. All the equipment included, as well as meals, even snacks for the summit day. Note that there is at least one other company that is called Huayna Potosí. The one that we chose has their own private refugios: base camp at 4700m and high camp at 5300m.
We visited altogether 4 (5?) agencies, not counting the ones that would just sell your booking to another agency as they don't have their own guides/equipment. It was a difficult choice: one agency said that they don't recommend the climb as it's off-season, i.e. often raining/snowing, also their price was higher (why? because of a cook that would come along?), another one was a bit cheaper, but then it turned out that overnights would be in tents, and one could go into the hut for an extra 10 USD (which would raise the price to the same level as for the other companies).
In general the companies in La Paz seem more professional than in Arequipa (see: our El Misti climb), they ask about your acclimatization, provide good equipment (which you can check out the day before), etc.
Picked up the equipment, then drove to El Alto, and from there to Refugio 1, all in a regular car, i.e. not a 4x4.
No other climbers. Other people in the refugio were our guide (Eduardo) and the cook.
Had lunch, waited until the rain stopped and went to the "Old Glacier" to practice ice-climbing. Then back to the refugio.
It was terribly cold in the refugio, but they have a fireplace there which they lit up eventually. Could also dry all our clothes, which got wet during the ice-climbing practice.
Slept well. At 3 o'clock woke up to pee, head was aching, took 200g of Ibuprofen. Breakfast at 8: large fruit salad, frosties, yogurt, one egg (frito).
Then packed. Managed to fill the large backpack completely: sleeping bags, plastic boots, crampons, harness, gaiters, clothes, 0.7l + 0.5l of water, some snacks, wool hat, balaclava(?)/scarf, ....
Then worked on the laptop a bit, it's nice to have electricity in a refugio. Lunch was at 11: beef, rice, ?.
Left at 11.45. At first along the same path as yesterday, then climbed higher, got to see a nice view to the glacier. Some steeper points where had to use hands. Foggy, visibility some 50m, dribbling rain on and off. Another group (guide + a single tourist from Switzerland) caught up with us. They went until Campo Alto Roca at 5130m(?). From there on we climbed a steep rock wall, slippery from rain/snow, quite annoying with the heavy bags. Reached Refugio 2 at 14.40 after almost 3h on the road. Now trying to sleep. Quite hot as the sun has come out.
On the picture: our track (red), roads (yellow), Refugio 1 at the artificial lake at the beginning of our track, Old Glacier and its lake, Campo Alto Roca on the plateau by the (white) glacier, Refugio 2 at the end of our track.
For a while the sun was out and it was pleasantly warm. (At Refugio 1 it was always so cold, one either had to sit by the fire or crawl into the sleeping bag to be warm.) At 17:30 had dinner: soup + 2 slices of toast bread (untoasted), and a cup of coca leaf tea. The clouds pulled out and it was sunny outside, could take some photos of the neighboring mountains and Campo Alto Roca 100m below. Now trying to sleep. Will have to wake up at midnight and then start the accent in the snow at 1am. Will take acetazolamide now.
The 3rd day started right after midnight when Eduardo woke us up to ask "preparando ou esperando" [BUG: what's the correct Spanish?], i.e. if we prefer to start getting ready (e.g. put on the plastic boots) or wait (i.e. sleep) some more. The reason was that outside it was snowing, but maybe it would stop soon. I don't know what expert opinion Eduardo was expecting from us, but we decided to wait. In 45 minutes he woke us up again and now no choice was given, we had to get ready to start summiting. The snowing had not stopped.
The refugio is right at the glacier so one needs to walk just a few meters before he/she can put on the crampons. We were roped together: the guide first, then Kaarel, finally Csilla, i.e. the guide's task was to find the way and make the track as the fresh snow had covered the existing track. The beginning was hard. The footprints that the guide created did not hold me, I kept falling through on every 5th step. After a while it got better though, but walking in snow is exhausting in any case.
After some 15 minutes of walking we arrived at the track that came from Campo Alto Roca and saw two groups of lights approaching from below — the Swiss with his guide and the Australian couple with theirs. The Swiss soon caught up with us. For a while our guides were taking turns making the track, but we proved much to slow for the Swiss group. We kept shouting to Eduardo to go "slowly slowly". This seemed to annoy him quite much. Apparently he was not familiar with the pole-pole technique widely practiced on Kilimanjaro. He kept cursing in Aymara and Spanish that we are too slow (or at least this was my impression) and kept pulling on the rope to make us go faster. This doesn't really make you go faster, it just pulls you out of your rhythm and makes you feel like a dog. At some point we angrily made it clear to him that we want to follow our own tempo and go as long as the time of day or weather forces us to turn back, be it at the top or before.
So we walked, always going uphill, slowly gaining altitude, meter after meter. The snowing stopped at some point and the weather was quite warm. The hardest part was an almost vertical wall, about 6m high. The steps which the guide created when going up didn't hold me, and the wall was too snowy to use the ice ax / crampons technique that we had learned the day before. I was about to give up but somehow managed to get up the wall before.
At around 6000m we were completely exhausted needing a break every 10 steps. But the 6000m invisible barrier had been broken and I didn't really care anymore if we make it to the summit or not. There was more light now, the sun had risen, but it was still quite foggy.
The top of Huayna Potosí was now visible (or so I think/thought), but according to the guide it was still 1h to go, or more if we want to do it "slowly slowly". We decided to turn around and save the energy for the descent. The Swiss was about 20m above us and heading for the summit. (They were much faster, but made longer breaks and lost the right way in several occasions and had to wait for us as our guide obviously knew the mountain much better, even in deep snow. So in the end they were not much ahead of us.) While we were walking back we also met the Australian group who had not given up and was moving towards the summit. Some 10 minutes later the Swiss group caught up with us. I was surprised that they had done the summit so quickly but then it turned out that the final narrow path to the top was covered with fresh snow making it very unstable (or so I understood) and the guide had decided that it is not safe to summit like this. (The Australians did not summit for the same reason, as it turned out later when on the way down we passed Campo Alto Roca and met one of the Australians.)
The following is a list of longer stops, during which I took out the GPS and marked a waypoint.
| Time | Altitude | Comment |
| ~ 2.00 | 5309m | Started out from Refugio 2 |
| 3.20 | 5518m | Stop |
| 5.27 | 5848m | Stop |
| 6.48 | 6006m | Stop |
| 6.56 | 6014m | Decided to turn back |
| 9.26 | 5309m | Reached Refugio 2 |
| 10.12 | 5309m | Left Refugio 2, after a brief stop for having some snacks and changing some clothes |
| 12.57 | 4757m | Reached Refugio 1 |
The way back was also long (at least it felt so). Looking at the path coming up (it was still there because the snowing had stopped) it seemed impossible that we had walked all this way. The sun rose higher, the mist cleared and the surrounding mountains were revealed, we could even see Refugio 1 down by the artificial lake. We could also see the many crevasses that we had crossed during the night. Under the cover of the night, snow, mist and our ignorance the trip during the night had felt so safe. Now we started to take extra caution when walking.
[BUG: expand: Climbed down the snowy wall. Then short break. The snow is melting now making it even harder than in the morning to walk the final part to Refugio 2. Short stop at Refugio 2. Have some snacks (nuts, raisins). The mist is back.
Then start walking down towards Refugio 1. Leave the plastic boots on since the beginning is on the glacier. After Campo Alto Roca the steep rocky climb. The rocks are now covered with melting snow, the path has turned into a little river. Very slippery. Using one of Csilla's sticks to carefully walk lower. Interestingly, the walk from Refugio 2 to Refugio 1 (i.e. downhill) takes as long as it took from Refugio 1 to Refugio 2 (i.e. uphill).]
Before the climb I had the following goals (each subsuming the previous listed goal):
The last goal was in a way quite arbitrary as the first time I had heard about Huayna Potosí was 2 weeks before from a French guy who was climbing El Misti with us. So I wasn't very unhappy when we turned around at 6014m (measured by my GPS which can be a bit inaccurate when it comes to measuring altitude) after 5h of gaining 700m in deep snow. Yes, we were well acclimatized and healthy but the weather played a trick on us — during the evening heavy snow fall covered the tracks and made walking very tiring. We decided to turn back and save the energy for the way back, which was a good idea because after the sun came out the snow started melting and became very unstable, also further down the hill there are loose rocks which were now covered with melting snow making it quite dangerous to walk on.
Our guide wasn't very good. On the rocks he walked much ahead of us listening to some Aymara radio station. On the snow when we where roped together he kept pulling on the rope to make us go faster so that I felt like a dog on a leash.
But all-in-all, the Huayna Potosí climb was one of the highlights of our South America trip.