August 16, 2023 - Huayna Potosi

Today was our summit attempt on Huayna Potosi. We woke up at 1 am and were ready by 2 am. There were four guides and two people assigned to each of them; my dad and I would be going with Roberto. I was very nervous that morning and wasn't feeling a hundred percent. When we were all ready, in an effort to get people going and out of the door, Roberto told me "let's go". So, I started following him with my dad behind me and everyone started coming behind us.

We started off at a pretty fast pace and I was right in front with my whole group behind me. We started going up a big rocky area like the one we had done yesterday, but we had our big mountaineering boots on today which are clunky and hard to climb in. But we were still going pretty fast, so I was trying to somehow get up this rocky area and go super fast because everyone was behind me. It is also pitch black outside so we had headlamps on, but it was still hard to see. After a few minutes of this, my heart was racing from trying to keep up with Roberto and not go super slow with the whole group behind me. I found out later that everyone else also needed to go slow and they weren't waiting on me. I didn't know this at the time, so I thought that I was slowing the whole group down. I ended up stopping because it was super cold outside and I couldn't feel my fingers. Roberto and my dad stopped with me, and we switched my gloves to these huge mountaineering mittens that are really meant to just be worn in a tent when you're not doing anything. I'm explaining this because I couldn't hold my trekking poles with the mittens on, so I had to put them in my backpack, and then I didn't have anything to hold for stability. This made things a lot harder, but my fingers did warm up after a little while. After this, we had to grab onto a rope and pull ourselves up a steep rock slope. We kept going, got to the glacier, and put our crampons on. Because I had my mittens on, I couldn't hold poles or an ice ax on the glacier, and I still wasn't super confident in crampons, so I was a little nervous. Thankfully, it had snowed a little the night before which makes using crampons on ice a lot easier. I got the hang of it after a while, but I was exhausted. 

I have not been eating very well for the past week because of the altitude. My stomach has been hurting and loss of appetite is a big side effect of altitude. But not eating food causes a loss of energy which is something essential in mountaineering. Unfortunately, I had spent a lot of the little energy I had on the first part of the climb on the rocks, so I was very tired. The glacier seemed to last forever, and it was just straight up. Roberto told me to do the steps he was doing, which were mostly the duck walk and a little of the French technique. Every once in a while, there would be a flatter part in between the steep but it was mostly all up. We jumped over a few crevasses and saw an ice cave which was fun, but it was really dark so we couldn't see a lot.

We stopped a few times to get water, but it was mostly all climbing for long periods of time. During those periods of time, all I could think about was how I was so tired, and my legs were hurting and I didn't feel well. Once when we stopped, I sat on the ice trying to stop my nausea. After a few minutes, Roberto asked if I could keep going. I immediately said yes without thinking about it. So, we kept walking and I started thinking about my stomach hurting; I looked at the ground and I was so dizzy. I thought about how maybe I shouldn't keep going. It took me a long time after that to convince myself to speak up. I kept practicing what I would say in my head "Roberto, can I just talk to my dad really quick". I repeated it in my head about a thousand times before my stomach finally started hurting enough for me to convince myself that I couldn't keep going. So I finally said "Roberto, can I just talk to my dad really quick"? I turned around and looked at my dad. We had worked so hard for nothing. I told my dad I really didn't feel well. We talked about it for a while and I felt so horrible now. I had disappointed him, I had disappointed my crew, and I had disappointed myself. But I knew I really couldn't keep going. The worst part was I knew my dad could have made it to the summit if it wasn't for me.

So, Roberto takes out his radio and speaks in Spanish and then tells us that Christian (the guide) is below us with Don who is still going up and that my dad can go with them while we go down. This seemed like a great idea so we went down and after a while we found them and my dad told me he was proud of me and then left to keep going up. Me and Roberto continued down and after what seemed like a really long time, the sun came up and it was beautiful. Huge, majestic mountains silhouetted against the red and orange striped sky. It didn't take us long to get down because we went a lot faster and the crampons were very helpful.

Once we got to camp, I got right into bed, drank some hot chocolate and went to sleep. I slept for a few hours and then woke up to my dad's face saying hello. He hadn't made it to the summit either. He went all the way down, then all the way back up with Don, and five feet from where I turned around, Don said he felt like that was enough. I know my dad would have made it had he been with the right people, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. I kept sleeping for a really long time and then finally woke up. I talked with my dad and Don for a while. I still felt really bad about not making it, but they helped me see that the summit isn't everything and that I had done really well. I set a new personal record for the highest I've ever climbed, 18,500ft. I passed my last PR which was 17,500ft. We talked about how I was annoyed now because I had been pretty close to 19,000 and if I had only gone a little farther. But I know that at that point in time I couldn't have gone another step uphill, so I am proud of myself and everything I did accomplish. I may not have summited but I went as far as I could possibly go and I could have turned around much earlier but I kept going. Alejo had told me that it is only 40 percent physical and 60 percent acclimatization and it is harder for kids to acclimate. It was a while before anyone got back. The other four members of our group made it to the summit with Alejo and Marcelo the guides.

They came back and we all cheered and told them they had done incredible. They all told us it was the hardest thing they had ever done. Clayton who is 19 made it and said he was nauseous the whole time, I don't know how he did it. We were all so happy for them, they all did amazing. After that, we had lunch, packed up and headed down to the start where we met the bus and drove back to La Paz. We had a celebratory dinner and then Brian, Clayton and Matheus left the next morning because they would not be doing Illimani. It was a really fun night but sad because we only got to know these great people for a week. We got back to the hotel and went right to sleep after what seemed like the longest day in the world.

I didn't take any pictures because it was dark the whole time but here are pictures of it during the day taken by members of my team.