Three Expeditions to Incahuasi (6621m)

 

Expedition 1

Day 1 (30 December 2009)

The driver was getting restless. The plan was to pick up a Spanish group from the base camp of Ojos and continue together to the base camp of Mount Pissis. We had been waiting in Quemadito for three hours but the Spaniards didn’t show up. It was late afternoon and it was probably already late for going to the base camp of Pissis which involved 80 kilometres of rough driving on a dirt track. I tried to explain to the driver that we should wait until 7:30 pm and then return to Fiambala. He nodded in agreement.

The Spaniards finally showed up, but not from Ojos but from the Fiambala road, in Jonson Reynoso’s 4×4. They had “changed their mind” and had decided to go to Fiambala for “a couple of days’ partying” and a “bit of drinking.” So, ignoring the initial plans, they had used another team’s transport and went all the way back to Fiambala before we reached Quemadito. I was annoyed by this tactless and inconsiderate behaviour and the absence of any apology. I didn’t want to go back to Fiambala for another couple of days of loitering. So, I asked Jonson if it would be possible to drop me at the base camp of Incahuasi. Embarrassed by the behaviour of the Spaniards, he agreed. This is how I ended up climbing Incahuasi with crampons in my rucksack (which I didn’t need) with a sketch of Mount Pissis (which I didn’t need) and without any map of Incahuasi (which I desperately needed).

After Las Grutas, the 4×4 turned into a dirt track, continued slowly towards the skirts of Incahuasi. The landscape was painstakingly beautiful: vicunias fearlessly roaming around, flamingos flying over white lagoons, colourful hills everywhere. The 4×4 continued for another 21 kilometres before we reached the base camp (Fern Point, 4244m). I took my rucksack from the back of the jeep. The driver asked me if I wanted anything else. I asked for more water. He gave me a couple of bottles of water and a huge watermelon. I hide the water bottles and the watermelon behind a cairn. During the next four days, when I was suffering from severe dehydration I would have dreams and fantasies about the melon. I would cut it thousand times in thousand different ways and I would have dreamt of eating it thousands of times. In the event, I wouldn’t see the watermelon again.

Saying goodbye to the driver, I started walking towards the volcanicitos. I was reasonably acclimatized after climbing Nevado de San Francisco (6018m), which is, according to guidebook, the most easily accessible six-thousander in the world. I set up camp after an hour.

 

Day 2 (31 December 2009)

Today was a rather eventless day in a rather eventful expedition. I picked up the tent and after ten hours of trekking behind the volcanicitos and a rather long ascent along a gulley, I reached the high camp at 5281m according to my altimeter. I went into my sleeping bag without eating anything and had bad conscious all night for breaking my promise: differently from last year’s climb in Ojos, when I almost successfully starved myself to death, I had promised to take good care of myself this time and eat a full meal at least once a day – whatever happens.

 

Day 3 (1 January 2010)

I woke up early, boiled water in the vestibule of the tent and prepared a package of dry frozen food: beef and noodles as breakfast! Lacking any appetite, I pushed the food down to my stomach. Putting on my clothes and boots, I started my summit bid. It was difficult going on steep scree slopes: three steps up and two steps down. I could see my tent below, becoming smaller and smaller. It turned into a little orange dot and finally disappeared altogether behind a curve. Finally, I reached the rim of the summit plateau. I passed between two very large snowfields, which are visible, as far away as from Las Grutas, and then turned left to reach what looked like a broad ridge. I saw the summit cross which was almost about to fall to the ground. The views were spectacular but it was late, almost quarter to seven. I had almost two hours of daylight left and my initial plan was to find the correct exit from the summit plateau during daylight and go down the scree slopes at night. It turned out to be a miserably bad plan. Although I had been attentive on the way up and had tried to identify positively the point at which I had left the scree slope behind me and reached the plateau (in a sense I had anticipated the problem that I was going to encounter) I couldn’t find this exact point on the way down. It was getting dark, so I started descending the scree slopes anyway. I was also starting to feel the impact of hypoxia, where the boundaries between dreams, daydreams and reality start to blur.

 

Day 4 (2 January 2010)

I descended the scree slopes whole night, being careful not to descend below the 5200m level, where I had my tent – and for that matter, food and water.  I reached that level in the early hours of the day. It was dark, windy and cold. In order to keep myself warm – rather than in the hope of finding the tent in the dark – I started to circumnavigate the mountain at a 5200m level, taking a compass bearing now and then in the hope of finding the north east face of the mountain soon.

Circumnavigating a mountain at a certain altitude is more difficult than what it appears to be at first glance. The surface is not smooth. Often there are deep gulleys, which involves descents and ascents. Finally, the east started to glow. I sat down for a moment, exhausted but keen to enjoy the sunrise. It didn’t take long before I started to feel the cold again. I stood up and continued to circumnavigate the mountain in a counter-clockwise direction. It is at about this moment that a beautiful natural phenomenon turned my navigation into a hopeless enterprise. Dense fog, started to move into the valleys and gulleys that surrounded the mountain. It was now impossible to see or guess, by any means, in which gulley my tent was. But, I still continued to circumnavigate the mountain whole day. I had no food and only three-four decilitres of water. I was starting to feel the effects of the deprivation.

Towards the evening I saw the two volcanicitos below me. It is at this point that I made a very serious – and a very stupid – navigational mistake. I was actually on a range of subsidiary peaks of Incahuasi. Due to over-exertion or severe dehydration or hypoxia or sheer stupidity, I thought that I was not on Incahuasi but on another mountain, had to descent the scree slopes, and then to circumvent the volcanicitos to reach later what I thought was Incahuasi (which in reality was San Fransico – a 6018m high mountain which I had already climbed for acclimatization purposes). There was no basis whatsoever for such faulty reasoning because I had never been below 5200-5300m since summiting. I started to descend rapidly, and when I noticed my mistake the next morning, I was already at 4500 meters’ level utterly exhausted and with almost no water.

I was severely dehydrated. I was using the little amount of water that I had very economically, only to wet my mouth and later only to wet my lips. Either because of dehydration or because of hypoxia (or perhaps due to both), I was also starting to have hallucinations. The steep scree slopes turned into a gentle slope and I could see large boulders at distance. I started to hallucinate that these boulders were actually hollow and that they had doors – made of stone, of course – and that there were people living in them. I thought that these people could give me water. At one point, I actually checked one of the boulders if it had a well-disguised door and uttered the word “agua” aloud.

It got dark. I continued walking along the volcanitos. I had been ascending, descending, traversing and struggling to make sense of my surroundings during the last 36 hours. I was very, very tired.

 

 

Day 5 (3 January 2010)

 

A woman claiming to be the custodian of the mountain, told me that I was going to be tested… Go through some kind of a job interview… One of the challenges was that I would encounter bottles of water on the mountain but I was supposed to resist the temptation of opening one of the bottles and drinking from it. She said nothing about any rewards. I saw/dreamt/hallucinated about bottles of water, which somehow felt unreal. I was cold and I was shivering. I was lying on the ground and I had apparently dug into the sand with my boots and covered the sides of my legs with sand to keep them warm. My rucksack was lying on my legs. My torso was warm and fine in my down jacket but the cold was penetrating through my legs. I continued having something between vivid dreams and hallucinations. The custodian of the mountain continued testing me. I told her that she was the most rude host that I had ever met in my whole life: no water, no shelter but a lot of “tests” for no purpose.

I woke up around 5am, shivering. I wet my lips with the few drops of water that was left in the bottle and understood that I must have collapsed and fallen asleep without even taking the decision to do so – which means without even calculating the risks involved in sleeping at 4500m level without a sleeping or a bivi bag. I was scared. Rational decision-making is the most important asset of a solo climber. You lose that faculty and you are lost.

I started circumventing the volcanicitos. Once below the volcanicitos – and once I understood that I had made a serious navigational error – I started looking for the watermelon and water bottles which I had hidden at the beginning of the expedition. My initial idea was to eat the watermelon, take some water and climb back to the base camp to get back to the tent – and food. In the event, I could neither find the watermelon or the bottles of water. To try to climb almost 1000m without water and in a severely dehydrated state would be suicidal. So, there was only one option left: the 18-20 kilometre long trek to Las Grutas. I started walking.

I was walking slowly and thinking obsessively about water, watermelons, orange juice, Coca-Cola, Fanta (even Sprite, which I usually find disgusting). At the same time I was thinking if it would be wiser to think about thirst or to suppress the feeling altogether. Around noontime – when it was hottest and when I was driest – I reached the lagoon. There were 5-15 centimetre deep pools everywhere. I tasted the water. It was not salty but had a strong smell of sulphur – possibly due to organic material rotting in it. I also knew from my previous research on the area that most water resources in Puna were contaminated with arsenic. I filled my water bottle and carefully dropped four iodine tablets into water. Now, I had to wait for half an hour for the iodine to have effect. I washed my face in one of the shallow water pools. I let my face rest on the surface of water. It was a nice feeling. The smell was awful but it was water after all. I could hear flamingos at distance. “What”, I thought, “if I turn pink like flamingos, after drinking the water”. The water was unfiltered and dark and I had no reason to exclude the possibility of having one or another little shrimp – of the kind that gives the flamingos that lovely pink colour – in the water. I imagined myself entering the first lecture of the new term with a pink face and pink arms. I would lose authority and never be able to re-establish it. I smiled for the first time during the last two days. The half an hour was over. I could drink the liquid.

I continued trekking. I was only barely feeling better. I was often taking breaks to drink a couple of mouthfuls from the liquid in my bottle. At one point a wasp successfully entered the bottle, fell into the water and started to swim. Trying to get rid of the wasp and wasting water in the meantime was out of question. So, I started drinking carefully to avoid being stung in my tongue by the wasp. After a while it drowned and I was nastily happy about the dead of this potentially nasty creature.

After another five hours of trekking, I reached the thermal baths just next to Las Grutas. I saw a car and started walking towards it. Just as I reached the baths, another car arrived. I approached the car. The driver was a woman around her fifties, who was apparently taking her family for an excursion. I asked for water and sat down. I pointed to Incahuasi and said “quatro días”. They looked worried. They gave me water and candies and drove me to the refuge in Las Grutas. For the next two days, I would be drinking almost continuously while seldom feeling the need to go to the toilet.

My mission was not over yet. I had to get back to the mountain to retrieve my tent and equipment.

 

Expedition 2

Day 1 (5 January 2010)

I spent a frenetic thirty-six hours in Fiambala and recuperated. The Argentina Dakar rally was taking place and the village was filled with people, vendors, 4x4s of various models and shapes and support lorries. It was almost impossible to find accommodation in the village. I shared a rather expensive hacienda with two Spanish brothers who were planning to climb Ojos. Later, we also shared transport to our respective destinations.

It was not easy to leave Fiambala. All outgoing roads were closed because of the rally. Unless, you were a rally driver with a rally car, you were stuck in the village. We tried various options but we encountered roadblocks everywhere. Somehow, at one point, our driver, pretending to be a rally driver, hit the road. There were crowds everywhere and they seemed to think that we were one of the participants of the race (which makes sense as we were riding a 4×4 just like the other participants of the race: the only difference was that our 4×4 didn’t have a race number or flashy decoration). The crowds, greeted us, waved to us, photographed and filmed us. We responded by waving our hands. On at least two occasions, I made the victory sign, indicating that we were determined to win this race. I felt asleep after a while, only occasionally waking up with the roar of the engines of the rally cars, which were overtaking us.

We dropped the Spanish brothers in Quemadito and continued to Las Grutas and then to Fern Point. When I said goodbye to the driver, it was already 12:30. I started ascending, first slowly, but later at a faster face. I was fully acclimatized. I thought that it was such a pity that I was making use of my acclimatization to search for a tent rather than doing an interesting climb. After circumventing the volcanicitos I started walking up the gulley. The night fell. I switched on my head torch and continued walking. I could recognize the features surrounding me and I had a feeling that I was very near to the place where I had pitched my tent. At around 21:30 my stove and my kettle suddenly appeared in front of me. They were supposed to be in the vestibule of the tent. “The tent must have blown away”, I thought. That was the reason why they were there, glittering in the dark.

I had counted on the tent being in its place, so I had no bivi equipment. To bivi on the spot with whatever clothes I had on me was out of question. I was at an altitude of 5200m and it was very cold and windy. So, I had only one option: to walk all the way back to Las Grutas. This time, I had at least water. After trekking whole night without any break, I arrived at Las Grutas at around 9:30 in the morning.  Receiving the news of my arrival to Las Grutas, Jonson Reynoso had sent a remiss taxi to pick me up.

 

Expedition 3

Day 1 (7 January 2010)

If I were to have any hope of retrieving my tent, I had no option but to get back to the mountain with proper equipment. I borrowed a sleeping bag, a bivi bag and binoculars from Jonson Reynoso. For food, I bought a couple of chocolate bars, dried meat and biscuits. Together with six litres of the water, I believe my rucksack was not heavier that 12-13kg. Like a lightly equipped commando soldier, I was ready for my mission.

Jonson Reynoso´s daughter Ruth was going to go to Chile, so she gave me a lift to Las Grutas. At the border control, it was very crowded. People who had been in Chile for the rally were returning.  The sergeant who was checking the passports recognized me in the crowd: “You over there… Come over… You are a crazy man…” he joked. He did my paperwork before anyone else, asked me to take care and avoid passing the Chilean border.

The refugio was also very crowded: a local mountaineering club was preparing to do several ascends, there was another team from Cordoba and also an international team of diabetics from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, who were planning to climb Incahuasi as a prelude to a climb of Aconcagua next year. I fraternized with them. The diabetics group and the Cordoban team more or less adopted me. After many mate sessions and several meals, we were friends in spite of the language barrier.

The next day, I woke up with a stomach pain which refused to alleviate during the day. One of the climbers, who was also a medical doctor, suggested that I stay in the refugio for another day. I declined, saying that I didn’t have time. The interesting thing is that the news of my stomach cramps had already reached Jonson Reynoso’s ear. He later told me that he was worried that I went to the mountains in that condition. That afternoon, the diabetics group dropped me as high as 4600m.

It was late afternoon but I started my search at once. I combed sections of the mountain with my binoculars (I had lost my glasses and contact lenses with the tent so I was using the binoculars almost as a substitute for them – thankfully, they were providing a clear vision of my surroundings). I started going up. After reaching the spot where the tent was erected, I continued my ascent. My intention was to figure out, if the tent had been blown upwards and fallen to the other side of the mountain. The night was about to fall. So, I got into the sleeping and the bivi bag which turned out to be too small and covered only up to my hips. The down jacket kept the rest of my body warm. I ate some meat, biscuits and chocolate and drank as much as I could. I was ready for the cold night at an altitude of 5200m.

I continued my search the next morning. I walked up almost to the end of the gulley. There were no signs of the tent or its contents. I returned to the point where the tent was and started walking downwards. More and more of the contents of the tent started to appear. The dry bag with the book on Christian-Muslim alliances and by notes for a book review was the first piece which I found (a week’s work saved). Then, I continued finding more and more items: tent pegs, another dry bag (this time completely empty) my tooth brush, my reading glasses, the leather bag of my wooden cutlery, the wooden spoon (smashed into pieces), and ironically, the guide book for climbing in the Andes (which I interpreted as if Allah or Virgin Mary wanted me to continue climbing in the Andes).

After a while, I started losing my hope of finding the tent intact. The winds must have been very powerful. The fact that there was debris around indicated that the cover of the tent must have been ripped off. I saw no point in continuing my search. My tent, my sleeping bag, crampons, thermo rest, platypus, my spectacles, even my Swiss army knife was lost for ever; they were gone with the wind, literally. I started walking towards Las Grutas. At around eleven o’clock that night, I covered my body with the sleeping bag and slept for a couple of hours under a carpet of bright stars. This was my last night in Puna. I woke up with the dawn and continued walking towards Las Grutas.

Once again, Jonson Reynoso had received the news of my arrival to Las Grutas and asked one of his tour guides to pick me up. I travelled all the way to Fiambala with three Argentinean ladies who were on a holiday together. One of them was a teacher of English so I could strike a conversation with her. We drank mate talked about thousand different things. For the first time in almost ten days, I was able to forget about the tent.

 

12 January 2010

Catamarca