Arrival at our camp site on the slopes of Misti

The rocks provide a little bit of shelter should the wind would pick up, but apart from that, there are lots of places to camp. All that's required is a flat spot, because there is no water anywhere and even if there is snow at all, that's normally much, much higher, so you have to bring all the water you need anyway. On the way up, we basically followed the ridge that's visible behind our camp site until we got close to the summit, and from there we followed the crater rim. Apart from the altitude and the cold, it was an easy ascent. A little bit of very easy scrambling, but mostly just hiking. For the last part, we would need crampons. On our way down, we didn't descend along the ridge, but choose the slopes to the right of it. I took off my crampons quite high, thinking I could slide down easier without them, but the snow was still too hard and lots of rocks were sticking out that might cause trouble if I would slip. I had to put them back on. Once we got below the snow, the scree made for a very easy descent. A good thing too, because after resting and packing up our camp, we continued down the scree all the way to the trail head. Our camp being at 4500m or so, that makes it roughly 1300m up and 2400m down in one day. 15 May 2011.