Cordillera Blanca - RANGE > Chopicalqui > Climber's Log
Cordillera Blanca - RANGE > Chopicalqui > Climber's Log|
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| markthejock | Soth West ridge  Date Climbed: Aug 18, 2011 | |
| Climbed the South West ridge with rgg in good conditions with a good track to follow. Some red flags even showed the way! | |
| Posted Feb 17, 2012 12:06 pm | ||
| rgg | My last climb in the Cordillera Blanca (for now), and a beautiful one it was! Date Climbed: Aug 18, 2011 | |
| I was down to the final week of my long Peruvian vacation when I met up with Mark, a Scottish climber. We talked a bit and pretty quickly settled on Chopicalqui. Normally, it takes four days, and to improve our chances, I proposed taking food for six. As that made our bags rather heavy, we hired two porters to carry our stuff. No guide this time though; I had tried that before. - The first day we went up to moraine camp at about 4900m. - The second day we bypassed the usual glacier camp somewhere just above 5400m and camped at 5600m, primarily to make for a shorter summit push, but also because on my previous attempt I had been thwarted by route finding problems not all that far above the usual glacier camp in the dark hours of the night, and by camping above them, we passed that section in daylight. And, after seeing the spot during the day where, last time, not even my guide could find the route while there were no tracks and in the dark of the night, I recognized how difficult it had been to find it. And, to jump ahead of myself, without having a track to follow, it would have taken far too long to rediscover the route higher up as well, so our decision to turn back was vindicated. - Third day we summitted. Leaving camp just after 3 am, we reached the top at 8, thanks to almost perfect conditions: it was a bit cold, but not too much, virtually no wind, no clouds (they would come later though) and a highway of a trail from lots of other climbers in previous days. Back at our camp, our porters had our stoves running already - I had told them we planned to descend all the way down if we were up to it and the conditions good enough, and still promised to pay them 5 days instead of 3, so they were really motivated to help us in all ways possible. After a bit more than an hour of eating, drinking, resting and packing up - the porters made soup and tea and did the packing, we did the eating, drinking and resting - we headed down. The clouds were getting thicker all the time, albeit well above us, and somewhere after three a very light drizzle started. No need for the wet gear though, and it stopped pretty soon after that. Back down at the road shortly after four, we hitched a ride back into town, that is, to Yungay, where we got a warm reception in Hostal Gledel (which I warmly recommend - you can even get a pretty good meal there). | |
| Posted Aug 19, 2011 8:35 pm | ||
| andret | Made it despite snowfall Date Climbed: Aug 7, 2011 | |
| Made an attempt from high camp at 5600m. Left at 3:15, summited at 9:30. It had snowed about 6-10 inches the previous 2 days. We were the second party to break trail. Several parties who started from moraine camp (5000m) became warn out and turned around. Go for the higher camp! | |
| Posted Aug 13, 2011 7:15 pm | ||
| sergejf | Summit! Date Climbed: Aug 3, 2011 | |
| Left at 2:00AM from high glacier camp and got to the top of the first 55 degrees snow/ice wall at 4:15AM, too early, so we sat with my guide, Alberto Hung, one hour in the cold to wait for sunrise. Quick progression to the summit on the ridge with high exposure. Quite definitely an AD climb but some wonderful views from the summit. Photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/sergejf/sets/72157627265452906/ | |
| Posted Aug 8, 2011 11:26 am | ||
| Jukka Ahonen | Denied Date Climbed: Jul 19, 2011 | |
| I tried to climb Chopicalqui right after a successful summit of Yanapaccha, with just one evening down at Pampa in between to rest. By the time we reached moraine camp at 5000 meters, I realized I was not recovering quickly enough to continue safely. Our weather forecast was also turning from bad to worse, so we had to leave the summit to next year... | |
| Posted Jul 23, 2011 4:17 pm | ||
| rgg | Too much snow Date Climbed: Jul 5, 2011 | |
| It was a beautiful day, but the last few days, and up until late yesterday evening, it had been snowing. Lightly, sure, but nevertheless the trail was gone. As a result, we spent two hours getting up just 100m from campo 1 (according to my altimeter around 5450m, not 5300 as I had heard before). At that point, we couldn´t find how to continue, and besides, there wasn´t really enough time to find the route to the summit and return during daylight anyway. We didn´t have enough food with us to stay another night at campo 1, or we could have scouted the route by daylight and climbed it the next day, so, instead, we went down. In fact, we went all the way down to Cebollapampa and up to Pisco refuge and climbed Pisco the next night. I want to go back and try again, because it´s just a beautiful mountain! | |
| Posted Jul 8, 2011 12:24 pm | ||
| bighornmonkey | so close... Date Climbed: Jun 24, 2011 | |
| Attempted the summit from Moraine Camp on a less that perfect day (windy, cold, poor visibility). Made it to within 100m from the summit but had to retreat after 11 hours of ascent breaking trail. Sugar snow made rappels unsafe. | |
| Posted Jul 4, 2011 10:39 pm | ||
| kevin trieu | 3fer | |
| got within an 150m of the summit. terrible conditions. very cold. need to go back. 3rd peak in the valley after Pisco and Houndoy West. | |
| Posted Jul 4, 2011 5:28 pm | ||
| etai101 | wow Date Climbed: Jun 21, 2008 | |
| loved tscenery the ice caves and the summit ridge | |
| Posted Dec 17, 2010 12:52 pm | ||
| 7summits | Great climb on Huascaran's sister Date Climbed: Aug 26, 2010 | |
| A few hundred meters lower than Huascaran, but a big mountain nevertheless! On the first day we skipped BC and went to moraine camp. When there a descending party informed us that the main bridge over a large crevasse to glacier camp had collapsed. 2 meter/7ft is not a huge jump, but the huge crevasse made us look for alternatives and we crossed on a very tiny and sketchy bridge. On the way down we had to find a new route. Anyway, from camp it took about 6 hours to the summit. Very cold and pretty windy, but the route was very nice. The first half in 2 hours, the second in 4, due to steeper walls, wind etc. Top bergschrund was very accessible, just a short climb and then up to the top while the sun chased away the full moon. Wonderful place. Back down to camp in 4 hours due to some abseils and much downclimbing. Then to Moraine camp in about 2 hours and another 2 hours down to the road, from the summit to Huaraz in 12 hours! | |
| Posted Aug 27, 2010 5:43 pm | ||
| dwalters1 | SW Ridge Date Climbed: Jul 1, 2007 | |
| Great climb to acclimatize, with some good exposure across the bergschrund to the summit pyramid. Not as technically difficult as the guide book suggested, but there are some sections where pitching it out could be helpful (or prudent). Had a few issues with bottlenecks and guided groups/inexperienced climbers - made things a little more dangerous than i would have liked. | |
| Posted Oct 20, 2009 1:21 pm | ||
| MRoyer4 | SW Ridge Date Climbed: Jun 13, 2008 | |
| A long route to a high peak without much (if any) technical climbing. Great views of Huascaran and the rest of the Blanca. Conditions were very good, nice to find after reports of heavy snow and no prior ascents during the season. | |
| Posted Sep 30, 2009 5:34 pm | ||
| bledl | Normal route | |
| Reached the summit together with my peruvian friend Julver. The night before we brought a mexican couple down to basecamp because of sorroche, slept 2 hours & started the climb. Some sketchy climbing on the summit mushroom (around 80 degree) with bad protection. Rappeled on a snow bollard and descended to the low camp. Long but unforgetable day! | |
| Posted Sep 1, 2009 6:12 pm | ||
| deuder | South West Ridge Date Climbed: Jun 25, 2009 | |
| Amazing climb! It snowed every other day except for our summit day :) | |
| Posted Jul 7, 2009 1:55 pm | ||
| FlatheadJim | SW Ridge Date Climbed: Jun 18, 2006 | |
| Climbed with Peruvian guide, Willaim. | |
| Posted Jul 4, 2009 1:24 am | ||
| nattfodd | SW ridge Date Climbed: Jun 12, 2009 | |
| Great climb, good snow conditions in the early morning. A couple of steep snow pitches and an exposed passage on the summit mushroom but nothing too bad. Day 1: trailhead (4200m) to Moraine camp (5000m), skipping BC. Pretty awful load carrying on a steep trail, maybe a porter would have been a good idea. 4h30 total. Day 2: Moraine camp (5000m) to High Camp (5600m). Glacier terrain but quite easy, unroped travel possible. Pretty grueling as I was still tired from the previous day. 4h instead of the 2/3 usually recommended. Day 3: High Camp (5600m) to Summit (6354m) and back to Moraine Camp. Left at 2am, summited at 9am along with two other parties. Snow was in good condition and we didn't see any ice at all. Tracks were already made from the past week. It took us forever to descend the technical parts at the top due to merging with the Columbian party, and 4 persons abseils are very slow. 7h to summit, 5h back to high camp, 45 minutes to moraine camp. Day 4: Moraine camp to BC (1h30) to trailhead (15 minutes) and taxi to Huaraz. | |
| Posted Jun 13, 2009 7:10 pm | ||
| tbacus | SW Ridge Date Climbed: Jun 26, 2007 | |
| Spent an extra day at the Moraine Camp to wait out weather. Summited from Moraine Camp and down in a day. long day... Climbed with Peter (see below, I'm one of the Toms..) and a couple of Brits we met at the Moraine camp. | |
| Posted Nov 27, 2008 1:39 pm | ||
| hhsilleck | Route climbed: SW ridge Date Climbed: Jul 9, 2007 | |
| Summited in a whiteout after a hurried ascent to avoid getting stuck away from Huaraz during the strike. Beautiful mountain and approach, wish we could have seen something from the summit though! With Derek, Oscar, and Carlos. | |
| Posted Jul 22, 2008 6:25 pm | ||
| ClimberMan420 | summited? Date Climbed: May 16, 2007 | |
| Were first up for 2007 season according to guides, definetly no signs of others. Plodded steps through deep powder, luckily were well acclimatized from two months trekking and climbing. Made it to summit shoulder but could not climb final pitch, extreme snow wall, no ice, lots of crumbly snow. Hard one to swallow but went down safely to climb again. | |
| Posted Dec 12, 2007 1:18 am | ||
| gremlin | sw ridge Date Climbed: Jul 5, 2007 | |
| high point so far, super fun except for the guided cluster disaster ahead of us | |
| Posted Oct 24, 2007 1:22 am | ||
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