Haliku wrote:Athos791 wrote:...so didn't like the idea of spending a whole week just hanging in La Paz instead of climbing.
After your almost deadly HAPE experience in Mexico (New Hampshire to Orizaba hut in about 24 hours) I think you'd want to sure to be acclimated for your next high altitude attempt? Just going to Huarez will be a lot of altitude for you. So spending time in Huarez or La Paz it is the same time. In La Paz you have cultural activities which can help spend your days while getting used to being at 12500. Cheers!
Exactly Haliku, I am taking every percaution possible to be acclimated this trip, and that would have been the point of spending a week in La Paz, to get acclimated. However when I made my trip plans I didn't think I had enough time to spend a week in the city, so looked at different options.
As far as Huarez goes, the current plan is to spend two weeks in CO (conifer) getting "pre-acclimated" by climbing nearby mountains. Might as well do that as long as I am out there for CSU pre-orientation.
This should hopefully get me acclimated enough so that I can spend a day in Lima, then head up to Huarez and spend a couple of days before heading to Base Camp.
My guide recommended this trip over the Bolivia option, and laid out our acclimation plan, specifically hoping to prevent the HAPE incident of Mexico. (I am going with Oso).
Hope this helped to explain my thinking a little bit, in the end, I know Huarez and La Paz are very similar in elevation, so care must be taken in acclimation, however when I decided to go I wasn't including the Colorado factor/didn't know I had extra time. Should have made it clear in my OP.