Day 23 – Climb Urus
We woke up to slightly overcast skies with half a moon for light. Alex hadn’t slept well, so we went at a relaxed pace. The trail goes for about two hours up to a morraine, crosses a boulder/slab field, and then reaches the glacier. Alex initially wanted to rope up, but we decided against it since the route over the glacier was neither cravassed nor difficult.
We reached the summit, took some photos, ate, and napped for a bit. We spent 45 minutes on the summit before descending. Since we had seen glascade tracks on the way up, we decided to take off our crampons and glacier/butt-slide/self-arrest back down to the rocks. It was good fun! We took the more direct route back to base camp, which is a steep and eroded path from everyone sliding down the dirt/scree with their boots. Round trip time – 7 hours.
Back at camp I found that I had very little appetite, which is unusual for me. Things gradually deteriorated until I was with diarhea and vommiting, showing the same symptoms as Alex had at Laguna Cullicocha.I laid around for the remainder of the day, not feeling so hot.
It was a very long night for me – I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep. When I thought the night must almost be over, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 11:30pm. It drizzled the whole night, so we had to sleep with the tent door closed. The interior of the tent got pretty wet with condensation from our breathing
| Published on June 23rd, 2011 | | Posted by admin |