Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25123
at some point from a combination of altitude sickness and bles. One particular chicken feast at a polloria (a roasted-chicken restaurant) to have lingering effects on the whole group. But despite our health problems, we all managed to acclimatize over those four days. The night before our summit attempt we were nervous about the weather. we drifted off into troubled dreams, the sky above clouded in. But we awoke at to a clear and starry morning. The gods were on our side. We headed across the lower glacier and made our way toward our dream descent. Climbing the face made us feel small and petty. We would climb for an hour and our position never seemed to' change. It was like driving down one of those endless Midwestern highways, where you lose all sense of time and place, hypnotized by the line in front of you. Our line moved slowly up the mountain. Two thirds of the way up the face, a bergschrund, or crevasse, marked the beginning of the super-steep upper section and a moment of conflict within our p. The weather had begun to deteriorate, the clear morning skies turning to irling clouds hiding periodic pockets of sunshine. The snow was also questionable. e wind had whipped the powder into bulletproof sastrugi (uneven snow formed into waves or steps by severe wind). Jason suggested that maybe we should try gain tomorrow. I wanted to go to the top. Kris doubted the snow and Ptor voiced his worries about the weather. Our ascent hung in the balance. But as we come to a consensus, the clouds broke and we were lit by sunshine. The decisio as made. We booted silently to the top, then slumped down to rest our wea bodies and assess the situation before us. The golden rule of ski-mountaineering is always climb what you ski being surprised by an unexpected spot of ice or a crevasse. On the left side face, where we had climbed, the snow was unconsolidated and dangerous. not want to descend that way. Ptor remembered a couloir on the right side of th ce that had looked smooth and ski-able from camp. He offered to check it out e gave him a belay. Jason and I arranged a pair of skis as an anchor and gave n end of the rope to tie into. With Jason ripping out 10 feet of slack at a time, ped through the swirling clouds and out of sight into the abyss below. "I think she'll go. I'm going to unrope!" came the voice from below. A quick radio check to Freddy and Rob, filming us from an adjacent slop nfirmed that Ptor had descended the couloir to its end and then rsed through an escape slot above 100-foot seracs (ice cliffs) onto the main face below. John went second, on belay, to double check things. He confirmed that the snow was edgeable and that the escape slot actually did connect. Jason and I glanced at each other. Jason looked calm and confident and that gave me gusto to try the couloir free. I did my rst couple of turns. My legs felt like they were going to explode. Below me was the void. "Three turns, four turns. OK, that's about enough," I said to myself, panting between words. After four turns I was in 60-degree chute. I Side-slipped gingerly toward the seracs. ~~~~It' "Shit, I'm facing the wrong way!" I was about to do the scariest turn of my life: 60 degrees, firm snow and above seracs that threatened to hurl me onto the flats 3,000 feet below. Three short exhales and I stuck it then skated through the escape slot onto the main 50- degree face. A few minutes later, Jason appeared. I could see from stoic look on his face that he had had a similar experience. From there, the six of us descended, spread out on the football-field-wide face. If you got under someone, you were received a shower of hard snow and ice. It was difficult to coordinate, but we managed to slide and hop our way to the dry glacier below. I jumped the bergschrund and sailed to safety. I turned watch Kris. As he made his final jump safely, his binding failed, sending his ski sailing off. This was a cruel reminder of how dangerously we had ridden the edge. Our little group sat at the base of the Artesonraju, crumpled bodies in a ring beside a crevasse. There was only silence. Altitude had sucked the energy from our bodies and our only were of feasting on chickens and drinking beer in Huaraz. We walked out slowly, thankful for our lives, but also wondering why had flown thousands of miles and hiked all this way to feel so broken. A first snowboard descent seemed little consolation. But even in this state of fatigue, I felt a tinge of the magic that would manifest itself fully after some beers and a good night's sleep.