Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25240
everyone at some point from a combination of altitude sickness and food troubles. One particular chicken feast at a polloria (a roasted-chicken restaurant) seemed 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. As we drifted off into troubled dreams, the sky above clouded in. But we awoke at 3 to a clear and starry morning. The gods were on our side. We headed across the glacier and made our way toward our dream descent. Climbing the fa.ce 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 group. The weather had begun to deteriorate, the clear morning skies turning to swirling clouds hiding periodic pockets of sunshine. The snow was also questionable. The 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 again 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 struggled to come to a consensus, the clouds broke and we were lit by sunshine. The decision made. We booted silently to the top, then slumped down to rest our weary ies and assess the situation before us. The golden rule of ski-mountaineering is always climb what you ski to avoid being surprised by an unexpected spot of ice or a crevasse. On the left side the face, where we had climbed, the snow was unconsolidated and dangerous. We did not want to descend that way. Ptor remembered a couloir on the right side of the face that had looked smooth and ski-able from camp. He offered to check it out we gave him a belay. Jason and I arranged a pair of skis as an anchor and gave Ptor an end of the rope to tie into. With Jason ripping out 10 feet of slack at a time, Ptor mped 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 slope, confirmed that Ptor had descended the couloir to its end and traversed through an escape slot above 100-foot seracs (ice onto the main face below. John went second, on belay, to doubl check things. He confirmed that the snow was edgeable and that th escape slot actually did connect. Jason and I glanced at each other. Jason looked calm confident and that gave me gusto to try the couloir free. I did first couple of turns. My legs felt like they were going to explod Below me was the void. "Three turns, four turns. OK, that's enough," I said to myself, panting between words. After four turns was in 60-degree chute. I side-slipped gingerly toward the se "Shit, I'm facing the wrong way!" I was about to do the scariest tur of my life: 60 degrees, firm snow and above seracs that threate to hurl me onto the flats 3,000 feet below. Three short exhales I stuck it then skated through the escape slot onto the main 50 degree face. A few minutes later, lason appeared. I could see the stoic look on his face that he had had a similar experience. From there, the six of us descended, spread out on th football-field-wide face. If you got under someone, you we received a shower of hard snow and ice. It was difficult coordinate, but we managed to slide and hop our way to the d glacier below. I jumped the bergschrund and sailed to safety. I to watch Kris. As he made his final jump safely, his binding failed, sending his ski sailing off. This was a cruel reminder of 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 on thoughts were of feasting on chickens and drinking beer in Huara We walked out slowly, thankful for our lives, but also wondering we had flown thousands of miles and hiked all this way to feel broken. A first snowboard descent seemed little consolation. 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.