I arrived to La Paz by bus from Cusco on Sunday at lunchtime and spent the afternoon organising activities for the next few days and catching up with Peter and his new travel buddy (my replacement) Paul who I’d bumped into randomly in the Wild Rover reception. They were on a night bus out of La Paz that evening so our reunion was brief. 

Monday I cycled down Death Road – once the most dangerous road in the world when it was still open to two way traffic and you may know from that Top Gear episode. The edge of the road is pretty much a sheer drop off, the road surface is bumpy and some of the turns are quite tight so the adrenaline was certainly pumping by the time I got to the bottom! The views are spectacular and you can’t come to La Paz without doing this tour. There are a lot of different companies with a lot of different prices – I went with Vertigo who were middle of the road price wise but the guides were excellent. 

I also booked a two day summit attempt of Huayna Potosi, a mountain close to La Paz which stands at 6,088m. I booked with High Camp Lodge on some friends recommendations and they were great. We left La Paz by minibus at 9am on Tuesday morning and got to base camp (4700m) at 11am where we were given lunch and all of our hiking equipment which we were to pack into our own back packs.  This included helmet, crampons, snow boots, ice axe, harness, fleece trousers and jumper, waterproof trousers and jacket, balaclava and gloves. 

We then made our way on foot with our not very light packs to high camp (5130m) where tea and biscuits were waiting in the lodge for us. After a few hours of chill out time (nap time for me) we were served a dinner of veg and potatoes with chicken for the non veggies. Some people were already struggling with the altitude so there were a lot of leftovers being passed around the table. 

We were all in bed by 7pm in anticipation for our 11.30pm wake up call – some of us got two hours sleep at the most with some not sleeping at all. Between people getting up to go to the outdoor toilet, everyone breathing very heavily due to the thin air and lots of tossing and turning attributed to altitude sickness and nerves about the impending hike it was quite a noisy dorm. But we were all up, fed and dressed to start the hike at 12.30am as planned in five pairs with a guide for each duo – everyone topped with a headlamp as it was the middle of the night. I was paired with a Brazilian guy who decided very quickly that he wouldn’t make the top and headed back for the lodge with our guide Victor. I temporarily joined another pair and after the initial hour of rock scrambling we attached our crampons and grabbed our ice axes to start hiking on the glacier. The three of us were attached to one guide for about an hour before Victor came charging up the hill beside us. 

So now I had my own guide which was a bit of a treat as I could choose our pace. There was a full moon so we could see the outlines of the peaks around us and in the far distance we could see a lightening storm over the jungle which lasted the whole hike. It was all incredibly beautiful and serene if you cut out the sound of my heavy, laboured breathing and much too frequent swearing. 

The first really tough bit was at the halfway mark (around 2.5 hours in) where we had to use the ice axe to pull ourselves up a steep, narrow, icy corridor. I had my first sitting down (collapsed in a heap) break after that exertion – I was goosed and my axe arm was completely dead. But after a bit of water and chocolate, which Victor forced on me even though I had no desire for either, we were up and moving forward again up a steady incline for about another hour. After this relatively easy-ish section we were 200m and about two hours away from the top. I was starting to feel a bit nauseous and all the breaks we were taking with the other pairs were making it worse. I started encouraging Victor to keep moving so I’d be distracted from the growing urge to either spew or something much worse in the middle of the ice field we were now in. He kept shining his lamp in my face to check I wasn’t going funny and we kept pushing forward. Those last two hours were hell. The terrain was difficult to negotiate, I was feeling sicker and sicker as we went on and every step was heavier than the last. I was telling myself that ironman had been harder than this but I’m not even sure that’s true! There was another icy corridor that required the ice axe near the top which very nearly broke me. Never the less, we made it up before the other groups in about 5.5 hours and before the sunrise which we got to watch from the summit. When the sun came up the view was outrageous and after taking a lot of photos I suggested we start making our way down. I was not feeling good at all. I couldn’t even enjoy my summit celebration chocolate because my stomach was still in bits and it was also quite cold up there. 

The trip took down took 2.5 hours and it wasn’t that pleasant at all. The technical bits were even trickier going down and my ankles were really bruised from the ski-type snow boots we were wearing. I did enjoy the views on the way down though and getting to see everything we’d climbed up earlier in the dark was a buzz.

I was the first into high camp and by the time I’d packed my gear away the rest had made it down and the guides gave us some soup. I then grabbed a cheeky 30 minute nap while everyone else packed their bags before we started for base camp. I pretty much ran down the rest of the hill as I was desperate to get off the mountain. My head was pounding, my stomach still didn’t feel like it could be trusted and I was just shattered. At base camp I started to feel much better and was very happy to get into the van back to La Paz where I could sit with my eyes closed while we bounced around for two hours on dirt roads back to the city. 

I didn’t think getting to the top would be as hard as it was – there were two pro rowers in our group who didn’t make it up because the altitude just completely wiped them. 6km above sea level is a much bigger deal than I gave it credit for but with the right acclimatisation I reckon it’s doable for anyone.