Vallunaraju Summit

One small step up the mountain often widens your horizon in all directions...

After our incredible 5 day trek on the ¨Santa Cruz¨, we were hungry for more. We allowed ourselves one day rest in Huaraz before we attempted Vallunaraju; an 18,963 ft. mountain about two hours east of Huaraz. This was some crazy mountaineering, and we found a great local guide named Jhony who says he sometimes summits this mountains up to three times in one week during high season! We had some heavy duty gear for this trip including ropes, harnesses, crampons, ski boots, and ice axes. The first day hike up to base-camp nearly killed me!!! Little did I know, we went a really steep route so that our guide could judge our physical capabilities and decide how to approach the summit. HAD I know known this, I would have dragged-ass that first day so he wouldn´t expect so much of us! This was the most challenging thing I have ever done, but the most rewarding.

whoaaaaa altitude from Julia Scheri on Vimeo.

The 2am start was difficult, but our adrenaline and some coca leaf tea got us through. It snowed a lot in the evening which made the hike that much more difficult. With our headlamps we scrambled over icy rocks and over rivers to arrive about a half an hour later at the glacier. We got geared up and immediately started climbing. With our headlamps and the fog, all we could see was a few feet up, and ALWAYS up. We were all attached with a rope and had our ice axes to help us on the really steep sections. My breathing became more shallow the higher we went... man altitude does some funny things to your body. It was like I could feel everything in my body constricting and expanding, re-wiring to function with the little oxygen in the air. My heart felt like it would pound right out of my chest, but we kept going. We passed by some crazy ice caves, crevasses, cornices, ice bridges and about a 70º summit ridge. I mean, I don´t know a whole lot about ice and snow, but one little crack and I think we could find ourselves pretty deep inside that mountain. The movie ¨Touching The Void¨ happened on a mountain in the Andes and it was pretty much all I could think about while passing these sketchy areas. A little after sunrise we reached the summit, THANK GOD, because I was nearing my end. It was breathtaking. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The peaks all around and the ground covered in clouds... it felt so magic! Plus the euphoric feeling of being on top of a mountain, it was one of the best feelings I have ever had in my life, and one of the slightly more physically uncomfortable as well. We could only stay a few minutes up there because as the sun got stronger the condition of the ice and snow could become dangerous on the way down. Besides, I don´t think my circulation was working very well and I couldn´t feel my fingers or toes... maybe I was a little loopy from the lack of oxygen as well but I swear I thought my fingers were going to crack off! We finally got down and I couldn´t take one more step. Chris was making me extremely jelous with the bounce in his step - he was on such a high from getting to the top (I think his body handled the altitude a little better than mine)! Besides some possible pulmonary adeema, a headache, and sore feet, we arrived to the road unscaved. Nothing too bad that wont go away in a few days (hopefully), but we returned with a memory that will last a lifetime. Absolutely incredible.