Paolo Sartori

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Cordillera Blanca 2018

Around 5700m high on Tocclaraju.

In June 2018 I traveled to Cordillera Blanca, Peru. With more than 50 peaks higher than 5700m (18700ft) and 16 peaks higher than 6000m (19680ft), Cordillera Blanca is the highest tropical mountain range and one of the highest ranges in the world.

After a long fly and waiting a couple days in Lima because some of our bags got lost, we finally got to Huaraz and the day after we went directly to Ishinca base camp at around 4300m to start acclimatization process. In the next few days we climbed Urus 5420m, Ishinca 5530m and Tocclaraju 6032m.

At that point our plan was to rest a few days in Huaraz to than climb the famous face of Alpamayo, but this one got closed by Peruvian police after an avalanche killed 3 people just a few days before our planned ascent; after a couple more days an unusually heavy snowstorm hit the high peaks of Cordillera marking the end of our trip. But we’re already planning to be back in 2019.