An internet place, Illampu Street, La Paz

A couple of hours ago got back from Huayna Potosí. Before the climb I had the following goals

• reach higher than Csilla's El Misti 5822m
• make a new altitude record, i.e. reach higher than the Uhuru peak on Kilimanjaro, 5895m
• reach higher than 6000m
• reach the top of Huayna Potosí (6088m)

The last goal was in a way quite arbitrary as the first time I had heard about Huayna Potosí was 2 weeks ago from a French guy who was climbing El Misti with us. So I wasn't very unhappy when we turned around at 6014m (measured by my GPS which can be a bit inaccurate when it comes to measuring altitude) after 5h of gaining 700m in deep snow. Yes, we were well acclimatized and healthy but the weather played a trick on us --- during the evening heavy snow fall covered the tracks and made walking very tiring. We decided to turn back and save the energy for the way back, which was a good idea because after the sun came out the snow started melting and became very unstable, also further down the hill there are loose rocks which were now covered with melting snow making it quite dangerous to walk on.

Our guide wasn't very good. On the rocks he walked much ahead of us listening to some Aymara radio station. On the snow when we where roped together he kept pulling on the rope to make us go faster so that I felt like a dog on a leash, reminding me the Matterhorn story by Jerry R. Hobbs.

There were two other groups besides us --- a Swiss guy and his guide, and an Australian couple + their guide. None of them reached the top today because their guides claimed that the final narrow part to the summit was covered by loose snow making it dangerous to walk on.

UPDATE: Now available: photos and GPS tracklogs.