Wherever I go, there I am.: Safety in the Mountains

Hanging out at 36 stories high
(120 meters or 393 feet)

One of the best parts about living in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru is the accessibility of the mountains. There are over 50 peaks of 5,700 meters (18,700 ft) or higher, including more than 30 peaks over 6,000 meters (19,685 ft). Besides mountaineering, a multitude of other activities can be enjoyed here such as rock-climbing, ice-climbing, horseback riding, hikes, multi-day trekking, camping, bridge-jumping, birding, and glacial lake jumping (only popular amongst the Peace Corps crowd).

Upon arrival, the unsavvy tourist may be deceived into thinking they can summit a 6,000 meter peak, or scale a 30 meter ice wall, and someone will pop out of nowhere to save them if something should go awry. What most visitors don't think about is the lack of human resources, and therefore lack of rescue capabilities, available in this 340,000 hectare (1,312 square miles) Huascaran National Park.

Last year I embarked on climbing the "beginner's peak" of Nevado Pisco with a couple of friends and a couple of (maybe) guides. After hiking to the base camp and having a quick dinner, we went to sleep only to awake at 1am to begin the ascent to the summit. With our headlamps and gear, we made our way across the incredibly long and torturous morraine, then strapped on our crampons at the glacier's edge and tied into each other with 60 meter ropes. A few hours later as the sun was rising, we reached the summit and were able to see the white beauty surrounding us as we stood on top of an ancient glacier.

Then we descended. The terrain was quite different in the daylight. Instead of seeing the 2 foot radius of light from my headlamp, I saw huge expanses of snow and ice, icicles hanging into caves, and small cracks leading into deep crevasses that made my heart race. As the sun rose higher, shifting and cracking snow melting noises and deep guttural sounds of the glaciar revealed a hidden underground lair that I didn't wish to acquantaince. I was well aware that the Cordillera Blanca is the tallest tropical mountain range in the world, meaning it is subject to the slightest changes in climate. Estimates say they will all be gone in 40-50 years time.

With my feet finally planted on solid ground, I vowed to never again act like an uninformed tourist, and would at the very least learn the basics of mountaineering. Six months later I happened upon a high mountain rescue course put on by the mountain guide association of Peru, the Casa de Guias. Once again weighed down with heavy gear, I arrived on day one with my friend, us being 2 out of the 4 women signed up for this course of 130 mountain guides, guides-in-training, and invitees. For the next 5 days, we were treated with the utmost respect, and our instructor had unlimited patience as we went over the knots and rescue systems over and over again in different situations. I learned rescue systems, self-rescue, rappel systems, ice systems, snow systems, emergency cases, first aid, and we even had time for some rock-climbing and I rappeled down two pitches of 60 meters each.

On the last day we received closing words and certificates, and everyone went their separate ways for long, hot showers. While we were enjoying a celebratory dinner and an overdue night's sleep, one of my Park colleagues who was also one of the course instructors, had to postpone his much-deserved rest for an emergency call about a group of university students who had entered the park unauthorized. Two of the girls were separated from the group and couldn't be located in the dark. Coming just a month after the disappearance of two lost hikers in the Colca Canyon of Arequipa, with one still missing, the backcountry was up 4-0. Using years of guiding and rescue experience, my colleague located the two girls walking along a river bank at 1am, after hours of search-and-rescue. One had fallen in and was suffering from hypothermia, while the other was wet and cold from the rain; both were scared and disoriented.

While I may not be going out and rescuing someone anytime soon, I can at least rescue myself, preventing a midnight search-and-rescue in my honor and leaving the mountains in their quiet slendor.