This article is the WINNER of the Spring 2007 Traverse Award.

Words: Adam French
Photos: Ben Ditto

Off to the east, alpenglow bled over the spine of the Cordillera Huayhuash as our combi rattled out of Chiquian along a precipitous slash of gravel. Crammed against the outside window, I watched the van’s bald tires skirt the road’s edge and tried not to dwell on the long tumble into the rocky riverbed below.

“We’re more likely to die in this minivan than in the mountains,” I said to my climbing partner, Ben Ditto, who was sitting beside me.

Horn squawking, we sped into a corner, scattering a group of farmers goading their burros up the hill towards home. With the Peruvian potato harvest just underway, the smell of freshly dug earth wafted from the donkeys’ loads as we brushed past.

“Muy accidentado” is how locals often describe the landscapes of the Huayhuash, and, while the phrase means “very rugged” when speaking of topography, it was hard to ignore its English cognate from my particular seat in the bus. The connection was further supported by the fact that the mountains bristling pink on the horizon were best known for one of mountaineering’s most spectacular accidents—it was here on the lonesome flanks of Siulá Grande that Joe Simpson’s epic Touching the Void unfolded so horrendously.

The scar of the road we traveled was even fresh, gouged optimistically into the hillside not long before. New roads, in fact, were flourishing in the Huayhuash of late, eliminating days of walking to reach villages now accessible by car in just a few hours. Initially, I had condemned the roads as a ploy for access by the mining firms who had helped finance their construction. Yet it was obvious that the locals embraced the development wholeheartedly, for motorized transport made daily life much easier, if a bit more dangerous. Indeed, these perilous tracks were the region’s main conduits for modernity, ushering harbingers of change as diverse as fresh citrus and foreign climbers into these once-remote mountains.

The combi finally shuddered to a halt in the small hamlet of Pacllon well after dark, and we disembarked into a plaza awash in eerie fluorescence. Poncho-clad men passed a bottle and surveyed us without greeting as we collected our bloated backpacks. In addition to Ben, who in nylon knickers and a bright blue belay parka was doing his usual best to blend in, I was traveling with Tim Norris, an American expatriate whose sandy blond ponytail and bushy beard made him look more like a Deadhead than the cartographer and conservationist that he is. Add a sizable pelirrojo to the mix and, needless to say, we were in the spotlight. Read More...