After climb Ishinca & Tocllaraju or Pisco & Chopicalki; you can climb Alpamayo!
This trip is subject to the booking information on the Ecuadorian Alpine Institute trip application. We ask you to read this information carefully and to call us or write if you have any more questions.
The Institute organizes everything for expedition to Alpamayo.
We depart early in the morning from our hotel. We drive in a private bus to the small town of Cashapampa. Here, we meet our local porter with donkeys to carry most of our gear and begin the Santa Cruz trek, hiking up with day packs.
The trek through the first part of the valley can be very hot, so it is important to walk at an unhurried pace and carry plenty of water. We spend the night at Llamacorral, next to the River, our fantastic scenic camp.
We leave from our Llamacorral camp and start the trek to Alpamayo base camp (about 14,200 feet. 4,329m.) This is a spectacular camp with incredible views of the surrounding peaks.
We can expect to reach Alpamayo base camp by mid afternoon.
This is a day to prepare ourselves for climbing. We check our gear and decide what we are taking for the climb. We do all this in the morning. The afternoon is for resting and eating.
From our base camp, we move to Moraine camp. We take Moraine Ridge, crossing rock slabs across the edge of the glacier. It takes 3 or 4 hours to arrive to Moraine camp. We use the afternoon for resting.
The route above the Moraine camp continues over ice. We go to the Col between Alpamayo and near to Quitaraju peaks, after this section there is a short descent to reach the high camp.
This is a fantastic point at the foot of the southeast face of Alpamayo Mountain. After final arrangements, we go early to bed to get prepared for our early wake-up and a long, difficult summit day.
The group should be well acclimatized by now. One part of the group will climb Alpamayo today, the others will rest in the Col camp.
We start early, the route from the Col crosses the snow bowl and we will climb up with our goal of arriving at the summit. To cross below the Southwest face we need two hours approximately, we are on the main face and the Ferrari route, this is what you’ve come for! This face is a quite technical route.
With more than 1,000 feet of technical ground to cover, we move as fast and efficiently as possible, once we begin the belayed climb up the Ferrari route. There are 8 pitches of steep ice, mostly 50º with a couple of pitches steeper than that. We use two tools for ice and snow climbing to reach the summit. It should take us 7 or 8 hours approximately.
We’ll have incredible views of this part of the world. We celebrate reaching the summit, taking pictures and begin our descent down the route, returning to high camp.
If we have success with the first summit day we may have descended the day before, otherwise we will descend today to the base camp.
From the base camp we hike out to Cashapampa, where we catch our ride back. In the afternoon we drive to Huaraz.
Eat, drink and hopefully a celebration dinner with salsa dancing before heading back home.
12 Days.
As conditions on Alpamayo are variable from year to year, there is a chance that our scheduled route may be in an unfavorable state.
Your trip guide leader will evaluate conditions and if he is not satisfied with the route, weather ,etc, we will climb one of the other outstanding peaks in the Cordillera Blanca.
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