Bolivia - Dispatch #9

Bolivia Trek and Climbing Program May 29 – June 19, 2010

Guides: Danny Uhlmann, Alasdair Turner, and Juan Churra

Climbers: Danny Griffith (Bellingham, WA), Alfred Kwok (Claremont, CA), Diccon Westworth (Sacramento, CA), Jim Bonadonna (Poughkeepsie, NY), Raymond Gregory (Marquette, MI), Nancy Burke (Dallas, TX), and Margen Burke-Karr (Missouri City, TX).

Danny called at 5:06 pm Bolivia and Eastern US time on Sunday, June 6th with the following dispatch:

This is Danny calling from our base camp in the Condoriri Valley.  Today after breakfast we made a fairly leisurely hike up to 17,000 on Pico [this was garbled but probably] Austria.  It was great weather once again and we had excellent views of the Altiplano, Lake Titicaca, Pequeño Alpamayo, and the other peaks that we are going to be climbing.  The route up is a rock and scree trail with no technical aspect to it.

We scouted the cabeza (face) of Condoriri for later in the week and reconfirmed that it’s a pretty dry this year with more crevasses open than normal.  It an inconvenience, not a danger, and it all looks passable.  We got up to the base of the couloir, and it looks fine.

Jim Bonadonna’s birthday is the 11th but we celebrated tonight because of the relatively short life-span of the cake that we got for him.  Waiting until today was fine, but waiting until his true birth day would not have worked well for the cake.  It was a total surprise for him.  We had candles and all.  He made a wish but wouldn’t tell us because that’s bad luck.  Hopefully he’ll get his wish.

Tomorrow we’ll get up at 8 and do some skills on the glacier and then go ice climbing.  Everyone is doing very well!  We’ll give you more news soon.  By for now.

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