Thursday, 11.02.2010: Ascenscion of Licancabur: doubly proud

11 Feb

Ok, I make it short: no, I was not able to get on top of it.
Not because my breathe was not enough..but my head started to ache at 5000m around. I could fight against it up to 5400 to 5500m over sea, but than my love to Franziska told me it was not worth playing with my life: I had to be able to regress down to the car and I was feelinmg to be near of the point of very sick. So I told Gérard that I am out and let him open if he wanted to contnue. He wanted. I had to lower as much the altitude.
The problem after a while was that my head was still bumping and that I ahd to go down more. Gérard had the key of the car. And then begun some doubts….the what ifs. What if Gérard needs help? I can’t go there. I can’t use the car…So I could just hope and ger down some few meters, hoping the bumping in my head would stop. Sleeping was not really possible as the headache is less while standing.
Anyway, after a while, Rocket-Geronimo as he is now called came back.
He had made it… 🙂
And I am proud of him that he has done it and proud of myself that I’ve got there with some climbing parts and that I could say: here is my limit for today, even I would loved to see the view from over there.
And to be said: we did not used the "autobahn"-like path that you find on the bolivian side…we had to climb over rocks!.
The descant was better even my shoes were not the best: we could kind of ski down on a sand/stone part. Much of the sand came in the shoes… I definitively will have to buy some mountain shoes with a hard sole.
When we finally arrived at the tent and car, we enjoyed the chips, packed everything back into the car and headed back to the therms of Puritama, where I was been told we could have a warm bath in the river.
Yes you can…it is just a little bit to cold to do it in the night. Anyway, it was good to wash ourself.
We decide to find another place to set the tent, which was done 30 minutes later.
After the doner and more than 18 hours awake, we are happy to go to sleep.

the name was given regrding his speed: as fast down as up…with smoke behind him (look at the picture)

PS don’t believe there is no life atf that altitude. On the lower parr you find that kind of moos, higher you see flyes and even bigger animals of 20cm like fast rabbit running as if altitude would not affect them!!

One Reply to “Thursday, 11.02.2010: Ascenscion of Licancabur: doubly proud”

  1. that was definitely a cool tour, my first 5000m mountain… thanks for the company and sorry you had to abort the mission, power-schösche!

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