Welcome to the pain cave: El Alto in Bolivia's Cordillera Real

We didn't come for fancy hotels. We didn't come for fiestas or for cheap cerveza. We came for the mountains. We came to climb--sans Diamox, sans bullshit.

The smell of trash and smog floats through the small crack in the car window; a 1990 Toyota rattles down an unpaved road. Three days of acclimatization in La Paz and Copacabana culminate with a 4 hour drive into the mountains.

My brother and I are eager to get to the Cordillera Real: a portion of mountains in Bolivia which are part of a larger range called the Cordillera Blanca. Crowded roads and the smell of pollution fade as the Toyota bounces toward the mountains. I watch old dogs and old men alike shuffle through trash on the side of the road: el desayuno.

We arrive in the valley at the base of the mountains and we latch our extra climbing gear to three donkeys. We begin our trek toward Lago Juri Kota. Fresh mountain air replaces smog, and mountain passes replace crowded roads. The mountain air we had wanted so badly proves less refreshing than expected: it is thin and unforgiving.

As we approach 5000m, a pounding settles at the back of my head. I breathe heavily and I think about the mountains that await in the coming days: the Condoriri Group, Pequeno Alpamayo, and Huayna Potosi. The pounding in my head worsens. I hate this, I love this.

We reach Lago Juri Kota in the afternoon. Stoves fire up in the cooking tent, donkeys arrive with the climbing gear, and the sun settles behind the Cordillera Real. I climb into the tent and try to sleep. I glance over at my brother and shake my head. He is struggling to keep down dinner but manages to offer his thoughts:

Welcome to the pain cave. This is what we came here for.

I unravel the headphones rapped around my old iPod nano and zip up my sleeping bag. The string plucking of Ben Howard can only partially overshadow the pounding in the back of my head. I close my eyes slowly, taking in a last glimpse of the great mountains that surround our first camp. My head spins and I squeeze my eyelids tighter, hoping that it will settle the nausea. I give in, embracing el alto, settling into a light sleep. Only the thought of the mountains and the climbing that awaits eases my mind. I hate this, I love this. The pain cave that is our tent becomes home and I finally rest.

Matt Bryan

To Save a Wasp

In the wind at 17,000 feet you can't hear the sound of vomit hitting the snow.  The hood of a down parka insulates well.   In this casing of down and nylon stubborn cross wind is drowned to an air-conditioning hum.  The world sounds as if I'm standing at the bottom of a huge aquarium tank, muffled and suffocated.  Alpine starts are an abyss.  Light flashes schizophrenically at the edges of my vision.  Turning around I can see Matt hunched over, leaning on the head of his axe.  "Are you OK?” "Yeah... I'm good".  It's almost a lie, the convoluted self-assessment of a man both choked of oxygen and unwilling to quit.  There's something wrong with his eyes.  Have we pushed the acclimatization too fast?

Decisions are made quickly during a summit bid.  Who will lead this pitch?  Is this descent steep enough to warrant a belay anchor?  Do we abandon the expedition here?  Silverio.  Yes.  No. 

I've never seen the adze of an ice axe used to cover puke.  I think briefly how weird it is that courtesy holds up in sharp moments like this.  Another pair of climbers stand a few feet from us, the French woman and her guide.  They ignore Matt's sick-spell.  Matt pulls a drag off my water bottle and gags.  At this altitude it's too exhausting to drop your own pack, anchor it in the snow, undo the straps and remove your own bottle.  Much easier to simply reach into the back of your climbing partner's.  If Matt has a virus I have it now.  We give Silverio the go, "listo".

Despite our tattered state we lead the party of climbers ascending from High Refugio.  Silverio's pace is taxing for Matt and me.  We are comparatively weak and unacclimated but I'm not yet to the point of counting steps, that trick I want to save for the summit ridge.  For now it’s all "chop wood, carry water", "kiss or kill", "summit or bust".  Mantras I repeat to myself as the three of us grind our way up this lower grade section of Huayna Potosi's Normal Route.  There comes a point of fatigue in climbing where you grope for the off-switch like a man in a dark room he's never been in.  On a good day, if you’re lucky you can find this switch.  At seventeen-five I flip it to "off".  Linear time relaxes.  My breath and movement fall into sync.  A few minutes pass by like this or perhaps a few hours? 

I can feel Matt's weight in my harness.  It's not a good sign.  There's the taste blood in the back of my throat. "Matt- how we doing?" "I don't know."  We take a breather 200 feet short of the crux, a Bergschrund passable via a 60 foot section of moderately steep ice.   Matt dry heaves off route.  This section will be a bear in our already depleted state.  Maybe were not strong enough?  With Matt on my belay I get my first good look at his face.  Sunken and blood-drained.  But then again I probably look like shit too with the better part of the last week spent at threshold altitude.  I'm tired of breathing through coffee straws, waking in the middle of the night out of breath.

No. It’s the 1,000 yard stare that startles me, blankness in the eyes that only the deranged and those teetering on the fringes of consciousness have. 

What happened?  Just three days ago we topped out on Pequeno Alpamayo.  It hurt but not like this.  We weren't this sick.  Is this the edge we came out here to find?  How much do we need to hemorrhage before we feel fulfilled?  Why do we push it this far, why do we seek out the suffering? 

…There is a wasp that falls into a pond.  A man sees this wasp struggling to free itself from the water, fighting not to drown.  Wishing to save the wasp the man reaches down into water but is stung and drops the struggling bug back into the pond.  Despite the sting, the man reaches back down to free the wasp for a second time but again he is stung.  Recoiling in pain the man hesitates.  After a moment he reaches down again to free the wasp…

"I think this is the end for us,” I mutter.  It's half question.  Matt nods in the way of a drowsy person.  This is the highest we have been.  The highest we will go.  I lift a heavy, gloved hand to my face and read the altimeter: 18,566 feet, 400 vertical feet short of Huayna Potosi's summit.   We’ve topped out mentally and physically.  Few words are exchanged.  Looking down on the descent I can see the headlamps of other climbers crawling below us, a billion more bleed light from above.

  “To Save a Wasp” was my attempt to honestly portray not just the experience of our expedition to Bolivia’s Cordillera Blanca but to expose the internal grapple that comes with the complex and insatiable desire to push personal and physical limits.  The wasp represents that deep part of our (collectively as an outdoor loving community) mind or soul that desires something more, that thirst for fulfillment.  For Matt and I, true fulfillment is often only found at the stinging end of some climbing or running pursuit in the mountains or forests or oceans.  We have found that wild places both stoke the flames of adventure and ease the psychic malaise that too commonly affects people in this modern age.  For us this expedition represented both our last major trip together before my brother’s 4 year military commitment (an end of an era for us) and a conduit for self-exploration.  Above all, this trip was another excuse to do what we love, namely to enjoy wild places with friends and family and to experience these landscapes and memories in as refined and as true of a manner as humanly possible.  This trip was a sufferfest.  Perhaps we were a bit bull-headed and under experienced.  But for us that is also what these wild places offer, risk and growth and an authentic canvas in which to push the borders of who we are.  Would we do it again?  Absolutely.  In a way we are powerless, magnetically drawn to keep going back, to keep reaching down to once again save the wasp.

Reversing Tarnish

The accumulated weight of florescent office light bulbs, deadlines and painfully hollow conversation leaves me disoriented as if I've been set at a slow spin in some overpriced office chair. The late spring sun works its way through the trees and into the parking lot like coffee through a clogged press. A drafty north-south wind cuts across my face as I pull open and fall into the driver's seat of my RAV4. A second hand 60m climbing rope, chalk bag and beat up trail shoes sit hodgepodge in the trunk, subtly giving away my true life-blood. I pull a pair of old running shorts from the second row floor and dust them off. The engine hums, almost with excitement, yanking at the hem of the shorts I've just pulled on, nudging at me to drop the gear into drive. Heeding the prod, I pull the car out of the homogenized business development and onto the highway. Mason Jennings' Ulysses spins.

With one hand on the steering wheel I hack away at the buttons on my oxford, supplanting the 80/20 cotton/polyester armor of my day job with a ratty old race shirt. It feels right, weirdly appropriate on an almost existential level... but smells slightly off. As if the accumulated miles in this half-sour/half-kraut marathon T somehow worked its way into the fabric's DNA, rendering the T now immune from discount Tide detergent and high efficiency spin cycles. The minutia of 9-5 M-F begins to settle, like particulate in a glass. The churned waters of some primordial fish tank easing off, shit and sand and old scales falling slowly and shiftily in a feather dropped from hand descent. By the time I pull the regular (and illegal) U-turn into the trail-head parking lot, my post-hurricane-waters, Ganges polluted brain is now roughly half tempered. More of an Ocean City in September clear but not yet the sans OxiClean™ clarity of an alpine tarn which is what I'm craving, quite desperately. Soon, soon.

My pollen strewn SUV is one of 3 vehicles in the trail-head lot. Maybe the drivers are part of this eclectic outdoor oriented tribe? or maybe the cars are spill over from the low income neighborhood juxtaposed to our parking spots. The "store your valuables out-of-sight" sign offers mixed messages. I awkwardly pull a thumb knuckle-filleted-by-inner-heel from my running shoe and begin the slog across the 4-lane highway to the physical trail. A few more scales settle.

The dirt single tracks of PA's Wissahickon Valley reach like the capillaries of a frost bitten hand, at the outer edges they dwindle into almost non-existence, overgrown and peripheral they require near absolute awareness to navigate. As the steps accumulate these constricted foot paths open, running in tangents across the forest floor. Finally, here it makes sense. I toss mental baggage like an underpaid American Airlines handler. The trail gains relief. My heart rate and spirit follow the ascent. I choke down damp air, grasping for it, needing it, a blind man in the dark. Hypoxic pain nudges out subtle but chronic psychic malaise. There is only so much room in a man's head. My breathe reverberates in that open hall between my ears. My lungs ache signaling that deep, boiling burn of lactate thresholds ignored. Finally, here it makes sense, swallowed again whole by the forest. Sand and shit settle. The office chair's carnival spin stops. The present moment has friction. I am, finally, alive once again.