The Pupusani-Dasiri Group. The new highway from La Paz to the Yungas gives access to the impressive Pupusani-Kasiri group in forty minutes from the city limits. (Kasiri sometimes is called Rodolfo Gutiérrez.) These peaks are in the low 5000-meter class and are composed of steeply tilted hard grey sedimentary rock. There are small glaciers on the south sides. The prinicipal summits have been reached via scrambles on their back (north) sides, but all other exposures offer superb rock climbing and some ice. I did the south face of Pupusani on a Sunday last June by following the central ice sheet into a hidden fault-plane chimney or gully, starting in double boots and crampons and finishing in EBs and self-belays on iced and rime-coated rock. Lightning buzzed me off short of the summit, so I backed down an easier line to the west in a couple of rappels and some tedious downclimbing. I came back later with Oscar Fernandez, owner of a pair of EBs and my only reliable climbing partner, this time to do Pupusani’s long west ridge, a great climb as far as we got, because after three hours of speed-climbing third- to easy fifth-class rock, the weather dumped on us again as if we were in Patagonia and not sunny Bolivia. We bailed out to the north, thoroughly soaked.

Stanley S. Shepard