History and Relative Heights of Tiquimani’s Three Peaks. Tiquimani, one of the finest peaks in the Cordillera Real, has long posed a problem for Andean historians. Two fundamental questions have gone unanswered: which is the true summit, the west, central, or east peak? and who made the first ascent of the mountain? Recent research provides some answers: the true summit is the west peak; and Friedrich Fritz and Wilfrid Kühm made the first ascent in July 1940. This ascent, undoubtedly the best rock climb undertaken in Bolivia up to that time, was a fine achievement, especially so since Fritz and Kühm climbed unroped. An account written by Fritz appeared in the obscure and long-defunct Boletîn de Ski y Andinismo of the Club Andino Boliviano (“Un Problema de Roca,” No. 4, 1946, pages 10-11). Germans, resident in La Paz, Fritz and Kühm ascended the mountain from the north, accompanied part of the way by Friedrich Ahlfeld and Rolf Böttger. The account seems to describe an ascent to the west peak. Kühm, an accomplished alpinist, later made the first ascent of Condoriri. He disappeared on Illimani in 1941 while attempting the first traverse of that mountain. Fritz, a teacher at the German school in La Paz, remained a leading climber in Bolivia throughout the rest of the 1940’s. The next reported attempt on Tiquimani took place in 1956 by Bolivian mountaineers. The attempt, more along the lines of a reconnaissance, was briefly mentioned in Revista Andina (No. 83, Jan.-June 1956, page 35). Not until 1963 did mountaineers again visit Tiquimani, and they came in force. In April, a Bolivian Army expedition led by Major Acero ascended the central peak. The little that I have been able to gather about this expedition was summed up in a couple of lines in the A.A.J., 1964, page 219. However, the doubts expressed there concerning the Bolivian climb have never been supported by hard evidence, to my knowledge. In June and July 1963, members of a South African expedition led by D.R. Reinecke ascended all three peaks of Tiquimani (see his article “Climbing in Bolivia,” Journal of the Mountain Club of South Africa, vol. 66, 1963, pages 57-68; or the book by Margaret Griffin, Tiquimani, Stellenbosch: Kosmo Pub., 1965). Near the summit of the west peak, the climbers were surprised to find a large wooden cross and during the descent they came across an old rope draped over the rocks. Apparently, Fritz and Kühm left these behind in 1940; or perhaps unknown climbers who came after the Germans were responsible for these artifacts. To find out more about these curious discoveries, I got in touch with Malcolm Griffin, a member of the 1963 South African expedition who reached the summit of both the west and east peaks. “My memory of the cross is rather vague,” he says, “but I think it was two pieces of wood lashed together with wire or perhaps a nail. The summit we were on was five meters higher than the cross and twenty meters distant, but the cross may be on the true rock summit and the rest just ice. The rope was old hemp, definitely about twenty years old at the time and in places buried under tons of ice. It could not have belonged to the team of Major Acero. I retrieved a bit of this rope and posted a piece to Dr. Fritz at an address in Germany given to me by the Club Andino Boliviano, asking him to identify it, but had no reply. I still have the rest.” Fritz makes no mention in his account of a cross. Concerning a rope, he says only that he and Kühm never took their rope out of the rucksack during the ascent to the summit. The problem of the true summit of Tiquimani has now been solved. In 1963, Malcolm Griffin took measurements with an Abney Level from the two summits that he was on: “From the east summit the west showed an elevation of 1°20' and from the west and the east showed a declination of 1°55'. I cannot account for the ½ degree difference but I don’t think the margin of error could be so great as to put doubt on which is the higher.” The central peak showed a declination of 0°30' from the east peak and a declination of 2°45' from the west peak. The west is clearly the highest, followed by the east and central. The central peak, although being the lowest, offers the most difficult climbing, however. The ice wall on the central peak ascended by Harold Hill and Jimmy Mills presented a greater challenge than anything else encountered by the South African expedition.

Pieter Crow