South America, Peru—Cordillera Blanca, Huascarán Norte, North Face

Publication Year: 1988.

Huascarán Norte, North Face. Danilo Tic, Marjan Freser and I first made four acclimatization climbs. We wanted to climb Huascarán’s south face, but alternate snow and rain forced us to change our plans. We started for an unclimbed route on the north face of Huascarán Norte on June 29 and reached the steep part of the wall (UIAA difficulty V, 50° to 60° ice). The greatest threat there was rockfall and falling ice. We lost one rope. The next day we climbed five vertical pitches on brittle ice-covered rock (VI to VII-). We reached the ridge on the left of the face on the third day. The route was up a steep couloir at the top of which a sérac provided a bivouac site (VI+, 55° to 70° ice). The weather turned bad in the afternoon and it snowed all night. We got to the summit at ten A.M. on July 2 in falling snow and thick fog. Soaked and shivering with cold, we made a complicated descent starting down the standard route, which luckily Tic and I had climbed last year. We finally got back to the Llanganuco valley the next day.

Milan Romih, Alpinisticni Odsek Impol, Yugoslavia