On August 7, Krzysztof Zabłotny, Marcin Kraszewski, and I (all Poland) climbed a possible new route on the southwest face of Churup Oeste (5,495m). We approached as for the normal route up the southwest face, traversing left and then right on the rock slabs above Laguna Churup and then back left along the glacier below the face. Our route begins at a snow and ice gully splitting the center-left portion of the lower rock band. [Editor’s Note: A 1995 route (5.8 A2 90–95°) climbed by Americans Gary Keuhn, Scott Porter, and Andrew Swanson appears to climb this gully directly before trending up and left on 60° slopes to reach the upper west ridge (45° snow) and the summit. The Polish route described here, Polacos Banditos, may share some terrain on the middle to upper portions with the 1995 climb.]

We climbed left of the gully, beginning with a demanding 25m pitch (M6+) consisting of quite challenging dry-tooling. We continued up and left with two 50m pitches of very nice, Tatra-style mixed climbing (M5+). After surpassing the rock band, snow interspersed with rock (70–75°) led us to the upper west ridge, where there is a straight path to the top of the mountain. Our climb, Polacos Banditos (500m, TD+ M6+), took us six hours to the summit. It took an additional three and a half hours to make the nine rappels down the standard rock gully descent (Fear-Lahr-Malotoux-Ridgeway, AAJ 1973), on the southwest face.

— Dominik Cyran, Poland, with additional information from Sevi Bohórquez, Peru

Correction on 1999 Slovenian Route: AAJ 2000 states that the Slovenian route Primorska Smer (Golja-Klanjscek-Kosuta-Markocic, 1999) ascends the northwest face of Churup Oeste. Although portions of the route may face west-northwest, it is actually located on the eastern margin of the southwest face (above Laguna Churup), a considerable distance to climber’s right of the standard descent route (AAJ 1973) and Divina Providencia (AAJ 2016).