The Southeast Face
The night is terrible. I haven’t fully recovered from the gastrointestinal infection yet, and on top of that, I’m suffering from severe cramps from the trekking food, so I barely sleep. The alarm goes off at 1:30 a.m. First on foot, then later with skins and crampons, we make our way slowly but steadily toward Ancohuma. The huge crevasses force us to take detours again and again, and in the pitch darkness, the right path is often impossible to make out.
As dawn breaks, the southeast face rises impressively before us. But the many hours in the dark without a break have taken their toll, so when the first rays of sun appear, we take a long break with Inca Kola and a Survival Bar.
After a few hairpin turns, the slope becomes too steep, and we switch to crampons. To our surprise, the snow on the face is still nice and powdery, heightening our anticipation for the descent. We briefly secure ourselves across the bergschrund, then continue ropeless. Breaking trail is very arduous; our footing isn’t secure, and the altitude and exertion don’t make it any easier.
An exhausting climb upward
Just above the bergschrund, we’re already measuring a 58-degree slope, and in the upper third, the wall steepens significantly once more. We briefly consider turning back. However, we can’t set a secure anchor—neither with ice screws nor snow anchors—where we could switch from crampons to snowboards and skis. So our only option is to push on upward, and we dig our way toward the exit at 6,265 meters. The snow gets deeper with every step. After three energy gels in an hour, I finally reach the top; Matthias follows close behind me. Jonas arrives at the exit a little later, also completely exhausted.
At 11:30 a.m., we decide to descend directly from the exit and skip the summit ridge, which would have meant nothing more than a long traverse. On the face, the slush becomes incredibly fast at a 60-degree incline, so we can only make diagonal turns and not directly down the fall line. We skip the 70-degree spines next to it. The snow conditions, however, are perfect and allow for a smooth descent. How often in life do you get to carve beautiful turns in powder snow at over 6,000 meters on a 60-degree slope?
No survival skiing, no slipping!
A rescue operation here would take several days. Only once we’re below the wall does the tension ease; the goal of the entire trip has been achieved, and I lie down for a moment. Matthias and Jonas also ski down with focus and make it down safely. On the steepness scale, we rate the descent as 5.5 E2. Since we found no prior ascent or descent reports, it’s highly likely this is a first descent.
We ski back toward camp across endless glacier fields and only now, between the huge crevasses, do we see where we’d been walking all night. For the rest of the day, we just lie around at camp; we’re so exhausted we can barely eat anything. The next day, we haul everything back to the starting point. We use a satellite phone to notify them of our planned descent, and Sabino is waiting for us right on time at the starting point. That evening in Peñas, we have a proper meal for the first time in many days.
