Misti Mountain - Arequipa Peru

Day 1
We scheduled our "4-wheel drive" taxi service for 8am to give us an early start on Mt. Misti. The road which supposedly requires 4 wheel drive vehicle was washboarded and could have been driven in almost any vehicle. Upon arriving at the end of the road the weather was perfect and you could see the whole mountain, currently at 12,000 feet only 7,000 to go to the summit. The guy in charge of the mountain taxi service tried to give us instructions on where the trail went but as we speak different languages it was basicially a bunch of pointing at the mountain with reference to a ledge and a yellow spots of grass. Greta understood but I took it on faith.


As we started off we were carrying all of our water for the two day trek and knowing that we needed to conserve water our pace was VERY slow to keep our bodies from overheating and losing water via sweating. The great thing about going at such a slow pace is that your heart rate stays low and you don't need to stop for breaks to rest. So at our very consistent and slow pace we climbed 4,000 feet to 15,900 feet in four hours where we set up camp for the night. We were both very happy with this progress and thought this put us in perfect shape for an easy summit the following morning.

Now neither Greta or I have any high altitude experience to speak of, we really just thought it would be fun to hike to the top of a really high non-technical mountain. We've read that you are supposed to acclimate to higher altitudes at a rate of 2,000 feet per day, but we also were told that everyone does this mountain in two days. The hiking to where we set up camp went great and we went 1000 feet higher than the first base camp because it was early in the day and we were feeling good. But as soon as we stopped hiking and started setting up camp and cooking dinner the action of bending over caused both of us to get headaches immediately. Being the first time either of us had really felt the side effects of high altitude sickness and the feeling of not knowing what could happen was scary. What if we had camped lower at the first base camp, would we be fine? But that would have left over 4,000 feet for tomorrow. And of course the obvious question, if we were feeling as we did at a measly 15,900 feet, how in the world were we going to make it to 19,100 feet the following day. These were some of the wonderfull thoughts running through our splitting heads as we waited for the following days hike.

On the bright side, we were blessed with excellent weather. We were camped between cloud layers which made for a spectacular sunset that lasted much longer than the sunsets we are accustomed to. And in the middle of the night the clouds dissappeared entirely leaving a glowing maze of the Arequipa city lights 8,000 feet below us.

Day 2
In the morning we packed light packs, leaving the tent, sleeping bags, pads, cooking equipment, and misc. other gear at camp and started up the trail, both of us feeling marginally better but still anxious about how the rest of the climb would go. The first thousand feet went as the first 4,000ft did and we were at 17,000 within an hour. 18,000 feet per the map should put us on the rim of the crater at which point we were told the trail would split and we could go right and see lava in the bottom of the crater and then go left to climb the last 750 feet to the summit.

Climbing the last thousand feet to the crater rim was a much harder task than we could have imagined and even at our snails pace I could feel my heart racing, I'm assuming because in the oxygen deprived air it needed to pump higher rates of blood to get the needed oxygen to my muscles. Putting one foot in front of the other, we gained the crater rim. From here we could clearly see the big metal cross marking the top of the mountain and the other trail going off to the right towards the crater. At this point I think the only thing on earth that could have gotten me to walk the extra distance into the crater would be the chance to see lava. As we hiked into the crater and the bottom came into view it was disapointing to see not lava but a giant sulfur vent. It is the largest sulfur vent I've seen, but it was no lava. After the detour to the crater, we were now standing under the last 700 feet climb to the summit, but we were so exhausted that it looked like forever away. No option other than to take one step and focus on the next rather than look at how far it was to the top.

Making the summit and knowing that we didn't have to climb anymore was about the best feeling ever. We had clear views of the mountains on either sides of us and sitting on the top eating and drinking while looking down at the world was quite peaceful.

It had taken us eight hours of climbing to reach the summit and after a 20 minute break on top we were both looking forward to getting down to a lower elevation. The top portion of the trail down to the crater rim had to be walked but once at the crater rim we were able to walk/ski down a scree field to our camp in only about half an hour. Being back at camp was also a big relief and we took a proper lunch as we packed up. It was on our way down the scree field that we saw the first signs of other people on the mountain, until that point we had had it all to ourselves. After lunch and packing we made a quick decent down the trails and another long scree field making it back to the parking lot in three hours and fourty five minutes from the top including the time to pack camp and eat.

We were at the pickup spot before 2pm and the ride wasn't scheduled till 5 so after a snack break we figured the obvious thing to do was start hiking towards town. We had almost made it to the main road when we saw the Nissan Pathfinder pull in about an hour early. I think the driver was happy we'd walked out and saved him an hours worth of driving and we were happy he was an hour early. All worked out very well.

as a side note we were very happy with the service and info we got at the camping store we booked our driver through so we'll throw a plug in for them. The store is called Peru Camping Shop and their email is perucampingshop@gmail.com and they are located at Jerusalen 410 - Cercado, Arequipa Peru. We worked with Wilmar Diaz and his english was perfect.

Getting back to town early the shower was refreshing and after a quick dinner of some leftovers we were off to an early nights sleep.