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Outside Magazine June 2001

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Down Time -- cont.


	Cutting edge: Saari side-slipping down the Shield, 21,000 feet and dropping

THE TRAIL TO HUANDOY zigzagged up through chest-high thickets of lupine in riotous purple bloom. Paintbrush and miniature organ-pipe cacti brushed our boots, and we passed through a last, gnarled grove of papery-barked quinual, one of the world's highest-dwelling trees. Then, at 15,400 feet, we crossed over a little ridge in the moraine and dropped down to a turquoise glacial tarn: base camp.

After hearing about O'Neill, Saari had checked the logbook at the local guides' office in Huaraz and discovered that O'Neill and a partner had indeed climbed Huandoy Norte but had left their skis at base camp. Good news. The peak was still a potential first descent, and we'd quickly decided on it.

Above base camp we could see a series of smooth granite slabs, then the toe of a massive glacier leading back into the giant bowl formed by Huandoy and its sister peak, Huandoy Oeste. The first afternoon we made out a faint trail leading up the glacier—O'Neill's bootpack—but above that, nothing.

"It's going to be burly, really burly," said Saari. "It needs lots of traverses and rappels." He looked around, smiling. "I'm psyched."

After three days of acclimatizing, we decided to take a warm-up run on a ramp dropping down from the flanks of Huandoy Oeste. To me it was the only line on the whole mountain that looked remotely skiable. But when I got to the crux, a funneling, 53-degree couloir that connected the upper part of the ramp to the slightly mellower lower slopes, I changed my mind. Ditching my skis and poles, I climbed the rest of the way up with an ice ax in each hand.

A strange sight greeted me up on top: thousands of foot-high ice towers, apparently created by fierce sun and a lack of wind. They're known as penitentes, and the name is apt: They looked like cloaked pilgrims plodding mindlessly toward some holy summit where they might or might not be redeemed. Luckily, the towers turned slushy with the heat of the day and gave way easily beneath the pressure of turning skis and boards.

"There were 40 people in base camp," Koky Casteneda said of Alpamayo. "It's like ants. Every morning there's a race to get out of camp and be first on the face."

The slope, which we later dubbed Los Bonitos Penitentes, topped out at about 18,500 feet and offered 50-degree turns over a terrifying precipice. Everyone gritted their teeth as Casteneda threw his first few turns. He'd been on skis for only a couple of seasons, and his self-taught technique was ragged. But he kept his stance low and wide and calmly shoulder-steered clear of trouble.

Trimble went next. I watched him, impressed by how casually he shifted his weight when turning from toeside to backside. Too casually, perhaps; an instant later his board shot out from under him and he went down hard on his butt. At first it was almost funny. He wasn't sliding fast, and the expression on his face was more of annoyance than fear. Then he began to accelerate.

"Get a tool in!" Erickson yelled.

Not a chance. Trimble was on his back, enveloped in a cloud of flying ice chips, straining hard to keep the bounces from becoming cartwheels. Though the pitch gradually flattened below, it wasn't at all clear that he would be able to avoid being swept over the cliff at the very bottom. And then, suddenly, he got his edge in and stopped. Shaken but unhurt, he sat up, swallowed hard a few times, and waved weakly toward us. By the time we caught up to him, the Chattering Skull—one of Trimble's many nicknames for himself—was back to his customary self-mockery.

"How'd you like that one?" he said. "Bucky's Wild Ride."

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