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Outside Magazine June 2001

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Down Time -- cont.


	Supper by headlamp

BACK IN HUARAZ, we again contemplated the Shield. Only, after the failed summit bid on Huandoy and the scare with Patridge, it now seemed more daunting, not less so. Nor were the reports from people who'd been up on the mountain very encouraging. Saari suggested another option: Ranrapalca, the chiseled peak that looms directly over Huaraz.

It's the south face of Ranrapalca that you can see from town, an incredible 60-degree slab overhung with seracs. It was, most everyone agreed, unskiable. Back in 1979, a 22-year-old Canadian named Peter Chrzanowski had attempted it only to take the most spectacular fall in the history of Peruvian skiing.

"After making only a couple of turns, I cartwheeled 2,000 feet down the entire face and somehow survived," Chrzanowski recalled for me in an e-mail. "I was barefoot when I came to, and in a crevasse. I ate three days' worth of sleeping pills while my climbing partner ran for help to the nearest village. This probably saved me from stress. I slept instead." Chrzanowski, now 43, is a filmmaker and a gregarious oddball whom the ski world has never quite taken seriously—"Chernobyl," some call him, or "Peter Should-NOT-Ski." Still, he's one of the sport's original soul surfers, and the guys liked the idea of trying a descent of the northeast face of the mountain he'd made famous.

Huascarán or Ranrapalca? While this latest debate wore on, Koch e-mailed the suspected poacher, Brendan O'Neill, who'd returned to Jackson, asking if he'd skied or climbed the Shield.

"Climbed and skied ruta normale on Huascarán," O'Neill replied. "The Shield looks fantastic, I want it. Black ice on the flanks, snow down the gut, but who knows how deep. I say check it out."

Then, a day later, we heard that some new gunslingers—two skiers, a photographer, and a writer sponsored by an adventure Web site—had hit town. Saari and Patridge went off to do a little espionage under the guise of a welcome-wagon visit. The cyber-jocks were there to generate a daily online journal of their exploits and had two peaks on their list: Tocllaraju, which Erickson and Saari had skied in '98, and Ranrapalca.

No time to lose. Erickson called a vote: Three to two for Ranrapalca, with Saari and Patridge dissenting. Then Erickson and Trimble began to have second thoughts. "There's a better consolation prize on Huascarán," Trimble noted. "Even if you don't ski it, you still get to climb the biggest mountain in the range."

Koch, "burned out on group decision making," quit the team. Erickson was sharply critical: "You just don't drop out of the expedition without warning."

As the discussion intensified, Koch seemed less and less interested. The next morning, just before heading down to the market to provision, we assembled for our "final" vote. Koch wore an aggrieved expression, as if it was all too tedious. "Whatever you guys want is fine with me," he said. But that same night, he dropped out altogether. "I just want to swing 'em," he said, miming an ice ax in each hand, "and not carry the board all over the place." Koch searched out everyone's eyes. "I'm just not psyched on the route."

Saari stood up and, without a word, left the room. Erickson tried to remain diplomatic. "What are you going to do?" he asked Koch, with exaggerated politesse. Koch said he and Jim Earl, a friend from Bozeman who'd turned up in Huaraz, planned to try a new route on Caraz, across the valley from Huandoy. Later, Erickson was sharply critical. "You just don't drop out of the expedition, and weaken the team, without warning," he said. "I admire Stephen for speaking up, but to me it's like he used the trip to get what he wanted from it, which was to figure out the scene in Huaraz. I could have asked numerous other people who would have been a much better asset to the team."

It was hard not to see Koch's decision as payback for Erickson's stand on Huandoy, but Koch took pains to explain otherwise. He was "burned out on group decision making," he said, and, certain that Huascarán would be all ice, worried that he might return from a month in Peru with nothing to show for it. On Huandoy he'd battled a bronchial infection and then fought his way up to the top, only to find the snow completely unrideable. There was no way, he said, he was going to haul his board up to 22,000 feet for another "nonstarter."

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