HUARAZ-LIMA. PERU.

After spending so much time in the mountains it really was bizarre to be back in a city. I went to drop in my rolls of film to get developed and the man at the shop used sneakily took a photo of me with my camera while I was searching some films.
The following morning I enjoyed a very hungover breakfast of arroz a la cubana and shared my last pesos by buying this old man breakfast who told me he was in town searching for work.
It was then time to double check i didnt have my pistol on me and hop a bus back to Lima which would be my last journey of this eventful trip.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING IS HARD. PERU.

Someone PLEASE give me a box of aspirin, a bottle of whiskey and a half comfortable bed.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING. GOING DOWN. PERU.

Going down is some serious work out on the knees.... the sun was out and booming down and the headaches began to seriously set in. Felt as if someone was ice picking and crayoning my brain. 

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING. SUMMIT. PERU.

SUMMIT FEVER. Once we arrived my friend from Pennsylvania literally hit the ground and stuck to the snow unable to take one glance of the life changing view, trying to catch his breathe. The poor bloke was down like this for majority of the time on top of the world.

OK. living in a box is shit. Get me back out on the road any days!

By the Herm.

The Northmen know how to do it best.

FSR Beton - Sundsvall 2014 from Claus Hermansen on Vimeo.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING. PERU.

After skipping, falling and clambering over scree for the past 2 hours we adjusted our crampons and tied ourselves together as we were about to take our first steps onto the glacier. By partner from Pennsylvania was devastated to discover that his crampons were broken. Our guide cut his own shoe laces in half and literally fixed them with a piece of string. Ive honestly never done anything harder then this in my life. Hands down mountaineers have a screw loose. These large cracks in the ice 'crevase' literally drop down into the abyss, one slip down there and your dead, frozen, meat. 

Only a couple hundred meters away from the summit our bodies shut down and our guide advised us that we were not of the beach so it wasn't time for sun baking and we best push on as any slight change in the weather could impact our lives. 

MOUNTAINEERING IN PERU.

For the last year I have really gotten into hiking and dreamt, read, watched about mountaineering and finally my chance to try it out was only hours ahead of me. First stop was the base camp where we would get a few hours of sleep before we set off at 12am to begin our ascent on the big beast standing at over 5000 meters above sea level. In the afternoon we scrambled up the scree and our guide roughy showed us the route we would take up the mountain under cover of night. 

BACK UP TO TACKLE THE MOUNTAIN.

Sophie left so and I headed back up into the mountains to do some mountaineering! First photo is of huascaran which is the largest mountain in Peru standing over 6000 meters above sea level.