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Fernando: Now that
is an aggressive schedule! All the luck in keeping to
it. I checked
out the rest of your site. Are you going to update it along the
way? It should make for fascinating reading. There are
a couple of comments after reviewing the site. The basin has indeed
been traversed and both Pissis and Bonete climbed on one trip. Greg
Horne (a climbing ranger in Canada) did both, solo, in March of
1995. Here are some particulars. Greg had contacted me in late
'94 and suggested we climb Pissis together, along with a German
friend he wanted to bring along. This was OK with me and we planned
to try to get to the peak over the Vidal Gormaz Pass. This was the
entry point I used the previous year to get to the western side of
the peak, so we thought we could use it again. I had driven over the
Pass in early '94 with my driver (who subsequently a few months later died
suddenly) and he had gotten me to around 13,800' for a BC. Access
was a large problem back then. Maps were virtually non
existent. No GPS. No phones, etc. We guided ourselves to
the peaks by a variety of means, one being just dead sight
reckoning. When Greg
and his friend joined me in Copiapo, I had a new driver, Patricio
Rios. Pat had never been to Pissis before. This was his first
trip. Unfortunately, we could not get to the peak. We had two
vehicles and one ran dangerously low on gas. We had extra gallons,
but it was a fuel pump problem. So, we abandoned the approach to
Pissis and decided upon Tres Cruces Sur. Pat and the other driver
dropped us off and they barely made it to the Customs station where they
were able to get some gas and make it back home, one truck towing the
other. Meantime,
we climbed TC. From the top of the col between the two peaks, I
climbed my own route while Greg and his friend climbed another. As
it turned out, his friend dropped out along the way to the summit, but
Greg went on to the top, a day or so before me. We
returned to BC and waited for Pat to come for us on the day we had
agreed upon. He did and we returned to Copiapo. I was on
a tight schedule and I had to return to the States. But Greg was on
an extended vacation and he and his friend had many more weeks of
time off. After I left, they decided to go to Pissis and Bonete
and climb both peaks. This time, however, Patricio convinced Greg to
try an approach from the north, via the Valle Ancho Norte and Sur
Passes. This proved to be the key to access, because they
encountered no difficulties on the way to Pissis. Valle Ancho is the
Pass I subsequently used on my later trips to
Pissis. Greg wrote
me months later that they got to Pissis and settled in on the north east
slopes, a spot I used several times. Their route took them across
the northern reaches of Pissis (at about 16,800') and around to the
western slopes. From there Greg worked his way across the
western flanks and then turned east, up a couloir, and then went north to
the summit pyramid and then east again to the top. This is the route
I used a year later to solo it. Unfortunately, Greg's partner had breathing problems at about
20,000' and he returned to BC, there to await Greg. Greg
returned to BC a few days later, having solo'd the summit. His
partner decided not to go on to Bonete. But, together they
moved their camp from the north east flank of Pissis down the eastern
flank of the peak and came out upon the southern plateau, right below the
southern end of the Pissis massif. They made camp at a spot with
three small ponds, of different color. I saw them on one of my trips
and I have thought of them often ever since. Such beautiful little
ponds in the middle of total desolation. Absolutely
wonderful. From that
camp, Greg's friend walked out to the west, over some very problematic
ground, and eventually waved down a mining truck on a remote road on the
Chilean side. He then returned to Copiapo. Greg,
meanwhile, next day left for Bonete, across the plateau. He reached
the peak, put in a couple of camps, and then reached the
summit. He almost bought the farm trying to get out. He,
too, walked out to the west. He knew there were two mines on the
Chilean side that would provide a ride to town. At one point,
he ran out of water and was barely able to drag himself to a Chilean
mining road three days later. What a story and what fortitude he
showed. He not only solo'd the two peaks, but was able to
overcome incredible adversity to get back to
civilization. Again, this is before GPS, sat phones,
etc. Well,
I wanted to provide you with the story. You would not know of
it otherwise. The few of us who climbed in that whole
area never wrote much about the climbs. I tried to get Greg to
write about it, but he declined to do so. Now you have the
story. One other
item caught my eye. It concerns the heights of the peaks. I
haven't heard anything to the contray of a height of 6885 for Ojos.
It was well established by Ad Carter's expedition way back in the
60's. It has always been honored by international groups as the
correct height. There have been many expeditions to Ojos over the
years, each one seems to come back with their reading of their GPS that
either confirms or not the correct altitude. The Argentines,
especially, have a tendency to inflate or deflate their readings, where it
will give them some kind of advantage. In this case, they have tried
over the years to deflate the height of Ojos while inflating the
height of Pissis. This then gives them some sort of bragging rights
to the two highest peaks in the Andes. Brignone, the Argentine
climber who first climbed Bonete, made just such an observation to me in a
letter in the mid-90's. I have seen it in action over the years,
enough to confirm it in my mind. So, Ojos, I beleive, is still 6885
and Pissis is still at the recognized height of 6871. I'm sorry
if I have offended any of your climbing team members about
this. Well, I
really look forward to hearing about the expedition as you progress.
And I am also interested in the state of the ice and snow in the entire
area. I suspect a good part of the snow fields there in the 80's and
90's are gone by now. I saw the beginning of the end for the snow
fields higher up on Llullaillaco many years ago, for example, and I
imagine the same is happening farther south. Again,
thank you for taking the time to share your information on the
climb. Kind
regards. Bob
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