Black Light Expedition

Last day in Huaraz for the Black Light Expedition

Everything has an end…even this expedition. Today we leave Huaraz for Lima and back home to Europe.

We are all happy and satisfied with all the things we have done. In the end we did more than we have hoped for - 4 summits in 3 weeks, 18 000 vertical meters ;) 

Thanks to all ours sponsors that made this trip possible and we are already looking forward to the next one!!!?

Marco - he took all the photos, without his mountain knowledge you would never seen photos from the angle his been taken. He also makes everybody laugh and got a passion for passion fruits.

Giorgio - The great mountaineer that climbs mountains to get connection so he can speak to his family. None of us didn’t know that he was such a great dancer :)

Eva - The perfect partner for climbing on rocks or ice. Just like she did when she was leading the team to the summit of Alpamayo. She took care of how the Timex (the altimeter) works.

Tom - From the beginning he starts out as a paraglider and ends as an alpinist. All the team envied him to his fast descents. He must be adicted to his computer?

Jenny - The sunshine smile with one side that’s soft and gentle, but when it comes to the real thing she is rock hard. She even think of the porters skin protection, even though they have been doing this for all their lifes. 

Jacopo - The planer of this expedition and the best team leader you can ever have. Jacopo have great confidence in the mountains and always good spirit that he gladly share with everyone. “The chef” that made homemade pasta for everyone at Zarela’s and couldn’t help that he needed to help our porters/chefs to cook on our trip to Alpamayo.

Last but not least - thank’s to Zarela that helped us with all the logistics in place.

Juan and Toyno our new friends that carried our stuff that we didn’t manage and made us eat gourmet in the mountains.

Until next time….big hugs from the Black Light Team and tanks that you have been following us….

Alpamayo 5947mt

Alpamayo 5947 Mt

I thought the face of Alpamayo was 6 rope length to climb, now I’m standing on the sixth belay but there is no summit in sight! I should know better than that, it’s always longer than you think…

It started of with a bumpy car ride threw the Peruvian landscape to Cashapampa. Here we met up with the donkeys that were going to help us carrying all our gear up to the Base camp. The goal of the day was to take us as far in the Santa Cruz valley as the day offered. The big fisherman Akilles, our ariero, invited us to new catched thrucha, from the lake Ichiccocha where our first camp was sat up for the night. (3900Mt). A wonderful place, like a picture taken directly from a fairytale.

We woke up the next morning of some tissel and tassel from the kitchen tent. Tonyo and Huan, our porters and chefs, where preparing a big breakfast.

During the trek, parts of the team ended up on the wrong side of the Santa Cruz river and needed to nude to get over, it was cold but at least it gave a big laugh to the other guys ;)  After four hours we arrived at the Base camp of Alpamayo          ( 4330Mt), this were just like the next page in the fairytale book, a spectacular place, surrounded by the peaks of Quitaraju, Alpamayo, Paron and Artensonraju. The place is full of quenual trees and the big powerful Condors (the peruvian Condor is the biggest bird in the world, about 3 meters over the wings) are keeping an eye on us.

Day 3. We walked up to the moraine camp (4925Mt). Crappy weather with a lot of wind and snow coming in.

Day 4. The tracks of the fox are always good to follow and so we did. As we reached higher altitude it was harder and harder to breath and the climb up the glacier started to be more demanding. Finally we reached the col (5500Mt) and there she was, the “Muddy Water” ( Alpamayo in quechua).  

The plans were to start our climb at 03.00, but the weather didn’t look to good, strong wind and a lot of fresh snow coming in. As Giorgio was tracking in deep snow to the base of the face, the weather was getting better and the stars filled up the sky.

It’s dark, it’s cold and above all a lot of snow. The higher we get on the face, less snow and more ice there is. The season is dry this year. We have to look around  in this fairytale book that we are in. The sunrise is lightning all the peaks and the colours are amazing.

Tom and Giorgio reach the top and we meet them on their way down on our last rope length. At: 12.13 team Eva Jacopo and Jenny are on the summit of Alpamayo 5947 Mt.

French direct route. D+ 485m.

Yieaooo!!! The summit photo is taken before we start to rappel down. Eleven hours after that we started in the night, we were back down again.

What a feeling, everybody did their best and…what a BlackLight* team!

Just to let you know, we all did a really hard work going back down again except for the lucky guy Tom…he took his paraglide and flew down!

Ishinca 5530 Mt and Urus 5495 Mt

We are back from Ishinca valley where we climbed two really beautiful mountains, Ishinca 5530 Mt and Urus 5495 Mt. We started of monday and did a fantastic trek in to the base camp of Ishinca valley, and got help from a porter and his two donkeys to carry our gear. After two days climbing and with more than 5600 vertical meters in our legs we returned to Huaraz again. Today we had a day of to refill the batteries and organize for our next climb, Alpamayo. This is the moment that we all have been waiting for. We will be back to you in about 8 days, hopefully with a lot of god news and nice pictures. 

Take care/

The Black*Light Team

Check out the video of Tom De Dorlodot flying his parachute from the summit of Vallunaraju, 5686mt: http://youtu.be/xiwpzCWc4co?a

Vallunaraju 5686mt

Hola!

We are just back from our first Mountain climb, Vallunaraju (5686), a beautiful mountain with an amazing view.The season here is a bit dry, witch makes the glacier more open with less snow and with more exposed crevasses.

After spending one night in the moraine camp at 5000mt, we started the climb for the summit at 03.30 and we all reached the top at about 08.00, from witch Tom took of with his paraglide. It was a very powerful moment, with a lot of feelings and adrenalin.. at that point where Tom run out over the edge, of the summit, i need to egmit that some of us even had a tear of joy and relief in their eyes ;)  

We are now planing for the next coming 4-5 days, we will split the team and head of in two different directions. Jacopo and Giorgio are going to climb Cayesh (5721mt) a technical climb, where they will spend about 4-5 days. Tom, Eva, Marco and Jenny will go in to the Ishinca valley, and try to climb Ishinca ( 5530mt) and Urus (5495mt) .  Take care and thank you all for following us during this amazing trip!

See you again in a few days,

Ciao!

All team members reached the summit of Walluranaju (5685) early this morning after sleeping at 5000, photos videos and more will follow soon