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Pictures here
So I tried to hike this 6075m mountain called Chachani. After about 7 hours hiking and occasional rests, we got to 5800 meters. The guide told me that at the pace I was going, it would take 10 hours to summit and back down to base camp. There were 8 of us. Two French didn’t quite make it out of base camp at 5300 meter because of altitude sickness. Andre, a Brazilian, and I turned around at 5800 meters and the other four probably made it to the top.
One word describes the experience pretty well – painful. It’s probably the most physically challenging activity I have ever done. I took two aspirins for my headache, drank a triple coca mate before setting off at 1am. The air at that altitude, as you can imagine, is very thin and makes walking or doing anything active difficult. It was cold but not unbearable. Even though we hiked slowly, my heart was racing at 100 mph. Even at rest, my heart pounded. We used crampons, metal spikes that attach to the bottom of the boots and ice picks to go through ice sheets.
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In other places, we used ropes to climb steep faces. I really thought I was going to make it to the top, but as we got close to summit Fatima, the mountain next to Chachani, fatigue set in. Andre and I fell behind, and the steepest part was still yet to come.
The mountain will always be there. On the way down, we both thought it was a good decision to turn around. As I write this, I still have a headache. Time to sleep it off.