First climb of the Andean "Claw".
One of the magnificent sights to enjoy on the Inca Trail is the summit of Pumasillo and the wide jumble of its sister peaks. You are walking down from the Runkuraqay pass at 4,000m and they jut out from balls of cloud against the concentrated blue of the high Peruvian sky.
When I saw Pumasillo, which is in the southern Peruvian Andes in what is called the Vilcabamba Range, I thought immediately how wonderful it would be to climb. Of course, the peak was beyond my ability but I could still savour the idea and was intrigued to find out more. Now I can point you to a fascinating account of the first ascent on 23rd July, 1957.
It is a story of youthful derring-do, because the British team were all in their early twenties and launched their expedition to a little-known mountain on a far continent "for the hell of it". The author, Simon Clark, was only 21, a year into university after completing National Service. It takes you back to a time when adventurers could only have a hazy idea of how to get supplies and transport, how to navigate to their objective and even where it actually was.
Simon Clark's title is a translation from Quechua, the language of the Incas which is still spoken by most people in this part of Peru. The "Puma" part is obvious and "sillu" is Quechua for claw. His band of seven climbers started their journey from Cusco, the Inca capital, and visited the ruined hilltop city of Machu Picchu as a side-trip. All around them was the "work of a people of marvels".
It is the same today. As you descend from Runkuraqay, dropping 400m in altitude from the pass, you arrive at Sayaqmarka, one of the old Inca forts which still guard the ancient path to Machu Picchu, this one also a temple dedicated to the mountains. And the great mountain of Pumasillo hovers in the distance, rising to a little less than 6,000m, denying the heat and sweat of the walk with its distant story of ice and frozen rock.
Sayaqmarka with Pumasillo hovering above
There it is, in sight. But, on the other hand, how would you get to it? You would engage a guide, of course, follow well-trodden and marked routes, and you would stay with people who make a business out of feeding hikers and providing them with somewhere to sleep, or stay in designated camp sites, and you would keep in constant touch by mobile or walkie-talkie. But not in the 1950s.
These climbers, calling themselves the Cambridge Andean Expedition, took a train as far as they could, then a truck, then they just walked into the unknown. They spent weeks exploring the valleys around Pumasillo, trying to find a way up, suffering on and off from altitude sickness and looking for the first time at the route which they thought would work, up the West Ridge.
At one point they lost a member of the team, Kim Meldrum, for several days. He was just staying in a different village but rumours got around and, by the time they found him, newspapers in Lima were already reporting a disaster, claiming that "El Perdido" had been abandoned in a crevasse and hundreds of local people had been mobilised to find and rescue him. None of which was true. Keeping in touch was a challenge; getting around was tricky as well; and the kit was heavy.
This was the age of heavily-laden expeditions, of what were called siege tactics: they took lots of people and supplies, put in months of work and set up a series of camps on the route to the summit, to provide safe refuges and allow a succession of climbers to leapfrog their way up. It was only four years since the triumphant ascent of Everest. The leader of the Everest expedition, Sir John Hunt, wrote an approving introduction to Simon Clark's account and the Pumasillo seven adopted similar tactics, albeit on a smaller scale. They brought more than a ton of food and equipment and set up three further camps above their base camp.
The West Ridge, with the Flutings at the middle right. The top camp was at the far end of the Bulge beyond
They compared their efforts, as well, to the harrowing French success on Annapurna at the beginning of the decade. In both cases the approach routes were unclear and the climbers had seen limited, though tantalising, photographs of their objectives. The French used up acres of precious time finding Annapurna and looking for a way to get close to it. It was the same in Peru.
The Pumasillo plan differed in one important respect, though. No porters. Clark felt that this was how future expeditions would have to be conducted and that they were showing the way to other climbers. In a sense they were: it was a step towards the fast, light, Alpine-style expeditions which would become the norm in future decades. On the other hand, there was still a lot to carry so, once they were off the road, they hired mules to transport everything to base camp. It was a three day journey and the mules had to haul themselves up the route twice to get everything in place. They had ten mules, carrying 150lbs per mule each time. Included in the loads were tents, fuel, rope, candles, a lot of sardines and boxes of warm clothing.
The clothes are worth dwelling on briefly. These days, such an expedition would provide style-conscious climbers with an opportunity to show off as much North Face, Black Diamond, Oakley, Scarpa and Petzl branding as they could. To be fair, that's where the sponsorship comes from. But the Pumasillo climbers had to make do with whatever they could lay hands on...or make. One of the team, Harry Carslake, made eight sleeping bags for the expedition, along with down socks for all, two down jackets each, down gloves and many other vital items to keep them warm and dry. He manufactured the Pumasillo wardrobe himself in the evenings after work, for months.
I don't want to take away from the book by describing the climb in detail. There are still plenty of copies available second-hand. Try to get your hands on one. And I don't want to give too much away, because it is an exciting read.
They had to negotiate an icefall, make camps on the big snowy shoulders of the West Ridge, and find ways to ascend a series of peculiar flutings of ice, as well as labour through exhausting "South Snow", snow which faced in the direction of the cold and remained impossibly powdery, yet still managed to cling to steep rock faces. It was so cold that they struggled to get going at all in the mornings. There were accidents, spattering blood on the snow, and a terrifying fall. Nearing the top, there was the disappointment of false summits, the horror of finding one last, tricky obstacle, then the exhilaration of looking out across ranks of Andean peaks, over the clouds and down to the jungle far away.
The Cordillera Vilcabamba from the Madre de Dios River and the rainforest
Clark describes how he and Mike Gravina shook hands and laughed after his friend got there first. Then they shouted and yodelled over the clouds and ice slopes, trying to express "a fierce and rugged joy".
What had started as something to do "for fun" had, of course, involved long preparations and a gruelling climb, what he called "months to prepare, days to act, minutes to win". He had only ten minutes at the top, in fact, knowing that they needed to get down to their tents before dark.
Whenever we go walking, or hiking, or climbing, it is as if we recreate our world as we travel through it. Yes, the hills, the woods, the streams and the peaks were all there before and, hopefully, they will be there after we are gone, if we don't damage them too much. They are uninterested, enduring, cruel sometimes, nameless to themselves. But we can't help naming everything as we move, and feeling and registering the weather and the rock, and processing the views, giving them meaning. It matters not at all to the mountain whether it gets climbed, but it matters to us. The world stays the same, but we are expanding our own worlds.
The naming is an important part of this. As Clark was descending he took in all the once anonymous features which they had given names to: the Egg, the Mushroom, the Bulge, the Flutings, the Mitre and so on. Many of them would have escaped the notice of people living in the valleys. Other climbers and hikers would add their own names, of course, but to be the first to make sense of a landscape, that must be satisfying.
The Egg, high on Pumasillo's West Ridge
Often climbers struggle to explain the Why. Why they do it. What struck me about about this tale is how he comes up with one reason after another: "for the hell of it", for the exhilaration of testing yourself and managing, to see an extraordinary and different place, for the teamwork, the joy and the celebrating when it's done. There is no one reason, which is obvious, really, when you think about it.
He made one annoying mistake during the summit push: he didn't wind on the film properly in his camera. All his shots near the top were missing. Luckily his partner had a few. It reminded me of reading the astonishing story of the ascent of the Kangshung Face of Everest, written by Stephen Venables. He didn't wind on his film either, or he lost it during the epic descent, or afterwards. His only summit photo was of an empty oxygen tank (someone else's - he hadn't used any). At least in Clark's case the disappointment distracted him from his frostbitten toes.
Veronica, from the Inca Trail
This is still a wonderful region to visit, if and when you can, full of beautiful mountains. Another one is Veronica, a white pyramid which you see over your shoulder as you start the Inca Trail. It's also known as Wayna Willka or Sacred Tears. As I say, names and who does the naming are important. Veronica was first climbed the year before Pumasillo, in 1956, with the French guide, Lionel Terray, leading the way. (He had been a vital part of the Annapurna climb in 1950).
One can always dream about these mountains and what it might be like to get close to them, and maybe do some climbing. One day, perhaps. Sadly, we are causing long-lasting damage. Glaciers in Peru have shrunk by about 30% since the year 2000 and they continue to melt because of global heating. They have retreated by hundreds of metres. There is no exemption for beautiful places like Pumasillo. If any of us do manage to get high up on the mountain, most likely what we see and what we clamber over will be quite altered, compared with 1957.
Acknowledgement: The book cover and the black and white photos included above are copyright Simon Clark 1959
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