The 7 Summits Club group on Huayna Potosi reached an altitude of 5900 meters and retreated

Lyudmila Korobeshko, Director of the 7 Summits Club, a guide of the group from Bolivia:

Greetings from the Cochabamba group in Bolivia!

We spent several days on the slopes of Huayna Potosi. There are two refuges on the mountain, at 4800m and 5260m. There were no other climbers in the refuges, only a few vacationers.

We've all been trying to know what the state of the route is. But over the past 8 months, few people have climbed to the top... They said there was a big crevasse and a ladder.

On November 30, we launched the climb from a height of 5250. We conjured up a great weather for ourselves. But the state of the route! This is the first time I've seen such bad condition. Even local guides who have worked on the mountain for many years said that they had not seen such a thing. There were lots of solid calgaspors, that greatly hindering movement. Somehow we reached the key point. Usually it was not a very difficult wall of 30-40 meters. Now we had to climb through the bergschrund and then make a steep exit to the slope and another 40 meters up. After this place started calgaspors again, and in addition opened a lot of crevasses.

In short, we reached the height of 5900m. We thought about time and safety, and decided to turn around. Of course, we are all upset. But we're alive, and mountains could wait. We may come back again.

We are currently resting in La Paz.