The mountainâs scale, as seen through my own eyes, terrified me. Film and photographs, a 60-year-old trip report, and even the topo sketches I had stared at for hours before arrivingânone of them captured the size, or the exposure, or the weight of it. Lying in its eastern valley, listening to the static hiss of rain against nylon, I couldnât sleep. I had been catfished by my own dreams. Any confidence I had built up in the Cordillera Blanca now felt suspect. Bootpacks and snow anchors set in place by mountain guides, lively refugios and high camps, and broader terrain that was mostly walkable; these were all crutches that fed into my delusion, now taken away by just one close glimpse at Jirishanca.
On June 2, 2025, after a few hours of tossing and turning in my sleeping bag, I set off with my partner Eric Kanopkin to climb Jirishanca Chico, a 5,400-meter peak in the Cordillera Huayhuash range of Peru. The grassy hills that rolled up to NinĚacocha, the meltwater of the Rondoy Glacier, were flooded with rainwater and cow manure. Our double boots squished loudly as we went up the valley, waking and startling cattle as we passed. We were indiscreet spies under the cover of midnightâs darkness, clambering across no-manâs-land toward what we assumed was our acclimatization objective.
The first time I had seen the Huayhuash was back in 2024, from the popular hilltop sport climbing crag of Hatun Machay. I was there with Maxwell Hodges, a friend who helped introduce me to the climbing lifeâas well as to the Cordillera Blanca. That day, we were sunning ourselves on rock, a happy respite from slogging up the Blancaâs sloping glaciers. âWhy donât we head there?â I had asked him, pointing toward the jagged, snowcapped massif of the Huayhuash.
All we knew then of that place was the famous climbing accident recounted in Joe Simpsonâs Touching the Void. While descending a 6,000-meter peak called Siula Grande in 1985, Simpson broke his leg and fell into a crevasse, which ultimately resulted in one of the most epic survival stories in mountaineering. Max just laughed. We werenât ready. He was right; we could barely lead the bolted 5.10s at Hatun without our legs shaking.
Throughout a season of climbing the high peaks of the Cordillera Blanca and another year of climbing in Colorado, I could not stop thinking about the Huayhuash. Max and I climbed tourist peaks like Chopicalqui, Tocllaraju, and Pisco, and since we were always surrounded by other climbers and guides from all over the world, it was easy enough to mimic the common patterns of ascension even on our dirtbag budget. We followed the well-worn paths made by pack mules and beater taxis. Throughout our adventures, I kept my head up to admire the condors, untethered by the groundâs limits, as we were.
The Huayhuash represented something different to me. Unlike the Blanca, it hosts no regular climbing activity; itâs harder to reach and has a higher concentration of more technical peaks. The number of climbers coming into the range each year can be counted on one hand. A significant reason for that lies in its history. The Huayhuash was closed off to climbing in the late 1980s into the â90s, as a result of the violent hegemony of a Maoist terrorist group called El Sendero Luminoso. Foreign climbers were turned away from the remote area for years, and the Huayhuash faded off of ticklists. Even after its reopening, the Huayhuash brought in limited climbing activity, while the Blanca, just hours to its north, expanded in popularity.
After leaving Peru in 2024, I was still drawn to the Huayhuash, but not just for the austere beauty of its mushroom-capped ridges and dramatic summit pinnacles. The mystique that shrouded the range, the lingering stigma among climbers, was what really captivated me. It was simply bizarre to me that two ranges, the Huayhuash and the Blanca, so close and similar in geography, could be perceived so differently by climbers. Stoked, ambitious, and just out of college, I was determined to go find out for myself.
Once the sun rose, warm colors illuminated a world of winter above us. Eric and I were finally on the Rondoy Glacier, heading toward Chicoâs northeast face. To climberâs right, Jirishancaâs north ridge was a sweeping ramp of snow and ice into the golden and pink heavens. That was the ultimate route that we were preparing for on Chico, a goal that ironically seemed farther out of reach the closer we got to it. I was worried that I was already in over my head, but my fear was dissipating from the restless night before. Dwarfed by the apu, the Quechuaâs mountain gods, I was moment...
https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2026/2/15/the-huayhuash-is-still-open
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