The blogs are kindly sponsored by The Energy Brokers

The route over to Canco was ridiculous. Once at the foot of the mountain we had to zig zag our way up an ever steeply increasing scree slope to the foot of some vertical crags. From the bottom we couldn’t see where the route would take us through there.

We set off in the dark and were at the foot of the mountain by 6am. It took us a further couple of hours to work our way up the scree. I no longer had the option to wear my boots as Hector, our previous guide, had “lost” them en route to Ayo. Crocs it was then. As the scree steepened the more precarious the routes became. Every now and then our guide, Efrain, would produce a small pick-axe and start to cut out foot holds for us.

With much slip-sliding (mainly from me) we were at the foot of the crags. Efrain pointed out the route, which looked like it went directly up through a ridiculously steep gully. Upon closer inspection the route wound its way through it.

It took another couple of hours for us to get up through this section. The rope was out on several occasions with a precarious body belay on one section. From then on it was just something to grab at. The route, albeit not too difficult, had very serious consequences! The ledges were reduced to a few centimetres in width at times and the hand holds, if any, came away in your hands instantly. Efrain seemed genuinely surprised at our progress, skipping backwards and forwards as if it were nothing to him. But then he didn’t have 35kg on his back and roller skates for shoes!

The crocs came off half way and I climbed the rest in my socks – at least I had grip. Ed was in hysterics over it as we were going to share his boots.

The scariest moment came when I gently pulled at what I thought was a decent hand hold. The entire block came away onto me. In that instant I thought it was going to push me off. It didn’t, dropped onto my feet and disintegrated. As usual Efrain was there waving my rope for support…as if he would hold a total of 135kg if I went!

So ludicrously insane the whole fiasco was, only seemed to fuel our laughter until eventually we reached the top – safe at last!

The route down was laborious and took a few extra hours but eventually we were able to cross the Colca River into Canco where we stayed the night.

The next day was a long slog up another 1600m to get to Huambo. This pretty much took it out of us and found a place to stay and had a long lie in.

We were going to stay an extra day in Huambo but decided at 11am to go onto Cabanaconde where we’d have internet access. On the bags went, heads down and on we went. By 7.30pm we’d had enough, climbing to over 4000m and walking over 25km we decided to camp on the edge of the road, finishing our walk today and getting into Cabanaconde by 10am.
Tomorrow its another long slog (22km) to our next town. The next day will get us into Lari. From here we’ll take a few days off and prepare for summiting Nevado Mismi and actually starting the expedition!

The video blogs are on their way guys. Craig has edited loads of them so they will be up on the site very soon!

I’ll also get the education side of things up and going as soon as possible.

Thanks for now.

Luke