The brothers Iker and Eneko Pou together with Micher Quito (Peruvian) opened a new climbing route in a single attempt from the ground, without installing fixed ropes and climbing for more than 12 hours of ascent, which they baptized with the name ONE PUSH ( a push) on the southwest face of the Pumahuacanca peak, located in the central part of the Cordillera Blanca in the jurisdiction of the beautiful district of OLLEROS – HUARAZ (area of great high mountain climbs and long rock walls); in the month of July 2022, considered for them the best climb to date.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: M7, 85°, V, 1000 m.
STORIES OF THE POU BROTHERS
We only have a few minutes of light and no prior information on how to get down.
The Pumahuacanca peak (original name "where the Puma cries") is a very convoluted mountain on all sides, which means that the descent is as complicated as the ascent. We believe that this is the first time that we have achieved something so difficult with an ice axe and crampons.
At that moment we realize that we must hurry up and choose the descent well. We barely have a few minutes of light and no prior information on how to go down such a large mountain, which, in the middle of the night, is covered in traps... In a decision that is always risky and difficult, we decide to jump towards the opposite slope to the one we have climbed. . The first part is very steep and we climb it as best we can with ice axes and crampons. Salvation seems very far away, almost 1,500 meters below in the beautiful green meadows of the Rurec valley. But we must not lose concentration, because there is still a lot to enjoy that.
Darkness is upon us, as we change our high mountain boots for sneakers, to go down more comfortably when the snow runs out. The cliffs are getting bigger and bigger, so the descents are also followed by a lot of lucky rappelling. Losing meters is a huge task, and in the middle of the night, and on a wall of more than 1000 m, we invent a descent that will get us out of danger... But it never ends.
At 3 in the morning, when we have run out of power from our headlamps, our bodies have already been working like an automaton for several hours, and we have pushed ourselves on countless occasions on dangerous descents and dubious rappels, we decide to stop (at this point we have been active for 22 hours!) and rest lying on the grass. It is a place with a lot of vegetation so we are sure that the bottom of the valley and therefore salvation is close, but with the little light we have we are unable to continue solving the hieroglyph… The three hours that pass until dawn are very hard. Lying on a steep slope seeking the protection of the grass with no other parapet than the clothes we have on (we have been wearing everything for hours to combat the intense night cold) the icy wind makes us shiver, to the point that, in the silence of the night, we only hear the chattering of the teeth of the person next to us," say the Pou brothers.
«When dawn breaks we realise that we were barely fifty metres from the ramp that would easily take us to the safety of the valley, but after seeing… It is 7:30 am (26 ½ hours after the activity began) when we reach the base of the ravine from where two days earlier we began our ascent to base camp. But our tents are five hundred metres above where we are and we don’t have the strength to get there, so we contact our cameraman and partner Alex Estrada to let him know that we are alive and to come down with everything from above. It has been hard, but our adventure has had a happy ending», conclude Iker and Eneko.
