Southwest Ridge Route

Page Type Page Type: Route
Location Lat/Lon: 18.06°S / 68.54°W
Additional Information Route Type: Snow / Ice Climb
Additional Information Time Required: Most of a day
Additional Information Difficulty: III/AD, 55 deg. , 1,110 m / 3.600 ft
Sign the Climber's Log

Approach


From the South
From Sajama village back toward Lagunas village. Turn left at group of houses and follow straight track until flat area (keńua trees).
From there (Base camp) to the north toward SW Ridge of Sajama. Follow the track to reach the bottom of snow slope. Climb this slope and on rock ridge is space for High camp.
From base camp is about 6 hours walking.

Route Description


From high camp, head up the ice wall. There you can expect steeper ice section (up to 60 deg.). Normally is possible to find easier line to reach the snow slopes above. From there follow the slopes (40 deg.) to reach summit with "football ground". Watch out for crevasses!
Ascent time: 7-9 hours
Descent: the same route

First ski descent from Sajama


Members: Andrej Petrovcic, Borut Crnivec, Uros Cerar all from Slovenia
They set up Base Camp (4950 m) on May 26. below the Southwest Ridge. Next day they climbed to the Camp 1 (5550m). The third day they reached the summit in 5.30 hours from Camp 1. The snow was very dry and hard with few icy sections. Below the summit they encountered penitentes up to 2 m high. They had amazing beautiful day and wind at all, so they stayed on the top 1 hour. They had skiing from the summit going down about the same way where they came up. In 1 hour they reached the Camp 1, and from there a 1/2 hour to the Base Camp.

Grade: V, 42 deg. to 48 deg., seracs section about 50 deg, 1600 m
Date: May, 28. 2001

Essential Gear


Crampons and one ice axe are necessary. Also is not a bad idea to take a rope (crevasses!)

Miscellaneous Info


If you have information about this route that doesn't pertain to any of the other sections, please add it here.


Parents 

Parents

Parents refers to a larger category under which an object falls. For example, theAconcagua mountain page has the 'Aconcagua Group' and the 'Seven Summits' asparents and is a parent itself to many routes, photos, and Trip Reports.

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