Chacaltaya

Wednesday 20th April 1988

I chucked my skiing gear into my Pro-Bears holdall bag and headed for Club Andino Boliviano with Karin and David. The receptionist chased us down the road, seeing our bags and assuming that we were moving out without paying.

We failed to find anywhere open for breakfast, so we had to settle for sweets and drinks from one of the numerous wooden stalls which are in all of the streets in La Paz. We met Bill and Pen and after a half-hour wait a battered but sturdy old red Toyota station wagon came to pick us up.

The driver was wearing an old frayed and torn boiler suit and an old yellow hard hat which appeared to be held together with cord. We got underway at 08:40 hrs., trundling along the atrocious roads of the suburbs at a snail’s pace while the driver continued with a monologue on life and politics which was to last all of the way to the ski resort.

The district got poorer as we ascended out of the city basin. Dogs chased the van yapping as we wove from side to side seeking the best way through the rubble and ditches. After an hour we were out in the countryside and the snowy peaks of the resort were visible across the plains of hardy short grass.

The road eventually hair-pinned it’s way up into the mountains passing coloured lakes and green vegetation giving way to brown, angular rubble and scree. We continued up to the snow line and walked the last couple of hundred metres to the Club Andino Club House perched near the top.

The Chacaltaya Ski Lodge was established by Club Andino Boliviano in 1939. It was the highest ski run on Earth at 17,785 feet high. (Since then, global warming had caused the glacier to melt by 2009, six years sooner than scientists had predicted, so no longer a ski run).

Here we got issued with our skis, sticks and boots, which happened to be the first comfortable ski boots that I have come across, and we sat down in the lounge to get ready. Half an hour later, fortified with salami and cheese rolls we set off out onto the ski piste.

Now I was not feeling so confident (only having been on one 2-week ski holiday in Andorra in 1987) but I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and pushed off traversing the steep icy slope. Within a few minutes I was hurtling downhill on my back, separated from my skis. It took me about 200 metres to come to a halt.

David brought me the ski that had come to a rest higher up the slope and I set off again, this time doing a bit better and getting to the bottom of the piste. We had a lot of fun and frustration trying to use the drag list to get back to the top.

We had to carry a length of rope with a wooden bar at one end to put between our legs, and a metal hook on the other, which if you were lucky would snag on the continuously moving wire hawser and haul you up the mountainside. The pulleys over which the drag wire moved were tyre-less wheels.

Eventually we all made it to the top where I fell, slid and scrambled and sometimes even skied back to the bottom. On the third descent I tried to ski straight back into the club house which was halfway down the slope. I almost made it but fell and slid quite a way passed it. I took off my skis and walked back up, arriving breathless at the hut for lunch.

Everyone was exhausted due to the exertion and the altitude and slumped into comfy chairs while summoning the energy to fill some bread rolls to eat. At 15:00 hrs. I went out once more into the breach for a final hour of skiing.

This time I did better, but the air was blue as I tried to use the drag lift, swearing with frustration as my hook was repeatedly kicked off. It was a system that worked admirably once you got the knack, but it took me an infinity to acquire it.

I managed two moderate runs and on the third run I managed to make it into the Ski Lodge, slowly but without mishap. Tiredly we all got changed and invested in some fairly wanky sew-on Club Andino Boliviano badges as souvenirs of our day on the world’s highest ski piste.

We trudged down to where our car waited by a cross on the snowline. The driver could hardly wait to start talking at us and Pen, who was almost incapacitated by the altitude, was the ideal victim for a monologue on mountain sport and health.

The drive back was extremely slow with the driver rabbiting on and gesticulating, telling us that it was too dangerous to go faster. Dangerous to his talking as it was a distraction to drive while he was talking. It took an age to negotiate the roadworks and traffic snarl ups of the dusty city outskirts, but we eventually made it to the Plaza Murillo.

We disembarked, paying the driver and leaving Pen for him to continue talking to! The four of us had a good Chow Fan con Pollo in the Cathay Restaurant before returning to the hotel in a state of exhaustion.

I had a shower and bathed the grazes that I had gained from trying to brake on the icy slopes with my forearms, treating them with Dettol disinfectant. At 21:00 hrs. I slumped into bed for a surprisingly restless night.