Shaqsha

“The Mexicans said it looks good. Actually, they said it looks easy.”

Line of our climb. Good? Yes. Easy? No.

Diego and I set off to climb Shaqsha with little more information than that. We had never heard of the mountain (even though it’s on the cover of the guidebook). There was no description of the route. We barely knew each other. Our talk switched from English to Spanish seemingly at random. A true adventure was guaranteed.

An awesome guidebook which is extremely hard to find.

Although the S face of Shaqsa graces the cover of Brad Johnson’s valuable Cordillera Blanca guidebook, no routes on the face are described in the text.

The only beta we had been passed was this photo, of unknown provenance:

We knew the Mexican duo had done route 3; we decided to try for route 4.

You have the sum total of the information we had. Here’s what happened: