Expedition "Chachani" or How "Iron-Rennie" lost her fame

To be on the top of a mountain on 6.075m altitude...a mountaineers dream! and our dream still

In the last days we attempted to climb the vulcano "Chachani" near Arequipe (Peru) where we are at the moment. On the first day we were brought to ca 5.000m with a jeep (Arequipe lies on ca. 2400m) and climbed to the camp on 5.300m. We reached the camp at ca. 14:00, made ourselves at home in he tent, cooked dinner and crawled into our sleeping bags at about 16:00. Unfortunately it started to snow at about 15:00 and became very cold during the night (ca. -10º to -15ºC)! We had a horrible night with headache and cold (although we used three layers of sleeping bag) and wind kept us awake all through the night. Actually the expression "all the night" is wrong, as we had to get up at 1:00am in the middle of the night to start our ascent, had a cup of tea, put on all our warm clothes and started to climb the mountain, through icy wind and snow, with our headlights on...brr.. after about 1,5h we had to put on crampons and use the ice-ax to climb over snow and ice for about 2h. It was very cold, pitch dark and there was very few oxygen as well! The climb was partly very steep and exhausting (especially with the crampons on) but without crampons it was as well more then tiring. After the icy part the sun started to come out, which bettered the situation a bit, but unfortunately by that we already were very tired. After 5h of walk we had to give up, because Renate was so k.o.! And we had still3h more to the top! and all the way back as well! ... All the chocolate and sugar could not help and we decided to turn back at 5.700m as we were tired, all our fingers were halfway frozen and there was still the way back to consider!
At about 10:45 we again reached the camp at 5.300m and we were totally ko! and still we had to pack the tent and continue down to where the jeep awaited us to bring us back to town. UFF!
In the end we are a bit disappointed, but at least we tried!
... and here are the PICTURES!

Anyway, it was an experience and adventure we would not like to have missed!!
And: we reached 5.700m! :-)

Looking forward to tell you about our next steps!
Regards, Renate & Mirko