Climbing Huayna Potosi in La Paz, Bolivia

Day 2 starts a little later, with breakfast served between 8:00–8:30am. Afterwards, you’ll pack only the clothing and equipment you need for the summit attempt, while everything else can stay safely at low camp.

The only hiking objective for Day 2 is reaching high camp at approximately 5,300 metres (17,388 feet). The climb takes around 2–3 hours and is almost entirely uphill, following a dirt path that becomes rockier closer to camp. With no real time pressure, the hike felt relaxed and I was able to stop regularly for breaks as the altitude became more noticeable.

High camp feels much more basic than the refuge below, with a kitchen at the front and tightly packed bunk beds. Outside, the surroundings were covered in snow and almost completely silent apart from the wind. There was also a snowman next to the refuge, built by a previous group, which was still standing with a smile on its face.

Lunch is served at around 2pm, and your guides will also brief you on the summit climb ahead. You’ll then be told to get to bed by 4pm, probably the earliest bedtime you’ve ever had, before waking at midnight for a gruelling 1am departure. If you thought sleeping was hard at low camp, good luck with high camp.

When the clock strikes midnight, your guides will wake you after whatever sleep you managed to get. Breakfast will already be waiting: a thick slice of Bolivian cake and seemingly endless coca leaf tea. I had woken up with a pounding headache and was ready to try just about anything, so I remember double-bagging my coca tea while chewing on the leaves before we left.

After breakfast, you will leave high camp at around 1am and, depending on the time of year, may need to put your crampons on shortly afterwards to start climbing on the glacier. I wouldn’t recommend wearing your warmest upper-body layer when leaving camp, as you’ll heat up quickly while climbing and the coldest sections are still ahead. Keep your warmest layers accessible for when the temperature drops or you stop moving.

The first few hours were probably when I felt the most delirious. Severely sleep deprived, I was mainly focused on putting one foot in front of the other while trying to work out whether my headache was from altitude, dehydration or lack of sleep. The terrain was mostly gradual uphill, winding between crevasses you only properly notice on the descent. One of my favourite views was looking back at the long snake of headtorches winding through the snow behind me.

Around halfway through the climb, you will reach a steep ice wall, which you have probably already heard about from others who have completed the Huayna Potosi climb. This is where the practice from Day 1 becomes reality, as you use those techniques to work your way up a steep face of solid ice rising above you. The section isn’t as daunting as it looks, as you are secured to a fall protection system through your harness the entire way up.

After the ice wall, the climb started to feel much more serious as we moved onto exposed ridgelines. In my case, temperatures had dropped to around -10°C (14°F), with strong winds blowing snow across the mountain. The number of climbers also became noticeably sparse as more people turned around because of the conditions or altitude sickness.

Eventually, as you reach the base of the final climb, the first purple light of dawn should start appearing and you can finally make out the silhouette of the summit and the contours of the mountain around you. You’ll have the opportunity to take a longer break before taking a deep breath and starting the final uphill. I recommend putting on your warmest layer here, as the entire face of the mountain was exposed to glacial winds during my ascent.

The final summit section took around 1 to 1.5 hours and was the hardest part for me, both physically and mentally. It felt like the summit was never going to come, and heavy snowfall had completely covered the existing route, forcing our guides to create a new path through the fresh snow. For this final section, you climb a series of long switchbacks with the summit on one side and a substantial drop on the other, so it is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

After roughly five hours of climbing through snow, wind and darkness, the conditions completely changed as the summit approached and I could see mountaintops in every direction. The sun came out in full and, for the first time that morning, I could properly take in the vastness of the mountains surrounding me. Reaching 6,000m (19,685 feet) after such a difficult climb was a euphoric feeling, and standing on the summit looking across seemingly endless mountains made every moment I had thought about turning back worth pushing through.

After what will feel like a short time at the summit compared to what you went through to get there, your guide will tell you it’s time to do it all again in reverse. Thankfully, the descent is considerably easier on the body than the climb up. Although it was still cold, the sun was shining and I warmed up quickly enough to complete a large part of the descent in a T-shirt. To this day, I’m still unsure whether that was real warmth or just a second wind of euphoria.

Daylight completely changes the descent because you can finally see the terrain you spent hours climbing through in darkness. The snow-covered ridges and surrounding mountains seemed to stretch in every direction, and it was the first time I could properly take in where I actually was and what I had achieved. You also get to see the deep crevasses you never realised you had walked past and how narrowly the footprints in the snow avoided them.

Once you reach high camp, don’t expect much time to recover. In my case, I was told to pack my belongings immediately, remove the technical gear I no longer needed and get ready to continue back down to low camp. There was no time for a coffee and definitely no time to rest.

The walk from high camp back to low camp is the exact same route as Day 2, except this time you will be eager to do it as quickly as possible. When I arrived at low camp, there was tea and coffee waiting until my transport turned up with a few traditional Bolivian pastries for breakfast. Your driver will then drop you back at your accommodation, with the final obstacle being peak La Paz traffic. Good luck.

By the time you get back to La Paz, you will be completely spent and probably tell yourself this is the last 6,000m (19,685 feet) mountain you will ever climb. If you are anything like me, that feeling will soon pass and you’ll start looking at what other mountains there are to climb. If you take anything away from this guide, it should be that climbing Huayna Potosi is a must-do while in La Paz and something you should seriously consider adding to your South American bucket list.