Peru 2024 Pt 3: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of
- blindsaint
- Aug 15, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 18, 2024
This builds off of Peru 2024 Pt 1 and Peru 2024 Pt 2 so go read those if you haven't!
Gear is a major part of mountaineering. As cliche as it sounds, climbing mountains as a hobby is more about the journey than the summit, and finding the right gear to be successful is one element of the hobby. Most mountaineers spend hours each year pouring over gear reviews, making trips to stores to check out gear in person, discussing with others about their choices, and often returning purchases they make after all their research because an item ended up not filling the need they were looking for. Gear hunting is like the guy equivalent of valley girls going to fancy shopping malls. While there’s no magic gear that can get you up a mountain with no training, a poor gear choice can definitely end a summit bid short of the top. Having your gear dialed in makes things way safer as well.
In general, mountaineers also don’t just get a set of gear that works and call it good. There’s always something that can be modified or replaced to make you even more efficient. After Mt Shasta and Mt Rainier (and other climbs each of us did independently) last year, we each had a good supply of mountaineering gear. We’ll call this equipment our “mountaineering base setup”. We needed to expand on this as our trip to Peru requires more technical equipment and the temperatures at high altitude can get heinously cold. Thus, in addition to getting better technically, we each needed some new gear. But buying new things is fun right?
When you’re trying to figure out what gear to bring for a trip, it’s hard to find an accurate and extensive list from others. Often people direct you to packing lists by guiding companies, but these are frequently overkill and don’t ever contain all of the equipment you will need, since guiding services provide some of the equipment themselves. Sometimes there are discussions on forums pertaining to specific categories (i.e.: what jacket to bring for a particular climb) but like any forum thread, you have to wade through a lot of comments that might not have any pertinent information. Finally, if you get really lucky, there may be a YouTube video of a guide or someone who has climbed where you are trying to climb, showing everything that they typically bring. These are awesome and extremely helpful. For a climb like the West Buttress route of Denali, there are like three good videos and a handful of other videos posted by people who haven’t climbed it yet, but are going to. Thousands of people climb the “West Butt” every year and there are three good videos. As for our climb, the Cordillera Blanca does not have any good videos, at least not yet. I’ll make a video when we get back showing what I packed and what I actually used.
Another huge gear issue on these trips is that we are flying, taking buses and other public transportation, and we are a group of 5 guys. All this factors into how much we can carry into the country and how much we want to bring up the mountain. With this trip, because we have personal clothing and items for our days off, and will be climbing multiple mountains with trips back into town in between, we have a lot of extra stuff that won’t necessarily be going up every mountain with us. We need bags that can stay in town at our hotel with our extra equipment and food for our climbing days (since we aren’t sure what type of food options will be available from the stores down there). We have sharp gear, fragile gear, expensive gear, long gear, and puffy gear that all has to somehow get down to South America and back. Packing has been a challenge. I have personally spent around 5 hours packing my gear so it works within the airlines’ regulations.
I’m using a 115L duffel, 40L duffel, and a 25L pack. The two smaller bags are my carry-ons and hold the obvious items (passport, chargers, change of clothes, etc.) as well as my most expensive gear items (Garmin InReach, 6000m boots, parka, helmet, etc.). Pretty much if (God forbid) my checked bag doesn’t show up in Lima, I can still continue the trip by renting the rest of the items. The other guys are bringing similar setups, with the exception of Nate and Miles, who are also bringing a ski bag.
Some items aren’t available for purchase at all, but are extremely useful. Climbing has a history of dirtbaggers making their own gear and some often used items have never been produced and sold commercially. Matt and I had our kids help make wands for example. Wands are super helpful when scouting out your route the day before so you can find your way in the dark and move quickly for the first section. They are also helpful if placed while moving up a mountain to find your trail back down, especially if it is windy (as your trail coming up can get erased by the snow and make it hard to figure out the way back down). Another use for them is as markers for detours or hidden crevasses. They are a simple, light, cheap craft item that will help us in a lot of ways. Also, they will remind us of our kids.
The single best piece of information I have found for any large mountaineering trip was from Aaron Linsdau, an explorer who has some cool review videos and has a pretty comprehensive list of gear he took for Denali. He also provides a free Excel spreadsheet of his packing list that I have modified a lot for different trips but which has saved me hours of time. Those can be found here: https://www.aaronlinsdau.com/solo-denali-gear-list/ Thank you Aaron!
Alright, I know this one has gotten kind of boring. You can ask my wife about how often I talk about gear and why I obsess over the sleeves of my jackets and she can probably tell you everything about them because she’s heard me talk about them so much. The reason I write about gear a lot is because there is a severe need for more quality help in finding the right gear. The forum discussions are cool, but they get real sidetracked and suffer from gatekeepers who say things like “if you don’t know what gear to bring on a trip, then you don’t have enough experience to do it”; meanwhile, professional climbers reach out to other experts they know to help them with their gear selection so the gatekeeper logic doesn’t stand.
In addition to taking everyone along on the journey to Peru, I’d also like to help out anyone who is looking at going climbing in Peru and stumbles on this blog in their preparation. That’s why when we’re back, I want to write a more detailed post about what gear was clutch and what sucked. If you’re interested, keep on the lookout for that!
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