Direct on El Carnicero: The 1968 West Face of Yerupajá

Ever since Jim Maxwell and Dave Harrah reached the summit of Yerupajá in 1950 via the South Ridge, climbing eyes had gazed with fascination and dread at the mountain’s true masterwork: the colossal, 1,200-metre (4,000-foot) West Face.

Plunging sheer toward Laguna Jahuacocha, the West Face of Yerupajá resembled a tidal wave of ice, striated with vertical couloirs, overhanging firn flutings, and friable rock bands. Constant spindrift avalanches and rockfall swept its icy corridors, earning it the reputation of an impregnable death trap.

The Bold Quartet

In June 1968, four elite mountaineers assembled in the Callejón de Huaylas to test themselves against this supreme Andean challenge: British alpinist Chris Jones, and American climbers Paul Dix, Dean Caldwell, and Leif Patterson.

Jones and Caldwell brought pioneering Yosemite big-wall experience, while Dix and Patterson possessed formidable high-altitude ice experience. Instead of applying traditional siege tactics, the team adopted a capsule-style approach, moving up the wall with haul sacks, nylon hammocks, and innovative technical ice tools.

Establishing their base at Laguna Jahuacocha, the four climbers waited for a stable weather window in late July. They crossed the broken glacier and bergschrund at the base of the wall under cover of darkness to avoid rockfall.

Climbing into the Ice Funnel

The climbing on the lower 600 metres was a relentless trial of icecraft. Jones and Dix took turns on the sharp end, driving chrome-moly ice pitons into bullet-hard water ice slanting between 60 and 75 degrees. Spindrift avalanches poured down on the climbers like continuous waterfalls of powdered snow, burying their ice screws and threatening to sweep them off the wall.

At night, unable to find ledges, the climbers suspended themselves in hammock bivouacs anchored to pitons driven into fractured quartzite bands. Hanging in space over thousands of feet of void, they melted snow over tiny Primus stoves and braced against sub-zero winds that threatened to shred their nylon shelters.

Above the rock band, the face steepened into vertical flutings of tropical ice. Patterson and Caldwell pushed upward, navigating delicate snow mushrooms that required delicate balance and ice-axe hooking.

Summiting the Titan

On July 27, 1968, after six days of grueling continuous wall climbing, Chris Jones and Paul Dix surmounted the colossal overhanging cornice at the top of the face and hauled themselves onto the knife-edge summit crest at 6,635 metres. Moments later, Dean Caldwell and Leif Patterson joined them.

Looking down the terrifying face they had just conquered, the four men realized they had achieved one of the landmark big-wall ice climbs of the twentieth century. Their direct line on Yerupajá demonstrated that extreme Yosemite wall tactics combined with European ice technique could unlock the most formidable alpine faces in the Andes.