Atlas/Huascarán
N° 32
Huascarán
The highest in Peru.
Difficulty 7/10
Elevation
6,768m
22,205 ft
First Ascent
1932
Philipp Borchers, Hermann Hoerlin, Erwin Schneider
First ascent of Huascarán Sur (true summit). Annie Smith Peck climbed Huascarán Norte in 1908 at age 58.
Best Season
May–September
Summit Days
8–14 days
Fatality Rate
~3%
Permits
Required
Overview
A 6,768-metre peak in the Cordillera Blanca of central Peru, the highest mountain in Peru and the fourth-highest in the Western Hemisphere. Huascarán has two summits — Huascarán Sur, the true summit at 6,768 metres, and Huascarán Norte at 6,654 metres, separated by a 1.5-kilometre ridge known as La Garganta. The name is Quechua and refers to the pre-Columbian ruler Huáscar, the last Inca emperor before the Spanish conquest.
The first ascent of Huascarán Norte came in 1908, by an American expedition that included the explorer Annie Smith Peck — at the age of 58, one of the earliest documented summits of a major mountain by a woman. The first ascent of the higher Huascarán Sur followed in 1932, by an Austrian-German expedition. The standard route via the Garganta and the southern ridge involves sustained glacier travel, several technical ice sections, and a long summit day from high camp.
Huascarán is the dominant peak of one of the most active climbing regions in South America. The Cordillera Blanca holds 22 peaks above 6,000 metres in a relatively compact range, and the climbing season — May through September — produces predictable weather. The peak has been climbed many thousands of times, and the routes are well documented. The fatality rate is low for a mountain of its altitude, though the seismic geology has produced two of the deadliest mountain disasters in history. In 1962 and again in 1970, large sections of ice and rock collapsed from the summit ridge and triggered debris avalanches that destroyed the towns of Ranrahirca and Yungay below. The 1970 event killed approximately 22,000 people — most of them in Yungay, which was buried entirely.
What Huascarán carries is two histories simultaneously. As a climbing objective, the mountain is among the great accessible 6000ers in the world. As a geological actor, the peak has been responsible for catastrophic loss of life among populations that did not climb it. The relationship between the mountain and the surrounding valleys is, in a literal sense, the mountain itself.