Summits

This story comes from an expedition to Peru in June 2016.

4 am. The crunching of crampons and the low whistle of the wind are all that anyone can hear. The stars are still out and it’s so cold, the air catches in the back of my throat. I didn’t sleep at all in the little bunk house that made up the high camp. I was way too nervous. 

I’d quit my office job a year before with the idea of becoming an adventure filmmaker. Through grit, determination, a background in filmmaking and a little bit of luck, I’d made it happen. Here I was at 17,000 ft, with a camera in my hand, on my first expedition. I was doing it. I was psyched.

The team I was with was headed by Mike Libecki, an expedition climber. We were here with his family partnering with Dell computers and Goal Zero solar to install a solar computer lab in the school in the remote town of Pashpa. This was the gateway for many alpinists and mountaineers heading into the Cordillera Blanca of Peru to test themselves. 

Pashpa is settled into the foothills of the mountains, a rugged 8 hour drive from Lima. Big meadows of wildflowers, cattle and sheep, create a patchwork around the town. Women walked around in traditional dresses and towering hats. People here speak Quetchua in addition to Peruvian Spanish, an indigenous language of the area. We smile at each other, wave, and kids play with us even though we don’t speak the same language. People are people. I wonder how often a group of this size comes to stay for a while. 

They’re happy to have the new computer lab that was just built for the project. Over the next several days we camp in one of the nearby fields, paint walls, install solar panels to the roof, wire up the power units and set up all of the computers and lights. Suddenly there’s a functional computer lab right next to the main school building. The kids are constantly curious, watching and following us in everything we’re doing. As I film the project, the drone is of particular interest and kids run after it screaming and laughing as I fly it around their town and school. It’s a way to connect.

With the internet, solar, and computers, these kids will be able to get better jobs and apply to college. We hope this is for the betterment of the community. We hope these kids or their kids will have better lives in some small way because of this project. 

Humanitarian projects can be difficult. There are so many factors that go into the actual success of a project. So much infrastructure, culture, language berries, and different lived experiences come with any type of humanitarianism and if there isn’t a deep enough conversation about needs of a community and understanding how that community functions today, tomorrow, and yesterday, the project can fail. I will say, even if imperfect, the attempt to help is always admirable. Only time will tell if this project is a success, but we were brave enough to try.

Once we had completed the solar project, next on the agenda was to summit Ishinca, an 18,000ft summit. I’d never been on a glacier before. Crevasses, snow bridges and icefalls were new and very intimidating concepts. Like all climbing, whether it’s on snow, rock or ice, fear is a part of the discipline. New terrain, new areas, always come with the unknown. Tethered to one of the guides I continued hiking up despite my fear. 

The choreography consisted of running in front of the group, shooting them hiking past, getting a shot of the group from behind, running in front of the group again. This would have been pretty standard if I wasn’t at 17,500 ft. My lungs were screaming and my muscles barely got enough oxygen to keep moving. So you want to be an adventure filmmaker? 

The sun started to rise and I realized that the snowy, icy, steep, wonderland I found myself in was possibly the most beautiful place I’d ever been. The shades of blue and yellow in the snow, the sparkles from the crystalized water all around me, the hanging ice falls frozen above and the deep deep blues of the gaping crevasses below. As I looked out, my field of vision was overwhelmed by snowy peaks upon peaks that marched off in every direction. My jaw dropped. 

Something started welling up in my chest. The beauty, the group of people surrounding me, my friends and temporary family, and the camera in my hand capturing the story as it unfolded. I started feeling a warmth and an energy in my chest. As we made the last few steep steps to the summit, revealing even more stunning peaks beyond, I realized what I was feeling was joy. Pure joy. It was one of those moments in life I’ll never forget. 

Then we started the descent. We slowly made our way back down the snowfields and over more crevasses. The sun was high now and it was surprisingly hot. I was stripped down to my base layer. Several hours later we walked into our base camp that we had left the day before. I crawled into my tent and fell asleep immediately. I hadn’t realized just how exhausted I was. 

The beauty of trips like this, choices in life like my attempt to be a filmmaker, and trusting the other along on the journey with me, takes a lot of bravery. I realized later as we walked back down toward Pashpa, I hadn’t been all that sure that I could do this expedition. I wasn’t so positive that I could film this story, help with the solar project, go to such a remote part of the world, or climb a peak with a camera in my hand, but I’d been brave enough to try.