The town of Arequipa is flanked by three mountains: Chachani (6077m), the volcano El Misti (5822m) and Pichu Pichu (5500m). You can see these mountains from anywhere in town as they're so close to the city. I climbed El Misti (shown on the first picture as seen from my hotel) since I'd never been up a volcano and since I already climbed a 6000m mountain last week anyway.

I was in a group with Daan, a Dutch student who's been traveling for four months, and six Englishmen. On the first day we climbed to base camp at 4700m. As expected the climb was rather boring; El Misti is a cone-shaped rock so the scenery didn't change much. The view on Arequipa and its surroundings became gradually more impressive though. In base camp we set up our rented tents - I shared one with Daan (pic 2) - and went to bed at 6pm. Neither of us got any sleep as a strong wind was shaking our tent all the time and it was freezing.

At 3am we set out for the summit. The cold was terrible because of the strong wind; after a while I couldn't feel my toes and it was hard to do anything with my fingers. There was no moonlight so we walked by the light of our head torches and there was nothing to see except the lights of Arequipa behind us. The group was too slow for me and these guides were very patient (as should be but I kinda missed my turbo-guides from Bolivia). In short, the climbing-in-the-night part was terrible this time.

When the sun came up (pic 3) we were still only halfway but now I just hung at the back of the group and started making pictures. The view was great (pics 4 and 5) but still the same all the time since we were just zig-zagging straight up the cone.

Then we got to the edge of the crater (pic 6) and things suddenly got interesting. The highest point of the crater ring, and hence the summit of the mountain, was some 150m higher so I rushed ahead (pic 7). The view there was fantastic, even better than from Huayna Potosi. From the summit we could see Chachani, the beautiful neighbouring mountain (pics 8 and 9), the impressive crater of El Misti itself (pic 10) and in the distance behind that the currently active volcano Ubinas and its smoke plume (pic 11; 900 people have been evacuated in recent weeks; here is how it looks from space) and the salinas. I have a lot more great pictures to show but that'll be for later when I've stitched them together etc.

Unfortunately because the group has been slow we didn't get to peek into the crater from close-by. I was a bit disappointed but not much; because of the views I was already very happy to have made the climb.

But the best was yet to come. The whole mountain is covered with dark grey sand - ashes from the volcano - and it had made climbing tiresome because our feet always slid away. Now from the crater edge runs a sort of river of this stuff (pic 14). We had climbed up on rockier parts of the mountain, but now our guide started walking down this river. It had a slope of more than 45 degrees but because our feet sank ankle-deep in the ashes, we could walk straight down it. Pics 15 and 16 show us walking down and show just how steep it is: the green upper half of the pictures is the landscape 3000m below us!

Then the guide started running down instead of walking and that's when the real fun began. You had to lean backwards, run on your heels and lift your knees really high but then you could run straight down the slope at a crazy speed, making huge steps. We went from 5600m to 4700m (our base camp) within minutes, while it had taken us 5 hours to climb up that part! It was fantastic fun and it looked totally hilarious, I just couldn't stop laughing. This has to be one of the funniest and most spectacular things I've ever done. I held up my camera and made a movie while running to remember the experience :) Here it is:



Again, that landscape in the upper part is 3000m below us and we're running straight down towards it, an incredible feeling! To get an idea of how funny we looked, check this movie I made of Daan running down (you can hear me laughing as he runs off):



This 'river' ended right next to our base camp at 4700m, but after packing our stuff we could run down some more ashes elsewhere though at a lesser angle and with more rocks to force us to be careful. There was one more stretch of pure ashes though and there I did a sprint with the guide and passed him, which judging by his woohoo's impressed him a lot :) I could have done this thing all day, it's more fun than skiing!

Of course my shoes, socks and all my clothes are full of ashes now from crashing a couple of times, and my camera makes weird sounds now from making those running movies, but it was well worth it :)