The next day, Wednesday, we practiced crevasse rescue skills. The glacier accommodated us nicely with  crevasses that allowed entry from the edge onto a sturdy snow bridge about fifteen feet below the top. Mark, Andrew, and Juan set top ropes where we could tie into from down in the crevasse, and we practiced prussiking up the vertical ice and over the top. After lunch we practiced rescue techniques where each of us was tied into a heavily loaded pack that was thrown into the crevasse. Working in pairs, Tom and I partnered. Tom went first and was the advice giver, helping him work through the complete process on his own. Tom managed well working through each technique with only minor difficulties. At my turn, feeling the yank from the pack, I dived to the ice to self arrest and began the process of placing an ice screw. After Tom's use of the ice screws we failed to clear their cores of the ice, and I had to do this while still assuming the arrest postion. While I was still clearing the screws Juan grabbed the rope and yanked on it with his full weight. Suddenly, feeling the additional load trying to drag me across the ice, I looked back to see Juan holding the rope while leaning over the edge of the crevasse giving me a big grin. Finally setting the first ice screw and clipping into it with a prussik line, I set the backup screw. Then I worked through the complex task of setting up a pulley system to slowly extract the pack from the crevasse.
Thursday, July 19th was a rest day and we all took hikes up some of the nearby ridges to explore the area aound base camp. Garry and I decided to wash our hair and rinse out some clothes, which caught on quickly so that soon many of the tent flys were decorated with shirts, socks, and underwear. Dinner was a real treat. "The Boys," as Mark and Andrew often referred to our cooks, had made a fabulous trout dinner from fish caught in the lake we were camped next to, and we ate hardily.
The next morning we were up at 4:00 AM to try climbing Pyramida Blanca at 17,169 feet. We got started by 5:00. This particular climb had been in question because of the greater than normal snowfall. At the very least it was likely to be an exhausting climb because no one this season had attempted the deep snow route, that until now had been too fresh and unstable. Starting up the glacier as we had a couple of days earlier on the previous climb, we reached the middle. Here we began a traverse, opening a new route crossing a couple of significant crevasses in the process. Finally reaching a high snowfield, we made our way around and up the rocky prominence that was the summit. Andrew set up a belay and we climbed the final 25 feet of steep snow on an exposed face to the tiny summit ledge. All twelve of us crowded the ledge while four at a time took turns scrambling up ten additional feet of rock to perch for a moment on the highest prominence. We took pictures of each other and then carefully made our way back down the small, steep, and exposed stretch of snow. The rest was an easy trudge back across and down the glacier. It didn't take long for a French group to discover and make use of our route even as we were still traversing across. We stepped to the side to let them pass and become the second group to head to the summit of Pyramida. We had bagged our second 17,000 foot summit in four days!
--Gary
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