Mountain Statistics
Location: Ausangate, Peru
Mountain Range: Cordillera Vilcanota
Name: Percocaya
Altitude: 5,230m
Level: AD
Terrain & Route: Southwest face. Route is the closest and most hidden, quiet access to the basecamp and its glacier.
Number of Days: 3-4
Experience: Intermediate Level
History
The snow-capped nevado Percocaya is one of the mountains of the Vilcanota mountain range; it’s located to the Southeast of the City of Cusco, in the province of Quisipicanchis.
Mountaineering
Leaving from Cusco; in private transportation early in the morning, you’ll drive 3 hours south to the Ausangate region. Following our arrival we’ll take our time to check all of our equipment for the climb. We’ll meet up with our arrieros and their mules; the arrieros loading all of our equipment onto them before setting off on this epic Peru adventure.
Nevado Percocaya is an intermediate level mountain with some steeper icewalls to climb before summiting. It is still an excellent introductory mountain for those looking for their first ascents in mountaineering.
To summit you’ll leave at around 1:00am to head towards the glacier, passing through heavy morraine for about an hour. Then hitting a rocky path for another hour and finally ascending a rock wall for about 30 minutes, level 4, until reaching the glacier.
There is a 65° degree wall that’ll take you to the next mixed section between snow, rock and hard ice. A very technical climb that will take you from the beginning of the glacier to the summit in around 4 hours and then a further 4 hours descent, followed by a 2 hour track back to base camp.
Highlights
Climb one of the famous mountains of the Cordillera Vilcanota, Ausangate region.
Train in 65° ice wall climbing & rappelling.
