We lazily packed up and headed the rest of the way to moraine camp. I had found out that in my late night packing, I had forgotten to bring a sleeping pad. Thankfully, both me and Stewart had Cilogear backpacks, which have bivy pads as part of the suspension system. With the rope carefully coiled underneath the two pads, this provided plenty of insulation and I hardly noticed the difference (witnessed by my 12 hours of straight sleep). After we setup moraine camp, we went to scope out our approach on the flat Paron glacier. Unfortunately, we were completely confused as to the line we were supposed to be climbing... should have brought a photo copy of the guidebook pages. In retrospect it was extremely obvious, but who knows what we were thinking.

Chad joined us in the afternoon as well, but he ended up not feeling well enough to climb, so he stayed in camp. We woke up at 23:15, and lazily had tea and breakfast, leaving at about 12:30am. The last team I talked to had taken 18 hours round trip from a high camp on the glacier, so we wanted to leave ourselves lots of time. It was a beautiful night with a full moon... it felt awesome! We made it to high camp on top of the glacier in 1 hour, which was really good time. And here is where we made a big mistake - instead of following the big trail leading us to the bergschrund in 45 mins (would have been there at 2:15), we kept going straight on the glacier. For some reason we thought we should go to the col between Paron and Artesonraju, heading for the face on the other side. We justified that the trail we saw must have been people checking out the South Arete variation described in the book. All of the information we had spoke against this, but it is hard to understand what we were thinking. Either way, we were headed completely the wrong way, and eventually realized it. Having gained a lot of elevation by that point, we decided to traverse under the face to the start of the route, backtracking horizontally on the broken glacier. Other than the fact that it went up and down quite a bit, which was exhausting, it was fairly straightforward... until Stewart fell into a crevasse up to his neck. He quickly climbed out and we were soon at the base of the SE face, except it was now past 5am! We had wasted over 2.5 hours and a lot of energy. We planned on soloing to the upper crux pitches, but since we were tired and the beginning looked rocky in the dark, we opted to simulclimb for a bit before putting the ropes away. We made it about 1/3 up the face and were getting to be extremely slow, the snow conditions being fairly difficult, so we made the choice to head back. We were pretty exhausted from our mistake and didn't want to push ourselves too much, as we would have had to rappel in the dark at that point. Back in camp at 11am, we enjoyed some food and then a short nap before we prepared dinner and retreated for the night. Despite not making it, it was still a great experience just being partway up that mountain.

The last morning we had in camp, we woke up and I ate almost all of my remaining food (which took a bit of time, I was stuffed), then slowly packed up. The hike out went by quite fast, even though the last stretch along the lake felt long... We powered through it quickly thanks to the music blasting in our mp3 players. The most amazing part came at the trailhead, when we had to wait for our taxi driver for half an hour - the park wardens were selling beer, and it was nice and cold too! It tasted amazing... and next thing you know, our ride to Huaraz had arrived. The drive back was uneventful, other than a police stop where our driver bribed the cops with S/.2 (70 cents) since he did not have a permit to operate in the district - very amusing.

	driving up towards the Paron Valley	driving up towards the Paron Valley	driving up towards the Paron Valley

	driving up towards the Paron Valley, big granite walls	driving up towards the Paron Valley	driving up towards the Paron Valley

	my fully loaded backpack	me preparing to haul a nearly 30kg backpack	Stewart enjoying his heavy backpack as well

	Laguna Paron	Laguna Paron	Artesonraju in the clouds

	the other side of Laguna Paron, where people place Base Camp	arrived in Tree Camp	Tree Camp

	Artesonraju as seen from Tree Camp, where we stayed	Me and Artesonraju in the background	Artesonraju as seen from Tree Camp, where we stayed

	Sunset at the Huandoy peaks	Artesonraju at sunrise from Tree Camp	Caraz II

		ice	The impressive Piramide de Garcilaso

	Stewart slogging up to Moraine camp	Stewart with the crazy north side of Chacraraju in the background

	Artesonraju	Pisco on the left, and Huandoy on the right, with the rapidly receding glacier...	Piramide and Chacraraju

	North face of Chacraraju	Me getting closer to Artesonraju moraine camp	The beautiful Artesonraju

	Artesonraju and Paron	North face of Chacraraju	Moraine camp

	Caraz I && II	Our tents at moraine camp with Artesonraju in the background	Artesonraju

	Piramide de Garcilaso	Nevado Paron (left) and Piramide de Garcilaso (right), with the flat Paron glacier

	moraine camp	my tent	Arteson cocha

	Arteson cocha	Stewart crossing a bridge on the way to the flat Paron glacier, on our afternoon scoping out of the route

	glaciology station	Nevados Huandoy	Paron

	Artesonraju		Artesonraju

	Sunset at Nevados Huandoy	Sunset at Artesonraju	Stewart downclimbing the SE face as we were retreating

	Looking at Nevado Paron while we were descending the face	Getting down the SE face of Artesonraju	Stewart rappelling

	Nevados Huandoy with Laguna Paron in the distance		me with the SE face in the background

	me with the SE face in the background	the SE face of Artesonraju	the SE face of Artesonraju

			Nevados Caraz

	Laguna Paron on our hike out	Piramide	Chad, Stewart and I on our hike out

		here i am, tired, but with a beer in my hand!	Me enjoying a beer at the trailhead

	driving out...

			cows blocking the road, and a big truck waiting to pass

	cows blocking the road, and a big truck waiting to pass	passing a truck on the dirt road	our taxi driver bribing the police, since he did not have a permit to work in the district