Early in January, I had a client come to Peru who hired me as a climbing partner to climb the local mountains in the Cotahuasi and Arequipa areas. After 2 days of trying to climb Pichu Pichu, the lowest mountain near Arequipa, we finally got tired of the cloudy, rainy and snowy weather, and decided to go to Cotahuasi and see if it was any better there. There are also some lower mountains there, which I figured would be better for Jerry, who was needing some more time to acclimatize to the high altitude here. The weather still wasn't very good, but we did climb a couple of lower peaks, and then decided to climb Cerro Lucmani, which is 16,924 feet.

Saturday morning we drove up to the trailhead, hoping for the weather to continue to clear. On the way up there were clouds down in the canyon, but we had a clear view of the site where the new radio tower is being built (see earlier blog - Working On a Chain Gang). Jerry had already met Brad and some of the brothers who were working on the tower, so I pointed it out to him as we were climbing up the mountain. The clouds were rolling in and out, heavy at times, but they didn't look like the storm clouds we saw on the same mountain when I climbed it in December, so we kept climbing up. At about 2:30, we were standing on top, happy to have reached the summit. By this time the clouds were heavier so we took a few photos and started back down. Our only problem was that the route through the crater back to the trailhead was fogged in so we need to use a compass and GPS to get back to the car.

Sometime during the day, Jerry told me he wanted to take Sunday as a rest day, and then on Monday to help the tower construction crew, so we made plans to do that. We went to church on Sunday morning and had lunch with the Shaws and others after the service. We also told Brad that we wanted to help the next day so made plans for that. Monday morning greeted us with more of the same rain threatening weather. As long as I was available to drive, Brad stayed back in Cotahuasi to catch up on work there (after just having returned from 6 months in the U.S.) and we went up to the work site in my van. In spite of the drizzle that made for less than ideal working conditions, we were able to get a good amount of work done on placing forms and pouring cement for the concrete walls. With an elevation of about 13,500 feet, it was good conditioning for mountain climbing as well. When he came to Peru, Jerry had no idea his climbing trip would turn into a volunteer construction project, but we received a blessing from his help, and he received a blessing for helping - thanks Jerry!