Trip Report: Aychana, a new route on the seldom climbed Verdish-Ventanilla in the Hauytapallana Mountains of Peru


Aychana, a new route on the seldom climbed Verdish-Ventanilla in the Hauytapallana Mountains of Peru
By Frank Nederhand
CLIMBING 05/14/2025 EXT
In 2014 and 2015 Quique Apolinario Villafan a good friend of mine and talented Peruvian Mountain Guide and I explored the Pariacacca Mountain Range that is east of Lima, Peru and just west of the largest city in the central highlands; Huancayo, Peru. In 2024 I had the opportunity to work with a coworker who was from Huancayo, Peru and I asked her if she had any suggestions on mountains to climb east of Huancayo. She told me about the Huaytapallana Mountain Range. I became very intrigued about this mountain range upon finding out that ancient Peruvian folklore connects these two mountain ranges in an interesting Romeo and Juliette style story about two lesser Gods that fell in love and later were tragically turned into the namesake mountains these two ranges are named after. I contacted my friend Quique to see if we could visit and climb in this mountain range. It so happened that Quique had been contemplating visiting a new rock-climbing area 248 km (155 miles) north of Huancayo called the Huayllay National Sanctuary due to the many fantastically formed rock spires there. Quique also found out that there was a small mountaineering club in Huancayo that we could work with to find an appropriate mountain to climb in the Huaytapallana Mountains.

On May 6, 2025, I arrived late in the evening in Lima, Peru. The next day Quique and I took the night bus to Cerro de Pasco on our way to the Huayllay Sanctuary, which is 42.5 km (26.6 miles) from there. After spending several days climbing and exploring the many beautiful and interesting rock formations there we took a combi-bus to Huancayo early in the morning of May 11, 2025, arriving in Huancayo in the afternoon.

In Huancayo we were met by a member of the Huancayo Mountaineering Club, Ruben Flores. Ruben would become an asset to our climbing in the Huaytapallana Mountain Range. The following day (May 12) Quique was able to meet with a group of the Huancayo Mountaineering Club including one member with the nick name "Hombre Verde." Hombre Verde (Freud Baldeon) was the first to climb the mountain "Nevado Verdish-Ventanilla" in 2017 and suggested we climb that peak since the tallest mountain in the range, Nevado Huaytapallana, is slated to be closed to climbing by the Regional Government Council due to environmental degradation concerns from overuse by visitors and climate change over the past several decades.
So, early on May 13, 2025, Ruben, Quique, Freud, Hugo (our 4x4 driver) and I began our trip from Huancayo to the Verdish-Ventanilla Base Camp. Figure 3 contains a vertical and horizontal plot showing our track through the Huaytapallana Mountain Range and to our base camp.

On May 14, 2025, between 12:30am and 1:00am we [Ruben (Peru), Quique (Peru) and Frank (USA)] got up and prepared to start our climb of Nevado Verdish-Ventanilla. Figure 5 shows the horizontal and vertical profile of our climb. We left our base camp at 1:38am and summited 7 hours later at 8:38am. We rate this route using the French Alpine Grade as PD+ (Not too hard to somewhat hard).

Figures 5 and 7 contain route GPS horizontal and vertical profiles of the first ascent climb "Aychana." Figures 6, 8-13 are pictures taken during and shortly after the climb. Figure 12 is an annotated version of the upper portion of the new route "Aychana." We named this route after the small village that maintains the Vacuna Sanctuary at the base of the mountain and who gave us permission to use the base camp we used to climb the mountain.
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