Then it came time for the last climb of the trip. And this one was by all measures big. A complete traverse of the Illimani massif, consisting of about 9 miles of technical terrain, most of it over 20,000 ft. At 21,122 ft, Illimani is the highest peak in the Cordillera Real and the second highest in Bolivia. This time, we were joined by Bolivian aspirant guide Marcelo, who added a great energy to our rope team. We stripped down light, opting to go for speed rather than comfort on our attempt. We planned two bivouacs on the route, with both locations just below the glacier where we could access running water to save gas. On our main day, we climbed for 20.5 hours straight, mostly in truly "heads-up" terrain, where absolute focus on the task at hand was critical. For hours on end, a slight mistake or lapse in judgement by any one of us could have led to disaster. We often dealt with challenging unconsolidated snow conditions, which made not only for difficult forward progress, but also upped the risk. It was also violently cold and windy...none of us felt fingers or toes for much of the outing. Nonetheless, and light on sleep and nutrition, Marcelo, Alex and I made it back down to a gorgeous meadow on the morning of our third day and had enough energy to rally for a nice, celebratory end-of-the-trip dinner in La Paz. In the photo essay below, pretty much every time you see a ridge, we were on it.