Some years ago as I arrived to the summit of Caraz (6,025m) with my client Luke, I saw the hulking south face of Santa Cruz (6,259m) come into view, a mountain many see from the popular summits of the northern cordillera Blanca but few climb. Over the years I got a few more glimpses of the face from afar. One time I called an arriero from Cashapampa and he told me no one has gone up there in over a decade.
The last registered ascent of Santa Cruz Grande I could find was in 2008 when a group of Peruvian aspirant guides climbed a variation on the north face, close to Nicolas Jaeger´s 1977 route of the north ridge. https://www.nuestramontana.com/variante-peruana-santacruz.html
The last ascent of the south face was already 20 years ago in 2005, by the Spanish Alpinist Jordi Corominas who soloed the Ecuadorian route (SE Face 1984) in 6 hours and then downclimbed the German route (South face 1977) in three hours. There have been very few climbs on this face overall and going there I didn’t really know about any of them, except the 1978 solo by Nicholas Jaeger.
Pink Route: August 12th, 1977; South West Ridge – German Alpine Club, G. Gloggner, P. Gloggner and F. Nierdermaier
Blue Route: August 4th, 1984; South Face – Ecuadorian Route, Marco Suarez and R. Navarrete
Red Route: July 3rd, 2025; Our route “Illegal”
Green Route: August 14th, 1977; German Alpine Club (same expedition as above), H. Gloggner, W. Janner, A. Muller
Yellow Route: June 15th, 1978; Nicholas Jaeger solo
At the end of June 2025, I was lucky enough to have a longtime client named Phil who wanted to go on a real adventure. We tossed around a few ideas beforehand but ultimately settled on trying to get up to the south face of Santa Cruz.
Our local Cook/porter named Ever and his father Luciano would help with logistics. I also invited one of my friends, a young aspirant Peruvian guide named Josue to join us for the opportunity to climb something big.
I didn’t know any arrieros in Cashapampa because I hadn’t gone there in many years, so I asked my driver Geremias for a contact and he called Aquiles. We arrived to Aquiles house at the entrance to the Santa Cruz trek in the late morning and there was still people drinking from the night before. One wasted guy was obligating poor Aquiles to play a song on his harp before he would leave.
As we got ready to go I started talking to Aquiles about the route and realized that he thought we wanted to go to the west or north side of the mountain, where he had taken climbers before. I said “No we want to go to the south face up the quebrada Paccharuri” and he responded “No one climbs that face and no one has gone up there in over 10 years!”
His wife was next to him, helping to rope the cargo to the donkeys and she said: “He will take you there he knows the place”, Aquiles stayed silent with a worried look and finished roping the donkeys. I asked him to bring a machete along and we started up the valley. After a couple hours hiking we arrived below the steep entrance to the Paccharuri valley and began working on the trail.
The next morning Josue and I went ahead cleaning the brush and gained we the upper valley walking through beautiful Queña forests until the south face of Santa Cruz came into view. There was almost a mishap with the donkeys while crossing a river, but the cargo made it to base camp without a problem. Aquiles left us and went down to his home saying he would return in a couple days.
On July 1st we ported up the moraine to a high camp at about 5,000m, a couple hundred meters from the glacier. Although the camp was in a good spot on the moraine ridge, the options for water were slim, luckily we had Ever who could go fill up somewhere. That night Phil, Josue and I left the tent and started toward the face, but it became apparent that Phil was coughing quite a lot and moving slowly. He also had lingering back pain and we made the decision to go back before committing to the first pitches of technical climbing. Josue went un-roped to get a closer look at the climbing on the bottom section of the wall, and then came down also. Since Phils cough wasn’t going to get better that quickly he went down with Ever and Luciano to the base camp later that day where they could meet with Aquiles and go back to Cashapampa.
Josue and I decided to stay and give it a try on our own, meaning we would have to carry our packs out of there when it ended. We bivied under a plastic all day and tried to get as much rest as we could. At 9 pm we were on the move. Time became irrelevant as we entered the wall in the dark and climbed the first technical pitch, which Josue got halfway up before having to make an anchor before a difficult move where he didn’t feel confident to send it. I came up and took the lead but as I went to pull the move an ice block with a screw in it became detached and I had to hold it in place with my crampon while Josue quickly removed the screw before we let it fall. Once we got above the climbing became simpler and we cruised for hundreds of meters on 60 degree neve, which was great for climbing on but was not hard enough to protect with a screw. I found out early on that punching though this layer was a gap of airspace 10cm before hard blue ice underneath where a screw would hold securely. The sun came out and warmed us only for an hour before disappearing above the face, the wind had picked up at night and never stopped howling for the next 2 days.
On the upper part of the face the conditions got more difficult with sustained pitches of hard ice that slowed us down with the altitude. We debated on where it looked easiest to gain the upper ridge and even if we should go down because it was getting late. This was the point of no return and we knew that to continue would have us coming down at night.
Josue started to climb a clean section of rock that looked to be beyond my abilities. I told him that it looked too hard and that I wanted to try around the corner to the left. In the end I’m not sure if it was easier because around the corner was a few unstable moves over an abyss, and while blocking the fear of exposure from my thoughts I made it into a more secure snow runnel which seemed to go directly to the summit ridge. Josue arrived at the belay and exclaimed “me quede huevon” surprised at how delicate those moves were. One easier pitch of snow climbing brought us onto the shoulder of the mountain as the sun fell low in the sky.
Josue went ahead breaking the trail through knee deep snow under the false summits as we made our way around them racing the fading light to get a view from the top. Right as the sun set over the western horizon we pulled up on the summit of Santa Cruz Grande (6,259m) at about 6:30pm.
The views looking south over the Cordillera Blanca were hardly a consolation since I was cold, tired and worried about getting down. But Josue was in good spirits and seemed unaffected by the situation we were in, which gave me some courage to keep going. I asked Josue to set the first anchors coming down so I could hang at the belay and rest while trying to smoke a bit of a cigarette to wake me and warm me up. After a few rappels I came back to life and set the anchors coming down the rest of the wall. The last couple anchors were a bit precarious but with no other options we spent the last snow stake to get over the rock band on the lower wall. The stake moved a bit as Josue went off the 15 meters of vertical rock to the slope below and after hammering it in deeper, I prayed that it would hold as I went over too. We crawled back into our sleeping bags around 3am, after 30 hours and passed out into a deep sleep.
The sun hit me around 7am and I woke up to a still incessant wind; I had to get down out of it as soon as I could. I tried waking Josue but he was still sleeping, talking about nonsensical things at first. After he was fully awake and packed up, I started down to base camp and thought he would join me soon. But after going down and waiting for over an hour I couldn’t tell where he was and decided to go down on my own. About an hour above Cashapampa, Ever was coming up the trail and helped to carry my pack back to Aquiles house where his wife made trout and we drank some “Cristal” while listening to Aquiles sing and play “Huaynos” on his harp.
Later that evening as Phil and I arrived to Huaraz I got a message from Josue saying he had fallen asleep up there and was just then getting to Cashapampa. Big thanks to Phil for funding the trip, and our guys Ever, Luciano and Aquiles. All was well and another great adventure in the Cordillera Blanca was over.
Nevado Santa Cruz, Cordillera Blanca, Peru “Illegal” – South Face, 1000m, TD+, AI4, M5 Nate Heald & Josue Sanchez 30 hours roundtrip, July 3rd, 2025
