The 90% humidity causes me to gasp like a fish with too much water. Where the hell am I? The short answer is Cartagena, Colombia, in late June. Two duffles loaded with ice axes, ropes, crampons, and way too much feathered goose down for the current conditions sag beside me as I inhale the sea-level oxygen saturation and blink into the brightness of a Caribbean summer. “Remember, you’re learning how to take a normal trip, Jess…beaches, sunshine, kayaking, and stuff. You’re going to let your body recover at sea level before catapulting into the next thing…” Well, as fun as splitting lanes on a rented moped in Cartagena turned out to be, I just do not think I am normal.

A week prior, I had been standing on the summit of Nevado Sajama (6,542m; 21,463ft), the highest point in Bolivia, which caps the strange little collection of volcanoes in the Cordillera Occidental, with my dear buddy and ultimate yes-man, Fin Keleher.

“Hey Fin, want to go to Bolivia for a month next summer? We can bring skis and work remotely,” I propositioned in late 2022. “Yeah, dude,” being his casual, enthusiastic reply. “Bolivia sounds sick.” And so it was. Fin and I had taken several not-normal ski trips together: attempting University Peak in Alaska and succeeding on Manaslu in Nepal. Bolivia had become the latest iteration of novel ski destinations. However, Bolivia would be the first place where we could work remotely, spending more nights inside rather than in tents or snow shelters. We were finally becoming weekend warriors.

Now I realize that the term “weekend warrior” can be loaded: either a sneer of derision from those ski bums and dirtbags who have left the rat race behind or a point of pride to the desk jockeys who are still pretty damn fit, thank you very much. The middle ground with such a term struck me as being a weekend warrior in Bolivia. Why Bolivia? Well, I love South America and still had a current visa from traveling there in 2019 with my now ex-wife. Bolivia offers no jet lag or time zone issues when working. Life is fairly inexpensive compared to the States. The avocados and coffee are fire. Oh, and there are mountains with glaciers. Many of them are a mere taxi ride from La Paz, the highest capital city on earth (sprawling between 10,650 to 13,250 feet; 3,250 to 4,100 meters). Finally, who goes to Bolivia to ski? It was a worthy mission for some weird aspiring weekend warriors.

Poaching an Excel packing list from previous adventures, we now got to delete things such as solar panels, down suits, and stove boards that were no longer needed in our bougie weekend warrior realm. I ordered a copy of John Biggar’s The Andes: A Guide for Skiers and Climbers, now in its 5th edition, which arrived weeks later via snail mail from the UK. It turns out other people had, in fact, gone skiing in Bolivia. Variable in its utility, the book provided a starting point for what would be an adventure all about seeking experiences, not objectives. Having done many objectives (whole years of training and saving for one mountain; entire seasons in the Wasatch devoted to the Chuting Gallery), I wanted to recapture the spirit of what got me interested in high-altitude skiing in the first place: exploring. For this trip, Fin and I dumped ten possible objectives into our shared Excel doc. We then saw what made sense as the weekends unfolded: no two-month push to the top of a single peak and then back down. Success would be measured by the sense of curiosity, flexibility, and adventure. As weekend warriors, these were our guidelines. “What do you feel psyched on?” Not, “How do you think we sequence the next rotation to Camp 3?”

In late May 2023, Fin and I boarded a series of planes, eventually bumping down on the highest international runway in the world, double in length due to the thin air. The first time I had landed on that runway, a woman fervently praying the rosary crossed herself, raised an eyebrow at my Jewish wife, and crossed her, too. Let the adventure begin.

Bolivia is weird. I love weird. Bolivia is that delightful mix of not-so-horribly foreign (think Pakistan) as well as a place where you can be perpetually caught off guard. For example, in 2019, our old battered combi (small van) gave up the ghost in a tiny village as we returned from climbing Illimani, the second-highest peak in Bolivia. It was my birthday and also evidently Día de Las Mamas (Mother’s Day). I heard a commotion in the local schoolyard and ambled over to check it out. A class of kids had just finished a performance, and a table was placed in the center of the dirt square. Four elderly Aymara women were brought forth, their hands bound behind their backs. Their tiny felt bowler hats were gently unpinned from their heads as they took their places standing around the table. The crowd was tense with anticipation. Four plates with papaya emerged. With a yell from the master of ceremonies, the women began furiously attacking the papaya face first. The crowd went ballistic. I can only imagine the bragging rights: “Yo, my grandma kicked your grandma’s ass in the handless papaya comp.”

Thinking of this and many more memories, I said, “Fin, you’re going to love this place.” Bolivia did not disappoint. During our first week there, we settled into our little apartment in a middle-class section of town close to a good gym, grocery store, and cafe. After work one night, we decided to look for oranges to juice (hooray for local produce!). We found the oranges but also ran into a five-hundred-person cosplay parade. Holding the heavy bag of juicers, we watched, wholly amused, as groups of chainsaw-faced men and other anime characters coursed down the street. We followed them to a techno dance party in one of the many squares that litter South American cities. The next week, we encountered a lip-syncing holographic Japanese concert with songs about eating your vegetables. And, of course, I would be remiss as a tour guide if I did not take Fin to La Paz’s Mercado de Las Brujas (Witches Market) to peruse the mummies of spontaneously aborted llama fetuses with pearly white teeth. Let me tell you, there is nothing more enjoyable than spending an hour negotiating in Spanish for your buddy as he considers the varied merits of mummified llama and pig fetuses.

But back to the skiing. The first weekend was all about easing into acclimatization. Hiking around archaeological ruins at 13,500 feet and having my heart rate spike to zone four on the elliptical at 12,000 feet were two initial forms of adapting to altitude. For weekend number two, we consulted our list of potential options and decided on the triple header of Wila Llojeta (17,205ft; 5,244m), Janco Huyo (18,084ft; 5512m), and Pequeño Alpamayo (17,618ft; 5370m) in La Cordillera Blanca a few hours’ taxi ride north of La Paz. Chofer Fredi (Chauffer Freddy) dropped us in a basin beneath Wila Llojeta with the plan to pick us up in 36 hours to give us a bump to the trailhead for Pequeño Alpamayo.

Friendship looks like both people having food poisoning in a tiny tent at 16,000 feet. A drawback of being a weekend warrior is that you can get sick with front-country illnesses at any time! The culprit to our intestinal divestment: cheesy bread in La Paz. Zipping and unzipping the tent all night, we moaned in pain and attempted to sleep. During one urgent excursion out of the tent, I looked up at the pitch-black cloudless sky of the new moon. Mid-bowel evacuation, I shouted to Fin excitedly, “Dude, don’t look right now, but you can see the Southern Cross!” It has been an honor to share these firsts with Fin over the years. Ten years my junior, I have had the express pleasure of seeing Fin buy a headlamp and use crampons for the first time, travel via glacier planes and helicopters for the first time, and leave our hemisphere for the first time… as well as have food poisoning at altitude for the first time. Some things are sacred.

Jess Shade is a queer cis woman and high-altitude ski mountaineer. She is also a licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in Salt Lake City, UT. Jess works in private practice with individuals, couples, and organizations such as the Utah Avalanche Center, American Alpine Club, and the LGBTQ+ Affirmative Psychotherapist Guild of Utah. Feel free to reach out via email: jess@alturacc.com, website: www.alturacc.com, or Instagram: @shade_jess