UKC

Gents, 

I’m planning a 3 week expedition to Bolivia and looking for guide book recommendations. I’ve picked up The Andes  guide by John Bigger, this is a more general look over the whole of South America. From Patagonia to Columbia, it’s all there. 

I’m after something more specific, now all I can find it the late 90s Bolivia guide book by Yossi Brain, I imagine this is very outdated not to mention the £40 price tag. 

Any push in the right direction would be much appreciated 

Tom

Los Andes de Bolivia - Guia de Escaladas by Alain Mesili is pretty good. I am not sure if it has been translated to English. I think David Taura was compiling a guidebook some years back. You might want to google him. 

Put up a post to see if anyone has a copy of Yossi Brain's Climbing Guide to Bolivia (1998|) you can borrow. Its long out of print and the author (ex Pat journalist who moved to Bolivia in the 90s) died in an avalanche in the Cordillera Apolobamba in 1999 but is great for Bolivian specific mountaineering. It goes for over £40 on Ebay/Amaozon.

Good idea. I’ll see what I can muster up. 

Thanks for the input 

I have a copy of the Mesili guide published in Bolivia in English in 2004.

As I live in Sydney I cannot lend it to you but I could send you individual pages if you know what you need.

I have a copy of Yossi's guide, and survived several trips with him - one to the Cordillera Apollobamba, and various others nightclubbing in La Paz - the pulmonary oedema was way less risky than the nights on the beer with Yos in full viking berserker mode...

As per CliffPowys I can help with scans of the odd page if you have an objective in mind. I also have the late 80s - early 90s little pictorial guide, will have to check when I get home who wrote it, in Spanish IIRC.

b

You may find SummitPost useful in selecting targets. See:

https://www.summitpost.org/cordillera-real-bolivia/319611

https://www.summitpost.org/cordillera-occidental-chile-bolivia/339039

Hi, 

that would be fab if you could, I'll send you a message, thanks for the offer. 

Tom

The addition of beer and the fuzzy head is a tried and tested method of overcoming nerves and settling any doubts. Let it continue. 

I have the Yossi guide as well, but found that the routes change each year depending on glacial retreat and changes. I'd go chat to guides, get up a day early to check out tracks and see what is said on summit post to find out info on that years route.

Climbed in C. Apolobamba with Yossi in 97 and have fuzzy memories of viking nights out! A true force of nature that one

Pacena nights and saltenas in the morning.... Yossi tried to tell me he was teetotal the first time I met him... my look of horror was what he was looking for so we went to Mongos to prove he was bullshitting!

Tom,

I have just changed my old email to my current one. If you have sent me a message, please resend it.

Sorry about that,

Cliff.

My memory is playing tricks - the other guidebook I had was the Beaud/Cordee Climbs and Treks in the Peruvian Andes, not Bolivia. Apologies.

b

Okay dokey. Good to know. I’ll get on it.

Check which village to start from if you want to do the normal route on Illimani - one of the options in Yossi's book has had problems with armed robbery on the route, whereas the other one hasn't. Rocking up in robbery world at 6pm off the bus and having to hike 1000m on vertical with torches off was memorable......

Probably Estancia Una or Pinaya? I think it was the latter we got dropped off at, in July 1999, and kids threw rocks at us (hard) as we walked by.

But we walked down to another small town, Cohoni, drank huge cheap beers in the plaza in the sun, and got a cheap bus back to La Paz.

Yossi's book was also a bit out on the locations/directions for Illampu BC, if coming direct over the high pass from Sorata.

For all its flaws, readers should know that Yossi had a heap more info on those and other peaks that never made it into the book, mostly for reasons of space. He intended to do something with the rest, but never got the chance. I was supposed to meet him at Mongos one night in LaPaz in late July '99 but he got called away, I left the country, then he returned and was killed in an avalanche soon after.

I haven't really looked at the Mesili book, but I know from other things that he can be somewhat unreliable in his accounts and memories, to put it nicely, so I'd take anything he's written with a grain of salt. There's a lot of history there...