18.10.2019

Half a century from the Peru expedition, the Jizerská 50 will once again commemorate the mountaineers

At the 53rd Jizerska 50, almost half a century will have passed since the tragic Peru 1970 expedition to Huascarán, where all 15 members of the expedition team died, 14 as a result of a devastating earthquake. With over 70,000 victims, that year's earthquake was named the largest natural disaster in the history of Peru. The Jizerská 50, which has come to honour the victims, will commemorate this tragic story leading up to 31 May, the date the disaster struck.

The Peru 1970 expedition was hampered by a series of obstacles from the very beginning. Initially the planned expedition to Alaska was banned by the socialist government. After the change of destination, the climbers' sights fell on Peru, thanks largely to the close cooperation between that country and the government of Czechoslovakia. When they arrived on the South American continent, the Czechoslovak mountaineers discovered that the ship with their boxes was two weeks late. It even turned out that some of their provisions had been stolen from the ship. But that was just the beginning of their problems. The first foreshadowing of the tragedy to come came shortly after the team's arrival in the mountains, when Ivan Bortel, the most experienced member of the expedition and a legend among mountaineers of the time, died while hiking the terrain. The 26-year-old mountaineer slipped and fell into the abyss.

According to the letters that the mountaineers wrote home, the expedition made the difficult decision to continue on with their expedition. However, after Bortel's death, they changed their plans yet again, and instead of climbing to the peak of Huandoy they decided to attempt to conquer Huascarán, the highest mountain in Peru.  

After all these many changes of fortune, the 14-member team chose a location on the Llanganuco Lakes for its base camp. But on 31 May 1970, nature showed its true strength. An avalanche of snow, stones, and ice, rolled down the nearby mountain slopes after a great earthquake and took out everything in its path. An area of nearly 23 km² was destroyed; rubble deposits reached 5 to 10 metres. Initially, differing reports about the number of disaster victims came from the region, and the families of the Czechoslovak mountaineers maintained hope for several days that the members of the expedition would be rescued and would return home safely. In the end, however, the earthquake claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people, including all of the remaining members of the Peru 1970 expedition.