Back in 2013 I started to collect my first top 10 summits while cycling from Chile to Ecuador along the Andes. I wanted to make a bicycletour and being able to do detours into areas were the bicycle could not take me and climb high summits along the way. Inspired by the Swedish touringcyclist and mountaineer Janne Corax that have done alot of travels in similar fashion. I wanted to spend a lot of time in the Andes and explore a lot of the mountain range, both mountains and passes. I managed to collect 11 summits along the 8000km route.  Including Aconcagua (6962m) solo, Bonete Chico (6759m) with Lars Bengtsson, Ojos del Salado (6893m) solo, Cazadero (6670m) solo. So during my first tour I was able to collect 4 of the 10 highest summits in Americas. I dident think much about that during that time and had no plans to collect them all. I did receive the Adventurer of the year award in Sweden for this trip. In the video below you can see my friend and one of most well travelled people I know Lars Bengtsson reach the summit of Bonete Chico (6759m) in 2013.

During 2014 I was following my friend and indian climber Malli Mastan Babu as he set out to collect the ten highest points of America. I got inspired and decided that this would become my next project aswell. Many of the peaks were easy on a technical level but remote not frequently climbed. So to develop myself on high altitude and have a proper mountain adventure this was an ideal project for me.

Unfortunately Malli died during his last climb to complete the project. He got trapped high up on Tres Cruses sur with some really bad weather. I believe that they found his body on about 6000m. I made a tribute to him in this video below on the summit of Tres Cruses sur (6748m) when I was on the mountain in 2016.

After a working period in 2015, I was off to Peru to spend most of the climbing season in Cordillera Blanca range the, the idea was to train on easier peaks and become fit enough to take on the Huascaran summits. Huascaran consists of two summits and is a mountain that require technical knowledge and good mountain judgement. I teamed up with aspiring climbing guide Marcel Commomalo from Catalunya to climb the south summit. It was a really cold summit day and we dident stop until we reached the summit, it resulted in a summit just as the the sun was giving out its first lights. Here is a gopro video from the Huascaran sur climb:

During the Huascaran climb I did research the route up on to Norte summit. Because nobody had been up there in the season I had to create my own route, and found an option that looked possible to climb solo without rope. I came back a couple of days later to camp 1 at 5200m and started  my summit push from there. After some shorter steeper sections around 6100m I had to navigate around some crevasses and could reach the summit after a long climb through the night at 6.30 in the morning, just 24 hours after I left Huaraz the main town in the area. Here is a video of that climb:

The Huascarans were the two most dangerous and the steepest climbs of all the top 10.

After Peru I went to Panama and ran up Volcan Baru (3474m) from both sides and decided to start another top 10 summits project in Central America, but that story is for another time.

After another working period in Norway I was ready to leave once again to the high Andes with the goal of covering the rest of the summits in the project.

I flew down to Mendoza, Argentina in January 2016 with my bicycle and climbing gear. First off was Mercedario (6770m). The normal route is very trekking friendly, with some steeper sections of snow slopes, but with a bicycle approach and fast acclimatization of only 5 days from about 2000m to summit I learned alot about fast acclimatization and understanding my body on altitude.

After Mercedario I moved on to the quiet semi desert village of Fiambala (1505m), its the last point of proper civilization before entering the highest concentration of 6000m peaks in Americas high up on the Puna de Atacama desert with plenty of the highpoints being directly placed on the border with Chile. Here I had good timing and could buy myself a spot on a pickup headed to the foot of remote Pissis volcano (6793m), the third highest peak in Americas. See the climb in video below:

After some short recovery time in Fiambala I was off again towards a multi summit tour covering the distance between Incahuasi (6621m) and Tres Cruses sur (6748m) with a shorter bicycletour of two days. The cycling went all the way over the Paso San Fransisco international border between Argentina and Chile at 4700m, and this type of high altitude cycling is my favorite. I do collect cycling the highest passes on the planet aswell and have done 4 passes over 5000m with my bicycle. Anyway here is another video from Incahuasi (6621m) that was a bonus summit by my list number 12 highest point, but by many Argentinians its believed to be the number 10. To avoid any confusion about my project I did this one aswell and its a special one with Inca ruins above 5000m and a small gold Inca statue was found on top of this mountain. It seems like the Incas were interested in the high summits of the Andes aswell. There are many Inca ruins and tombs high up on mountains throughout the Andes. Incahuasi (6621m) video:

After Incahuasi directly to Tres Cruses Sur:

Now it was only one summit left and that was Llullaillaco (6739m). For this volcano I teamed up with Connie Grasser from Austria that also collected summits in South America. This vulcano is a bit off the beaten track and I used San Pedro de Atacama as starting point. We got a ride to the foot of the Vulcano and from there we started our climb. There are also potential mines on the borderline between Chile and Argentina so we tried to stay away from that line. Llullaillaco is also home to the highest archaeological findings on the planet. Here three Inca children were found mummified in a tomb just below the summit. Its possible to see them in Salta, Argentina. Llullaillaco video:

Summiting Llullaillaco concluded my project and now it was complete! Here is a short video with all the summits from the Americas top 10 project:

The summit list I was following can be found here:

http://www.andes.org.uk/andes-information-files/6000m-peaks.asp

Its created by John Biggar, he has climbed and collected info about the Andes for decades, and probably knows more about the Andes summits then anyone out there. I noticed that in Argentina they count only Huascaran sur for this project, and not the north summit, that makes Incahuasi number 10 highest peak in their version of the Americas top 10.

With the experience from climbing in South America I am now challenging myself once again with the Snow Leopard project in the Pamirs and Tien Shan mountains. This project includes all five 7000m plus peaks in former Sovietunion. Last season I climbed Peak Lenin (7134m) and Peak Korzhenevskaya (7105m). I teamed up with Douglas Asplund and young filmmaker Noah Sandgren to tackle the high mountains of the former Soviet and hopefully we will learn a thing or two from the strong Russian alpinism community this season and complete as many peaks as possible during this summer. As a warm up I will cycle 2500km to Russia to watch Sweden play in the Fotball world cup in June!

My full summit collection above 5000m can be found in about me page. More info about my 5000m plus climbs at Peakbagger.

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