Where Will We Do the Ride?

The Location - Ojos del Salado

Where is the ideal place to try and break an altitude record for motorcycles?  A read through our articles on the history of people riding high has shown that historically most high rides have been in the Himalaya.  Over the past 5-6 years, however, there has been an equally strong drive to look to South America and the Andes.  We agree with the South American logic and intend to head there for our attempt, and one mountain in particular, Ojos del Salado.

The idea of riding high has been in my head for several years.  Initially I was interested in the Indian Himalaya.  There are loads of regular roads and passes up above 5,000 metres high.  Those passes are obviously a base to attempt to ride higher, if the ground surrounding the pass is rideable.  The idea was developed further in the Pamir in 2009, when I rode a pass at 4,665 metres, but noticed much of the surrounding terrain was not particularly steep and was in fact quite gentle and rounded.

I spoke at length with Indian biker and fantastic moto photographer Mani Babbar, who had himself ridden to Marsimik La, and looking at his pics, the possibilities were clearly there to ride higher, provided the bikes had more power than they typical Indian 15 hp, 150cc carb’d bikes that rode up there.   This theory was conclusively proved by the current world record, which was a bunch of Indian guys who rode up to Marsimik La and then made their way up the hillsides another 600 metres of vertical.

But the more we looked into it and discussed it, the more the Andes made sense.  While the Andes are not as high as the Himalaya, that additional height is pretty much a moot point, since no-one is riding high enough to challenge the summits of the Andes, let alone the Himalaya.  And the Andes have one huge advantage … the slopes of the mountains are often less steep. 

The clincher for us, around June last year, was studying the assorted videos and stories of the last two world records for cars.  Both drives were in 2007, both were over 400 metres higher than any bike has ever gone, and one of the drives was in a near stock Jeep Wrangler.  Importantly, both drives were on one particular mountain … Ojos del Salado … Eyes of Salt.

Ojos del Salado is the second highest mountain in the Andes, and indeed in all of South America.  Perhaps most importantly, it is the world’s highest volcano.  Volcanoes tend not to be extremely steep, and their slopes tend to be very even, compared with regular mountains.  This is because volcanoes are formed by ash and molten lava flowing down from the top, rather than the earth violently heaving upwards, as is the case with regular mountains. Ojos del Salado will, however, not be a cakewalk.  Being a volcano, the slopes feature significant amounts of sand like ash.   There are glaciers to cross on our route; and fields of ice javelins called penitentes.  The area is remote.  The nearest town, including fuel and water, is 300 km (190 miles) away.  It’s one of the windiest areas on the planet, and even in summer temperatures can drop to -25C.  The remoteness means we must be 100% self contained, and very careful.  Injury either from accident or from altitude will spell the end of the project for at least one of us.

Despite the remoteness, it will be to Ojos del Salado that we head in less than 4 weeks time, to begin the process of acclimatisation and ultimately, to take on the world’s highest volcano itself.