The Southwest Face of Alpamayo photographs like an idea rather than a mountain — five hundred metres of fluted ice arranged with suspicious symmetry. The photographs are why people enquire. This report is about the parts the photographs leave out, filed while the season’s notes are still legible.

We ran two ropes up the French Direct this season, summiting a day apart in stable weather. The line was in generous condition by Cordillera standards: firm névé in the runnels, ice screws biting first time, the kind of face where the climbing is strenuous but the decisions, for once, are simple. Both ropes topped out before eight and were back across the bergschrund by early afternoon, which is the shape of a good day on this face.

The decisions that are not simple happen lower down. The bergschrund crossing changed twice in three weeks — a snow bridge on our first ascent, a ten-metre detour and an awkward mantel by the second. Expect it to be different again next year. The file now carries three photographed variants with dates, which is the only honest way to document a thing that will not sit still.

A word on the flutings themselves, because clients ask. The runnels funnel everything — spindrift, sun, falling ice, other parties. We start at 01:00 not for drama but for arithmetic: the face gets sun at 09:30 and stops being trustworthy shortly after. Two parties above you is a reason to change plans; the file says so in bold. Timings on this route are not preferences. They are the route.

Grade D is earned here. Sixty-degree ice for pitch after pitch, near 5,900 metres, on a face where retreat means abseiling everything you climbed. Clients should be comfortable seconding sustained ice before they enquire, and honest about it. The moraine camp is a bad place to discover a gap in a CV.

For 2027 we will hold both departures in the same weather window and keep the ratio at one to two on the face. Base camp at 4,300 metres remains one of the finest offices in this profession. The mountain remains better than its photographs — which, given the photographs, is saying something.