How to get there:
First, travel to the small village of Barreal. Barreal (for example) may be reached from
the town of San Juan.
In Barreal, drive north and turn right (east) at location S31.63490, W069.46928. Shortly
after this there is a nic e hotel on your left at location S31.63528, W069.46406.
Continue along the same road (east), then turn left at location S31.63637, W069.45224.
After going north a short distance, turn right again near location S31.63027, W069.45052.
You need a high clearance 4WD vehicle to continue along this road.
Very soon, you will see a track (driveable) forking left near location S31.63308, W069.43610.
If you want to explore a way to possibly drive all the way to the summit, then turn left here.
To get top our trailhead, continue straight. Continue to near S31.64697, W069.40348, you should fork
left near this location. After more interesting driving you get to
location S31.65018, W069.35111, the road descends into the wash, sharp left, then right.
Next, the route will cross a pretty large, open area that climbs gently towards the mountains.
The road climbs to near 3000 meter as you cross this large area before entering a more
narrow gorge near location S31.65277, W069.22253.
The road narrows and there is some exposure, calls for focused and careful drive. The road now
enters a somewhat wider area with vegetation and signs of human activity, there are a couple
of pretty basic huts on your right hand side. Here, the road climbs a pretty long and steep
hill, straight on in order to get on top of the higher land. This hill may be the crux of
this drive. Our Toyota Hilux needed two attempts, the first one being too slow, the truck
ended up with spinning wheels and no uphill progress. Higher speed and a more sustained
effort got us up on a second try.
Drive left along the top, there is a road fork, two sort of equivalent choices, it seems that
keeping right is slightly better. The driving route now climbs gently into the lower
part of a quebrada, (small valley), a good
place to park and make camp is at location
S31.67827, W069.18412, elevation close to 3500 meter.
Route:
Follow a pretty nice trail
that continues up the valley.
Higher up, this trail climbs right out of the valley in order to
gain the ridge near location S31.68601, W069.17014. There are no issues, the
trail is obvious. From here, follow the ridge uphill,
eventually reaching the
(false) summit at location S31.69433, W069.15807, elevation near
4350 meter. The driving track will meet you here, follow this down to the
last col, then ascending gently before a final almost level traverse across
to the Pircas summit.
Comments:
We stayed in the nice hotel (I even tested the pool) located directly
on the access road (in Barreal). Starting
around 1000 (after a good breakfast), we did not know what to expect from
what we hoped would be a good access road.
We decided, mainly based on satellite pictures, to fork left and follow
the road as outlined above. The final gorge was interesting as well as
the steep uphill. We finally arrived at a good camp spot at
1230, so about 2.5 hours of interesting driving.
We decided to camp here, then do the hike to the summit the next morning.
The next morning, we left at 1130 and had a nice hike up the valley, then
more steeply up the first part of the ridge. Higher, more gentle uphill
leading to the false summit. It was quite interesting to find the vehicle tracks
that followed the main crest, they actually looked quite good for sturdy 4WD trucks.
We continued down to the col, then uphill to the main summit, arriving there around
1015.
The summit marker also have an official emblem.
We used our sight-level to confirm
that the peak to the south was indeed lower.
A good rest in the sunshine. Nice panoramas all around, but in particular to the west.
We left after 40 minutes and were back in camp by 1315, a very nice day!
