Alto Toroni
  • Alto Toroni
  • 5995 m
  • Prominence 1733 m
  • On the Bolivia/Chile border.
  • Location: South 19.75259, West 68.69683
  • Difficulty: YDS class 2.
  • Climbed May 21 2025.

Copyright Petter Bjørstad, 2009-2022.

Information:

How to get there:
The approach road is indeed quite long. From La Paz, drive to the town Oruro, from there on paved roads (with potholes) to the village named Salinas. If the conditions are OK and your vehicle is ok for the salt flat, then head directly via the small community Tahua across a section of the Uyuni salt flats to the remote town named Llica.
Llica may also be reached from Salinas by driving across the mountain pass directly above town, then looping around this part of the Uyuni to reach Llica in about 3 hours. A GPX track of this driving route is available. Llica is the last town where one may be able to buy a few things.
From Llica, the drive to the Alto Alianza sulphur mine is still another 3 hours. At last, one can see the peak growing bigger when approaching from this side. This mine is not in use, but there are many buildings and ruins showing that quite many people worked here some time in the past. This mine serves as a good base camp for the climb. An old road continues from this mine up to 5300 meter of elevation where a good high camp can be established. The upper part of this road is in good condition, however there are a few badly damaged and eroded sections in the lower part. It would take a very determined driver with a very capable 4WD to negotiate this. Thus, most parties will take this sulphur mine as their base camp.
The location of this sulphur mine is S19.74801, W68.63763, elevation near 4600 meter. There is a concrete basketball court there that is very suitable for camping.
Route description:
A GPX track is posted on Peakbagger.
From Base camp at the sulpur mine, follow the road uphill until it merges with the valley floor at or near location S19.74658, W68.66903, elevation 5300 meter. There are nice spots to camp here. Unfortunately, the small creek has water with a strong sulphur taste and should likely not be used. In May 2025, one could find snow nearby and melt snow to get water.
From this high camp area there are two possible routes, the most direct crossing over a big hump called Candelaria, then descending to the col before Toroni. This route cannot be recommended.
The second, and much better route first follows a clear trail that traverses out right, crossing the slope that you had across the valley (to your right) when following the road uphill to reach the high camp area. This path (almost an old road) is easy to follow, it turns the ridge and proceeds to access a nice valley. Follow this path until it basically ends at a very level and fairly wide valley floor. This location is near S19.740, W68.676, elevation near 5440 meter.
Continue in the valley, almost flat. (Picture taken on descent.) You will see the main valley heading slightly left and another valley shaped feature gaining elevation straight ahead (right of the more flat main valley). This is certainly the obvious route in order to gain elevation and ascend out of this area on climbers right hand side.
Proceed up this little valley and continue until it tops out (basically ends). Now turn directly right and ascend moderate slopes towards the ridge above. In May 2025, we had snow on the upper part of this slope. Aim for an area just left of a local top above. When reaching this ridge-line one should just contour (left) around the local summit, then do a long traverse essentially along the same elevation (just descending very slightly) to reach new terrain.
Proceed a little (only) up the gully where your traverse ended, keep left and cross over to reach a small valley below you. Descend into this valley, this is the only (significant) loss of elevation along this route, still mnot much, about 50 meter. Once down, do an ascending traverse going climbers left on the opposide side. This will get you up to a more level area, essentially near the base of the peak itself.
The rest of the route is now pretty obvious as one can see the terrain. The best route is to cross towards the peak, ascend on its left side to reach the pretty broad ridge, then turn more right as you ascend moderate terrain that soon will level more out. Complete the ascent along very gentle terrain to arrive at a small cairn marking the high point.
Comments:
Since we had to stay within Bolivia (due to an unplanned complication regarding the vehicle we should have used not beeing able to join us.) We decided to try climb this peak from The Bolivia side. The approach drive from the small town of Salinas took most of a day. Previously, a group had been able to drive the mine road all the way to high camp. However, a short drive up the very first part of this road made it pretty obvious that this road had detoriated and our Toyota Hilux would not easily climb it.
We established base camp on the basketball court. The plan would be to carry up to High Camp the next day.
The next day, we cleared camp and started uphill. Deliberately walking slowly to help acclimatize. We took about 6 hours to reach High Camp at 5300 meter. This included several stops along the way. High Camp is a quite nice area with good scenery. We melted some snow for the dinner boil, but we really had carried more water than needed.
I did not sleep very well, possibly due to altitude, but at least had a long rest. The next morning, we started out around 0700. First without snow until the top of the small ascending valley. From here, crampons. The route we followed turned out to be quite good. A single, short descent to cross a small valley, then soon we came to the more level terrain leading to the final bulky summit. The snow was good and the slope never steep. We reached the summit at 1150, pretty much according to plan. Almost no wind, sunny and warm at essentially 6000 meter of elevation.
After the ascent John Biggar informed me that there is an old Inca platform on the summit. Later, a small cairn has been built on top of the platform. With the snow cover, all we detected was the small cairn.
We spent about 15 minutes, looking around and taking a few more pictures. We knew that the descent would be substantially faster, the thin air makes the difference between walking uphill and downhill very significant. Overall a very nice and scenic walk back to High Camp. There, we took some time to clear camp and prepare for a slightly more heavy backpack. We finally descended back down to Base Camp in slightly less than 2 hours. Still daylight, but the sun had set.
A very nice and full day had come to an end. Dinner, then a good night sleep, much lower than the past two days, but still higher than Withney.

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