Local climber to bag peaks in the Andes

A Flathead area mountaineer who’s climbed in South America, Alaska, Scotland and Glacier National Park is heading back to the Andes for a decade-long climbing project.

Thanks to a grant from the American Alpine Club, Barbara Schwarz aims to spend every July for the next 10 years climbing nearly every peak in the Cordillera Blanca (“White Range”) in Peru.

“I climbed a peak in Peru and met a Colorado mountain guide named Brad Johnson who had published a book about the 34 classic climbs of the Cordillera Blanca,” she said. “I thought, why don’t I tackle this task? Why don’t I try to complete it?”

The 52-year-old Kalispell woman found her passion for conquering mountains while growing up in Switzerland. She was born in Brooklyn to a British father and Swiss mother and moved to Basel, Switzerland when she was just three. She speaks English with a Swiss accent.

“I was introduced to climbing through my ski coach,” she said. “He was also a mountain guide and took us climbing. He took us on glacier trail tours. That’s how we grew up out there, doing things in the wild.”

Schwarz submitted an application to the American Alpine Club, a nonprofit climbing organization that offers about $100,000 in grants each year for climbing, conservation and research. The club expects Schwarz to provide a thorough documentation of her trip, including planning, photographs and returning.

She has three peaks on her agenda for this July — Alpamayo, Ranrapallqa and Wamashrahu, all more than 17,000 feet high. Ranrapallqa is 20,217 feet high and the ninth highest peak in the Cordillera Blanca.

Schwarz said the high point of her trip will be scaling Alpamayo, which has been described as one of most beautiful mountains in the world.

“It’s the big, best-known peak there,” Schwarz said. “There are peaks in the range that are less technical, so I might be able to do four of them in a different year.”

Most of her training for Peru is in the Flathead Valley, where she climbs the Danny On trail on Big Mountain twice a week. The Avalanche Lake and Highline trails are two of her favorites in Glacier Park.

Schwarz has a blog site online at www.BarbaraSchwarzMT.com where she will update her journey periodically.