Written by RMI Expeditions Guide Marissa Tremblay.
It was 2 a.m. and our headlamps were the only light on the trail above Refugio Ishinca. We hadn’t gone far when a little dog trotted out of the dark and fell in step beside us.
We recognized him. We'd hiked about seven miles into the mountains the day before, and he was hanging around the refugio when we arrived. He was friendly and spent the evening by the hut. We didn’t know his name yet, but thanks to Instagram, we now know him as Roberto. At the time, he was just the hut dog, and we didn’t think much of it.
That morning we were headed for Ishinca, 18,143 feet in Peru's Cordillera Blanca. It was our first peak of the trip and our acclimatization climb before bigger objectives. We figured Roberto would get bored and head back to the hut.
He didn’t.
Two hours later he was still right there with us, tail wagging. He’d trot a little ways ahead, sit down, and wait for us to catch up. Then he'd take off again. It almost seemed like he was leading the way.
When we reached the glacier, we stopped to put on crampons. Roberto curled up on my jacket and fell asleep almost immediately. Apparently he needed the break as much as we did. I thought surely he'd turn back now, right?
Wrong.
As soon as we started moving, he was up and following us onto the glacier. This is not how we'd normally vet a new team member. He had no crampons and no harness. We knew nothing about his prior glacier travel experience and it was safe to assume he had no idea what a crevasse was. So we kept a constant eye on where he was walking, all the way to the saddle below the final steep section.
By then he was shivering, and the terrain ahead was steeper and more exposed. He was also wandering closer to crevasses than I was comfortable with. Leaving him wasn’t an option, and he clearly wasn’t going to turn around on his own. So I made the call to put him in my backpack.
He loved it.
Burrowed down inside my pack, he rode the rest of the way to the summit. Somehow our acclimatization climb had turned into carrying a dog up a mountain. For the record, I have never carried a client uphill. Roberto is the first, and hopefully the last.
Once we were back on safer terrain, we let him out. He followed us all the way back to the refugio, where we spent another night. The next morning we packed up and hiked the seven miles back down to the farm where we started this journey. And there was Roberto, already waiting for us.
For everyone wondering, no, we didn’t bring him home.
Turns out he lives at the farm with one of the donkey drivers. He'd hiked seven miles up to the refugio on his own, climbed Ishinca with us, hiked seven miles back down to the farm, and beat us there. We showed his owner the photos of his big adventure, and he thought it was awesome. I was nice to know he has a good home and is well looked after.
Apparently, this wasn’t Roberto’s first time. When I shared his story on Instagram, other climbers commented with their own stories of him tagging along. That's also how we learned his name. Remember how it felt like he was leading the way? He probably was. As far as I can tell, Roberto has been quietly guiding climbers in the Ishinca Valley for a while now.
So I'm not sure why he picked us that morning. Either way, he ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. He was also, by a wide margin, the fastest hiker on our team.
