Climbers Mugged For Boots At 17,000 Feet...

A party of 'climbers' in Bolivia have been held up at gunpoint for their boots at an altitude of 17,300 feet according to a story in yesterday's Mirror.

According to the rather confused report, the climbers were on a bus when it was stopped by a gang of machete and gun-wielding banditos at a remote mountain pass. The Mirror implies that the incident happened just a few hundred feet below the summit of the Chacaltaya, but this seems unlikely given that there is no road at that point...

Chacaltaya is the world's highest 'developed' ski area at an altitude of over 5000 metres with the summit at 5345 metres and easy 1 km walk from a mountain refuge. It's a popular excursion for tourists based in nearby La Paz and is often used as an easy acclimatisation day for climbers preparing to tackle higher mountains in the Cordillera Real. There are stunning views across the Cordillera Real and of neighbouring 6,000 metre Huayna Potosi.

Bolivia - dubbed the Tibet of the Andes - is an exceptionally beautiful country, but also a very poor one, and while it's generally considered safe, with less petty crime than in, say, neighbouring Peru, the disparity in wealth between the locals and rich gringo visitors is wide.

For the full storysee www.mirror.co.uk