This month’s program features Sven Taow who will talk about a month-long climbing expedition in the Peruvian Andes that he and three friends did in the summer of 2015. After arriving in Peru, Sven’s group hired a local Indian cook and rented 14 burros and headed up to Peru’s Cordillera Blanca where they set up a base camp to acclimate and practice self rescue. They climbed three peaks ranging in height from 17,800 to 19,800 feet: Urus, Ishinca and Tocllaruju. Tragically, just six days before Sven and his team summited Tocllaruju, a team of four Estonian climbers fell into a crevasse just below Tocllaruju’s summit after a snow bridge collapsed and three of them perished.

Sven teaches climbing, mountaineering, winter camping and backpacking at BYU Idaho. He also organizes the annual Idaho Mountain Festival - a weekend of climbing, trail running and mountain biking held each August at Castle Rocks State Park. During summers, Sven also manages to operate a photo business in Jackson, Wyoming