As I got to the entrance I could see that the tunnel itself was covered with snow and this wasn ’ t helping to let the snow melt during the daylight that was on the road inside , on the bright side , if I dropped it I would have only slid into the wall and not over the side , so as the heart pounded a little bit faster . I crawled my way through and welcomed the exit and the sunshine . I had about 14 on these heart starters to go through . Things were going well , I was shitting myself and I could see that I wasn ’ t anywhere near the top yet ; this is when you stop and enjoy a smoke . A lot of the truckies would wave at me , some beeped their horns and some would just stare out of their windows and shake their heads .
I had been going now for over three hours and the top was still not in sight yet . The snow was thick and it was everywhere , hardly a bare rock in sight , this made it even colder just looking at it all ; it was a beautiful scenic ride but a hell of a way to see the Andes . We crawled on and up , overtaking when the guys put the left blinker on , sometimes I had to squeeze back in between two trucks fairly quickly as some were heading down the hill faster then I thought . I was so cold my ears were getting frostbite INSIDE my helmet , thank God for BMW making heated hand grips ; they are heaven for the palms of the hands , not much good for the ends of the fingers , because they were now numb . I noticed the temperature gauge on the dash flashing ; it showed the oil temp . of the motor at minus 5 degrees . I became very concerned now about the motor when this was happening and decided to stop and let the heat of the engine block itself warm the oil up while I was stopped and just sitting there shaking like hell . This actually worked and as I was still going up and the temperature was going down , I did this a couple of more times before reaching the top .
The top was in sight after 4 hours of crawling and sliding , it was a beautiful sight to see . The last thing I expected to see on top of this very steep terrain was a ski resort ; people must have a hell of a ski up here , straight down the hill for about 4000 metres . After about another 6 kms of level , but slippery riding , I finally saw the exit sign that took me off the main road and into the Chilean Border Post Shed . I have made it I was screaming out to myself jumping up and down on the bike , I was so proud of how I had handled the bike and the Andes . I had a few hundred close calls but I was on the top of the mountain and still standing .
It was about 500 metres from the road to the shed , all the trucks had to go on up further and only cars bikes and buses went this way . I had to go around two buses and when I was only 10 metres from the shed I noticed a thick layer of pure ICE on the road , so I slowed down and went on . 5 metres to go and off I went . The bike just slid from under me , it dropped and stopped and I went nearly into the shed on my arse . People near by were kind of laughing until I got up and went back over and kicked the wheel of the bike , then they all started to laugh out loud , even the custom guys came out to have a look . One guy pointed to the bike and then to me and put his arm out to show me where I had to go , everybody from the buses just cracked up laughing . No damage to the bike at all , I ’ m glad I made those pannier crash bars ; they stopped the panniers from being bent or broken . With a few helpers I had the bike up and into the shed . One of the spotlight cases cracked when it dug into the snow , still worked , so that can be taped up later . No problem .