Cordillera Blanca, Part II

Ready for another round of photos? I've made some progress through the collection, and I'm ready to resume the narrative, begun here.

When last seen, we were camped at Huillca with the alpacas (alpaca poop made a nice change from cow plops). The next day (Day 5, I believe) saw us (as usual) getting up in the morning and climbing up over a pass, with views to match. The (young) guys switchbacked up out of sight quickly, keeping up with Juan, our amazing cook and high-speed guide. This was a two-pass day, with an easy climb of Mesapata Pass followed by a longer and harder climb to Caracara Pass.

Climbing toward Mesapata pass

 

Mealtimes were something we really looked forward to. This particular bit of fruit wasn't quite what we were expecting, however. It's some kind of relative of a passion fruit, but we aren't quite sure what.

Here, take a closer look:

The fish-egg texture and crunch of the seeds were off-putting for some of us, though the flavor was good.

A fair bit of lounging about seemed an appropriate response to mealtimes, summits, and any of a number of other excuses. In fact, on a trip like this, when not actually hiking, lounging about is the primary activity. Staring at the scenery of course is what we'd come for, so it mades sense.

My son, my foot, and my brother-in-law, atop yet another pass

The sixth day, and we were descending to our layover near Alpomayo. We can see the glacial lake (thus the lovely turquoise color) behind the moraine. Once again, we see too that we have to go down. A long way down.

Lago Jancarurish and Quitaraju towering above, seen from Caracara Pass

Clouds kept hiding the peaks, but they also made for great light at sunset. Since this moraine had failed catastrophically in the 1940s, flooding the valley and washing out a nearly-completed hydro-election dam down on the Santa River, I did think a bit about where we were camped!

Alpomayo Camp at sunset.

After two nights in our scenic camp, and a dayhike to get a closer look at the lake, we had to move on. But we had great views behind us at the mountain, as we descended the deep glacial Quebrada Alpomayo past Incan ruins.

The Spouse reluctantly leaves the Most Beautiful Mountain in Peru.

 This was a tough day. After descending the valley for several miles, we turned and began a relentless 2000' climb to the first pass of the day, Hatun Ventuna. This was the point where various people's minor illnesses and fatigue began to show--the gap between the Tres Muchachos and the last of the old folks was huge! But we all eventually made the summit, and we had traded Alpomayo for a new set of stunning mountains.

 Of course, having rested on our laurels, and eaten our lunch, we had to drop several hundred feet and climb a thousand to the second pass of the day, Ventana. In between, we passed a little cove full of these giant lupins, native only to the Andes.

Finally, after a day that went on far too long for me, and just in time for afternoon tea, I reached our next-to-last camp. Tucked into a small area next to a dam, we shared our space with several buildings and a pair of trekkers from Colorado, just starting out in the other direction.

Lago Cuillacocha camp

 What the campsite itself lacked in aesthetics, the lake and mountains more than made up for when sunset moved in.

Sunset on Santa Cruz mountain Lago Cuillacocha

 The last two days were a long, long way down, into the valley of the Santa River. Even though we didn't have to hike all the way to the bottom, it was a tough descent!

Down we go, into civilization!

I can't let this go without giving some credit to the guys who did the heavy lifting--our team of 11 burros and a packhorse, not to mention the wranglers. They got to walk home when we were done, too, but without all the gear and coolers. Well, the two wranglers who took the donkeys back rode, but still--no horse trailers for these guys. So it takes two days to get home? Vamos!

Descending toward Hualcayan, where we were picked up to return to Huaraz

 The Alpomayo Circuit was an incredible hike, and inspired all sorts of responses from our group. . .

These two posts don't even come close to doing the trip justice, and my husband's photos are better. Even better, for those who really like good photography, will be my brother-in-law's photos, once he has them up on his website, Photoseek.com (I just checked yesterday and they weren't there yet, which is no surprise given the size of the job!).

And, for those who want more: next week, I start the report on our second trek, the Huayhaush circuit.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2014

Trekking the Cordillera Blanca, Part I

In lieu of my usual Friday flash fiction, for the next several weeks I will be posting photo-essays of our recent trip to Peru. I posted a summary of the whole trip and a few shots from our pre-trek dayhikes here.  This week, as titled: Trekking the Cordillera Blanca. It's Part I, because it was a 10-day trek and I'm hanged if I can do the whole thing in a single post of reasonable length.

The main purpose of our Peru trip was to do two major treks, in the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Huayhuash (both are fairly popular and well-established routes). We did the treks with full support--not our usual approach, but it was a nod to age, altitude, and the local economy. Despite feeling a little bit lazy for doing it that way, we have no regrets. The passes were high, the knees are old, and we would have suffered carrying full loads over that route. Having someone else do the cooking was a real luxury for me, the chief cook on our usual trips! And being brought warm wash water and tea in my tent first thing every day was an enjoyable novelty.

Most treks in the area are based out of the city of Huaraz, as it is the main population center in the area, and has many tourist services, including restaurants that are safe for our pampered First-World guts. We enjoyed our stay there (at Mi Casa B&B, clearly catering to trekkers and, during our visit, research scientists), including shopping at the local artisan markets.  Alpaca wool products are all the thing--very light and warm, as well as beautiful.

The 5-hour drive from Huaraz to our trailhead left the pavement early on, and climbed over Portachuelo de Llanganuco. At 15,700' the pass offered views of Chacraraju (left) and Yanapaqucha mountains, as well as of Huascaran (highest in Peru but not shown here).

The trek started in the "town" of Vacaria, where we ate our sack lunches and watched the crew scramble to pack up all the gear necessary for 8 gringos and 6 staff (1 guide, 1 cook, and 4 wranglers, including a head wrangler and a gofer, who ended up being frequently deployed to keep up with and guide "los Tres Muchachos").

The first lesson on leaving the trailhead was that we have to go down in order to go up. Both because of geographical necessity and because the trails were there first of all to get the locals from town to town, they descend into every valley and climb back up around the base of the long ridges. So we began the trip by dropping several hundred feet from Vacaria into the valley and the town of Colcabamba.

Below we find Los Tres Muchachos--my two teen sons (on either side) and their 24-year-old cousin (in red shirt) in a typical attitude. These three were always out in the lead, and often (especially the older two) to be found climbing things. Our guide quickly realized that they needed their own guide, and deployed the young wrangler-of-all-work to keep up with them. At times, he sent the 56-year-old cook ahead with the boys, and he (a man of the hills with 30+ years as porter and cook for mountain expeditions) kept them humble by hiking them into the ground.

Our second day was a dayhike (well, we did move camp a short distance as well) to Punto Union (15,600'), part of the very popular 4-5 day Santa Cruz trek route.  We just enjoyed the summit and turned back to return to our longer route.

A typical camp scene (Camp 2). The clouds became a common afternoon feature, too, with rain often falling between tea time (5 p.m.) and dinner or beyond. We were lucky, though--it never rained on us while we were hiking! And with meals served in the large tent (to the right of the even larger rock), we could eat comfortably whatever the weather. Daily festoonings of the tents with laundry were also normal; we washed up whenever we could and (thanks to the donkeys) had enough clothes to let things take two or three days to dry.

 

Mornings could be glorious, however.  Here we are, having breakfast al fresco at Camp 4, in the Pishgopampa valley. It felt a bit weird to sit around at a table in the middle of such a place, but was undeniably more comfortable than sitting on the ground, especially given the amount of cow poop and donkey dung on the ground.

Morning sun could be fickle, though.  On Day 3, we woke to sun, climbed to fog and mist, and then enjoyed several hours of mostly sun.

It was probably at this spot, on the third day, that I realized to what extent I could kiss my knees goodbye! For the record, the only days (besides the first half-day) we didn't go over a pass. . . we went over two.

Halfway through the trek, we dropped (after going over two passes) into Huilca, where two or three houses constituted the "village," with far more sheep and alpaca than humans. There were a few people about, including this man weaving at a back loom.

 

A pair of alpacas discussing the visitors in their pasture.

 

Home at last, and back to writing. . . soon

After five weeks in Peru, trekking and touring, we are home, and it sure does feel good!  here hasn't been time yet to sort and edit photos, or assess everything we did, but here's a quick and dirty summary:

This was a family trip--the four of us, plus 4 more of my husband's relatives (two of his brothers, one spouse, and a nephew). That worked surprisingly well.

On June 18, we flew to Lima, via Mexico City. Spent two days there, gathering the group (some flew from Seattle, we flew from San Francisco) and seeing a little bit of the city. Lima is large, crowded, and full of buses belching nasty fumes. At this time of year there is a vague fog blanketing the coast all the time, making for a white sky and a damp feel. I wasn't sorry to leave.

On the 20th, we caught the bus to Huaraz, an 8-hour ride north along the coast and then up into the mountains. We arrived at dinner time (dark) at 10,000'. Thanks to some motion-sickness pills and some generous young geologists from (I think) Holland who let me sit up front, I did not puke. This was something in the nature of a triumph, as I am the person who gets motion-sickness when I try to use the route simulator video on the torture bike at the gym (true story).

For the next three days we did dayhikes out of Huaraz to get acclimatized, then we headed out for trek #1:  the Cordillera Blanca circuit, also known as the Alpomayo Circuit after one of the signature peaks of the route. Our treks were fully catered--a novelty for us that soon proved to be a wise choice. With ages ranging from 15 up through the 50s, and ten long days of hiking over passes that were all higher than Mt. Rainier (heck, many of our camps were higher), we needed to be able to get to camp and lie down, not set up and fix meals! Scenery was spectacular, as advertised (I'll have  photos later. I also will go back and put the photos into my earlier post that didn't quite work).

At the end of that trek, we spent one day in Huaraz, another driving to the next trailhead, and began 9 more days of hiking, through (around) the Huayhuash range. That was the end of the trekking, and we bused to Lima again, from which two members of the party went home and the other six of us flew out to Cusco, to visit Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu requires a lot of logistics! Plane to Cusco, bus (in this case private, so we could visit some cool places on the way) to Ollantaytambo, train to Aquas Calientes, and a 1200' climb to the ruins (you can take a bus, and on the second day I did, but hiking up isn't bad at all when you've just finished 23 days of hiking at higher altitudes, and the bus ride was terrifying). The big thing I wasn't prepared for was the jungle atmosphere--i.e., humidity! As a West-coast person, I have simply never had to cope with heat and humidity. For the record, for some irrational reason the body can react to dehydration by throwing up. Makes no sense to me, since that removes still more water from the system, but there it is. Drink up and avoid this!

Finally, the trip home--left the ruins at 2 p.m., caught the train at 4, were met by our van at Ollantaytambo at 5:45, and arrived in Cusco after 8. Next day flew to Lima, and the next day after that had a 7 a.m. flight home. Spent nearly 8 hours in Mexico City (we took the subway to the city center, returning at rush hour. That was an experience) and arrived home at 11 p.m. local time, July 23.

That's the nutshell version of our trip!  For today, how about a few photos of the dayhikes around Huaraz?  I have a lot of work to do, with over 2700 photos to sort, edit and process.  I'd like to get back to writing, too!

Bus ride from Lima to Huaraz.

Local home with cross on roof.

A grain similar to quinoa (which is from the area and grown a lot here too).

Lake Churup

Hiking to Lake 69.  Huascaran behind--Peru's highest mountain.

Los Tres Muchachos soon discovered that being faster meant lots of waiting.  Sometimes in a cold wind.

The imaginatively named Lake 69 (the 69th recorded in a survey of all the lakes in the Peruvian Andes).

Where is Rebecca?

While many of my compatriots are at Camp NaNo this month, writing vast amounts (or not), I am trekking in Peru.  I just thought I'd share a few photos, though they are taken on the iPad and really don't meet my standards.  The scenery does, though!  These are from the Cordillera Blanca.  And this fool device won't let me edit on down the page, so they'll have to stand on their own without commentary.

I also apologize to those whose blogs I haven't been visiting.  I'll be back!  Don't hate me and go away mad :)