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Published: August 4th 2005
Well, it is the final hours of a 14 day stay in and out and around the city of Huaraz and I must say that I’m glad to be moving on. My experiences here have been somewhat bittersweet and the expectations of adventure and accomplishment have fallen short. I also can’t say that I like Huaraz all that much either. Here’s the breakdown:
The morning after (there’s got to be…name that movie theme song!) arriving in Cusco, I took a taxi to the airport almost 3 hours before I needed to get there because of the impending taxi strike at 6 am. Almost everyone flying that day, at whatever time, was already there too. Luckily, LAN Peru is a very organized airline and had employees trolling the check-in line for passengers of the early flights and moved them to the front, I waited only 45 minutes to check-in. Now, the back story is that I land in Lima at 8:45 am and need to be in downtown Lima to make a 9:30 bus to Huaraz that Mark will be on. I had already resigned myself to spending the day in Lima but being the dreamer and optimist that I am
(and that has always gotten me into some kind of trouble) I had to try and therefore held some hope of not being in Lima for more than 45 minutes!
On my flight, which left late!!!, were about 10 people from my Inca Trail days including the Terps girl, who I had to explain the whole “yeah, I never went to Maryland” story. Somehow, our flight arrived on time, my bag came right out and the taxi I set up was….late! Deflated hope, phase one. Finally, Renaldo arrives and with his nimble driving skill, coupled with a no fear agenda, gets us into downtown Lima with about 5 minutes to spare, hope rekindled, phase one. As we turn the corner that the bus terminal is on we come to a screeching halt, rush hour in downtown Lima, deflated hope, phase two. Renaldo calls the bus company but it is too late, but…they have one more stop in Lima before it heads out of town, we get the address and with some more white knuckle moves, we are on our way back to the airport! Yes, the other stop is 5 minutes from Lima International, if only I knew these
things, hope rekindled, phase 2. As we pull into the terminal 30 minutes later, there is no bus, deflated hope, phase three. But suddenly, on the horizon of Lima, there it is, the Cruz Del Sur arriving! Renaldo and I shake hands, hug, and exchange surprised looks as I hop on the bus to another surprised look from Mark. I settle in for the 8 hour conversation with Mark as we proceed to get caught up on things and adventures.
After 7 hours we crest a large open expanse of high plains similar to central Wyoming and view for the first time the second highest range in the world floating above the waving grasses. The Cordillera Blanca, and the Cordillera Huayhuash to the south, jut up dramatically. Both ranges have a variety of peaks from pyramid shaped triangles to long cresting ridges to sheer faced rock to hulking masses. Most of the peaks stand alone with deep cuts of valleys in between them; they sit high on the foothills that lead down to a north/south running valley far below the plains and peaks. The massive glaciers cover the upper regions of all the higher peaks and stand in sharp
contrast to the sky, the green and brown foothills, the valleys and the range to the west known as the Cordillera Negra, a smaller but still significant range running parallel to the Blanca. Again, the size and scale of these mountains is like nothing I have ever seen and I can’t wait to be in their presence.
It is wonderful to be in a new town and after we check in we begin to explore Huaraz, we have three days to find a guide, set up our logistics for our climbs and get acclimatized. I do notice right away that Huaraz has many differences from Cusco. The city lacks the Inca/Colonial charm and feel that Cusco had, Huaraz was wiped out in 1941 by a massive mudslide following a big earthquake and the city quickly rebuilt itself without much thought to style, and who can fault that after such a traumatic event. The main street is clogged with stores and trek agencies and the side streets, which are much quieter, have some very good restaurants. The best aspect about Huaraz is that the people are very friendly and there is no one trying to sell you anything on the
street. The street venders sit and wait for you to approach, are very nice and not pushy, and their art and jewellery is more often hand made, if you find the right vendors. No pushy restaurant girls, no postcards, no shoeshine (well, a little but they don’t hound you) and no happy hour dudes! Ah, I can breathe too, fewer taxis (but still a lot) means less pollution and a cool breeze keeps the air above the town clear and the mountains visible.
After spending Friday shopping for guides, on Saturday we make the drive to Laguna Llanganuco near Yungay, up the valley an hour from Huaraz. The lake is supposed to be this natural wonder with turquoise waters. On the way up we share a taxi with Emerick from Austin, who is here for several months with a friend’s family, and his mom. We take the long and hard drive up the valley between Huascaran, the highest peak in Peru, and some high glaciers coming off the next micro-range to the south. The walls of the valley below Huascuarn are very similar to Yosemite, glacier scoured and sheer, and they look like they offer some great opportunities for
climbing and first ascents. We arrive at the lake, walk along the edges for ½ hour, get abused by bugs and head down after an hour. It was a nice place but without a good trail, there was no hiking nearby except to climb way up into the pass to the south, a bit of a disappointment overall since it was a total of 5 hours of driving there and back. That night we confirm our plans (after tense deliberations) with our guide company and head off for dinner and some chess at the 10 x 10 board at Pachamama. The town tonight is filled with climbers and I get that old feeling again, the enjoyment and connection of being part of this community coupled with the disdain of the big egos and the boring single-mindedness that climbers sometimes have about their world. Right away, I meet the full range and begin to align myself with groups and individuals who share common visions, goals and ideals.
On Sunday Mark had an epic day getting to, and hiking, and getting back from Laguna Churup near Huaraz, while I spent the day wandering Huaraz and exploring the town during a full
blackout. Don’t worry, the generators kept the little casinos and game rooms going all day. It was nice to wander, buy food at local markets and bakeries and just talk to the locals when the opportunity arose. Mark returns and we grab dinner, pack and hit the sack, tomorrow will find us high in the Ishinca Valley face to face with our three goals, Urus at 17,500, Ishinca at 18,500 and Tocllaraju at 19,792.
After a bit of a late start at Mountclimb, our guiding company, we head to Ishinca Valley with our guide, Percy, and our cook for the week Emilio. The crux of my desire to go with this particular guiding company is that they gave more of an impression of being able to cater to the needs of inexperienced mountain climbers, they had a family business that had been in town a while, the owners wife was from New Jersey! It cost more but I felt like I would get more and they came highly recommended by the local gringo climbers. We arrived at the trailhead, loaded our gear on donkeys, shouldered our day packs and began the 4 hour hike up to basecamp at 14,500
feet. The weather was perfect except for some nasty clouds lingering on the peaks as we entered the valley. Again, sheer walls of rock to both sides lead up over moraines, past cascades and into a U-shaped valley with a lovely stream of greyish turquoise braided across its floor. I’m feeling great and the hike is barely making me winded as I climb the last hill into basecamp with Percy, Mark is a good hour behind us. Due to the late start, it is getting dark already but the peaks of Urus and Tocllaraju loom in the reddish-orange sunset for at least another hour. The basecamp is in a wide, flat valley scattered with tents from other expeditions and in general is totally trashed. There is garbage all over the creeks, donkey, horse and dog shit everywhere, human waste and toilet paper in the bushes just up the hillsides and cooks washing the food wastes downstream. Mark arrives to a set up tent and we relax before dinner as the temp drops quickly once the sun is gone. The views up and down this valley in the settling light are like nothing I can even describe.
Before the first
of many massive and delicious meals from Emilio, Percy comes to talk to us about our agenda. He feels Mark is not ready to go too high up yet and needs a day to acclimatize and we agree, tomorrow will be a rest day with some hiking to about 15,500. I’m not sure what to think of our guide yet, he is young and pushy and impatient but we will see, he may show another side of himself on the mountain.
After only about 3 hours of sleep on a cold night, we have a very relaxed morning and the head up to the large moraine just below the hanging glacier near Tocllaraju, inside lies a deep green lake was once much deeper but overflowed and cut the rocky canyon through the west side of the moraine leaving an obvious cleave. The glaciers sit in ominous silence, always a danger here, and the wind is just restless enough to amplify this sense of danger and foreboding so close to the ice. Again, I have no trouble reaching our goals for the day, my head and lungs feel great here at 15,500 feet and I can’t wait to get up
to the glacier tomorrow as we decide to skip Urus and attempt Ishinca first. Back at camp, reading and chess at the Refugio (what a weird place, a lodge in the middle of basecamp with a restaurant, books and games) is the way to kill time until dinner and an early bedtime, 7pm. We have a 3 am wake up and the rude folks in the camp next to us seem to have forgotten about the need for early starts of their fellow climbers and get involved in drunken revelry until the wee hours.
3 am does not come quickly as I have had no sleep for the second night. I get ready for the climb but my head is already hurting and tea and breakfast don’t help matters. I figure that I am just tired and that will wear off as I begin to climb, I keep quiet about how I’m feeling. Once on the trail I am sluggish and as I ascend over the first push to a higher valley my head is pounding, Vitamin I is not helping. I recognize the first signs of altitude sickness and once I catch up to Mark and Percy, so
do they. The decision to turn back is made quickly so as to not hold up the others. I figure I’ll go back down. Sleep it off and then get ready for Urus tomorrow while Mark rests and then will both climb Tocllaraju on Saturday. After hiking 5 minutes my headlamp dies so I sit for a while waiting for the dawn to light the trail back to Basecamp, the valley is beautiful in the dawn despite my headache.
Emilio finds me later that morning in the tent reading, I have not been able to sleep since I returned and my head is getting worse, not better. It is becoming clear to me that I might have to go down even further than basecamp but I’m still thinking I have to be somewhat acclimatized. The day passes slowly with no sleep, barely any food and no change in my condition. Emilio is wonderful, always checking on me and offering to whip up some food and engaging in conversations to keep my mind off things for a while. He has been an expedition cook for some 25 years and he begins to tell me of some famous climbs he has
cooked for or has worked with as a porter. At 4 pm Percy returns, an hour ahead of Mark, from gaining the summit. After a quick chat the decision is made to head back down to Huaraz, my expedition is over and I’m pretty much crushed. I sit for the next hour packing and trying to figure out what to say to Mark and attempting to sort out my disappointment for some pieces of learning and wisdom but nothing comes, still nothing comes today. There is no other way I feel than disappointed, except glad to be alive but that is normal for me.
I knew Percy is right and after a quick explanation to Mark and some planning for his return later in the week, I turned my back on the mountains and hiked 8 gruelling miles, mostly by full moonlight (a small consolation was the amazing beauty of the Ishinca valley by moonlight) to a small village where we called for a ride back to Huaraz. As I sat with Percy I realized several things about the experience, mainly that this happens to a lot of people, even Percy confessed it had happened to him more than
once, and that the mountains will be there in the future. My hopes are to return to mountains equipped with the skills (or with friends) to be out here without a guide. Another difficult thing to process was being in the hands of a guide for the first time. Percy was good with me, (less so with Mark as I find out when he returns) but it took sitting there waiting for the taxi, high in this village, for him to get to know me and have an understanding develop of our mutual skills and our appreciation of the mountains. Part of the joy of climbing is choosing the people to climb with, people you can understand and trust, behaviours and skills you can predict and rely on, and of course joys that can be shared. He was surprised by the extent of my outdoor experiences and was bummed for me that the one last thing I desire to accomplish, alpine mountaineering, was temporarily out of reach. Once back in Huaraz I grab a room for the night and finally sleep for close to 10 hours.
The next 4 days in Huaraz run from downright boring to really great.
My first 2 days back I just blogged like nuts, drank a ton of killer coffee, read old climbing mags researching the “ethics in climbing” arguments from the past 15 years and reviewed more climbs I want to do than I have time to do in this lifetime. Spending time in Café Andino, the main hub for climbers, the source of the killer coffee and the library of climbing magazines brought me back to life and re-energized my desire to climb again. I still have not decided if going up high in places like this is something I’ll try again but I do know I will be working on developing my skills at alpine mountaineering so if that desire returns, I’ll be better prepared. On Friday I met Patrick, a climber from Sedona, Arizona who has been here for a while now and has had success on a couple of peaks. We shared some stories about climbing in Arizona, where I learned to climb and where my heart still resides when I think of my best years of climbing, and his energy has also helped me re-kindle the climbing bug too. We spent hours in Café Andino Saturday swapping life
and climbing stories and then we decide to meet for dinner that night. He is part of a huge crew of folks here together, via the internet, and we meet up with two more folks from…Jersey of course. Chris and Kelly have been here for a while now too, Chris doing lots of climbing and Kelly doing some and some Spanish school in Huaraz. The dinner conversations is lively, again about climbing but not all about climbing, as we share stories of home, travel and our perspectives about Peru and other places. Our opinions differ but that is what is so great, to hear others points of view, I know very little about this place and in trying to make sense of how people live here and what they value, it helps to get the other side of things. I am really enjoying Huaraz and its community by this time so we decide to go climbing up in the valley tomorrow.
I bump into Patrick at Café Andino and then head over to rent some shoes, grab Chris and Kelly and drive out to Monterey. Behind the thermal baths is a small series of walls with some top rope
options. The first wall we set up is a little too hard for me but Chris sails right up it in grand style. While working on this wall crowds of curious Peruvians gather to watch us climb, Kelly and Chris are always saying hello to everyone, they are super friendly which I think is wonderful to see. A group of 4 Israeli guys come up to the opposite wall and right away Patrick and I suspect they have little climbing experience as they shout down from 50 feet “does this knot look OK?”. Patrick scrambles up to their anchor to inspect the knot from a reasonable distance and soon we are both up there checking their top rope anchor, which turns out to be fine in general. We chat about where they are from and all the usual stuff, they are really nice too so later in day after a few successful routes we ask them if we can jump on their rope, the climb they have set up looks like the best line of the day. They let us go for a ride and I have a great time on a nice 5.8ish twin cracks sort of thing. Once
reaching the ground Patrick says to me “could you look at this rope?” Under not so close scrutiny, I see that the rope is really fuzzy, has several very thin spots, has stiff ends and is in general in poor condition. Did I just climb on this line of death? Yep, a rental rope from Huaraz.
Patrick wants to know if he should climb on it and so do the boys for Israel. After some intense discussion, Patrick ties in and with bated breath meant to make him seem lighter, he heads up the route. No problem going up but how should I lower him, quickly or slowly? Should he down climb? I decide slowly at first then quickly towards the bottom. He is back safe and it is time for a beer in Huaraz but first we chat more with our new found friends, they have just left the army and what to know if I think they should go to University now or just goof off for a few years. They have already expressed their utmost respect for me since I still climb at such an old age but this just is not my decision to make
(yes you anchor is safe but no, don’t go to college?) When I refuse to give a solid answer, they ask “Would you be upset if your kids didn’t go to college?” Who are these guys anyway? We have a good laugh as they know they have put me on the spot and are just messing with me. We bid goodbye and head to the hot springs, which are not hot, then back to town to meet up with Mark for dinner.
I find Mark, fresh from his successes on Ishinca and Urus, lying in bed reading. He is loaded with stories the whole night of Percythe whole night, about his impatience and other faults. Since Mark is not an experienced climber, he is not sure if some of things Percy did while climbing were normal or unsafe. Patrick and I confirm that most of the things Percy did, were in fact, unsafe. I’m pretty surprised by some of this and a bit disappointed too. Patrick confirms that he has heard several stories about the guides here who don’t really have the safety of the clients or themselves in mind all the time and tend to be somewhat of
a group of thrill seekers. More reason to comeback on my own the next time.
OK, Mark and I need to get out of Huaraz, it is loud and noisy and crowded with holiday visitors so on Monday morning we grab a bus to the quite and small hamlet of Caraz, the town at the northern most end of the valley. When we arrive at our hostel on the plaza we notice right away that this town has a completely different feel from Huaraz. The plaza is quiet but busy, hardly any honking of the horns and as we stroll the town, there are wide streets with distinct neighbourhoods, nice homes from time to time and unique plazas. Driving into town there were corn fields in a wide, broad valley where it seemed there was lots of active farming occurring. By this time Mark and I are very relaxed and this town suits us perfectly. We grab a beer and pizza at Café Rat during a flurry of 80´s music and some Eagles, walk the streets till dusk and then head out to dinner at the local polloeria (chicken house) An early night sleep leads to a slow breakfast
and afterwards we head out to visit Canon de Pato, a local sight outside of Caraz. I have no idea what to expect but our guide book describes it as a narrow canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon. A local guide tells us to get out at Bocatoma and walk a few kilometres along the road in the canyon, it is safe he says.
We grab a ride from a local couple heading home to the town on the other side of the canyon. For 5 soles each they drive us out of Caraz, down the valley and into the entrance of the canyon, the man driving suddenly becomes a tour guide explaining the features of the area. The canyon is where the two Cordilleras meet, at one point the two basement rocks of each range are just 3 meters apart! The river along the valley floor begins to pick up speed as we drop quickly into a narrow slot canyon with the walls and ledges soaring up a few thousand feet on either side. The road become dirt and passes through several long and dark tunnels and suddenly the canyon is barely 50 feet wide. We reach Bocatoma,
which is really a water diversion project, not a town, where the river is shot through the mountain for hydroelectric power. Below the dam, the canyon is pretty much dry. We go down about 2 miles into the slot and get dropped off on the road and head up back towards the dam passing through some tunnels I was glad no truck came through while we were in them. Not being the hike we expected, we flag down a taxi after about a 45 minute walk up and out of the canyon. We meet an architect from Lima and his wife while zooming along the road back to Caraz with more 80´s music in the taxi, the soundtrack for our trip to Caraz is now official. That night we try the other chicken place, yummy, and make list of our favourite bands, song writers and Joni albums in order, grab some of the world’s best homemade ice cream right next to our hostel and slip into one last episode of Law and Order, the first TV of the trip.
Mark gets up, grabs breakfast and gets the bus to Lima for his flight out tonight and I ride the
collectivo back to Huaraz for my bus to Trujillo later tonight. It turns out that tomorrow is Peru’s Independence Day, a great time to be travelling to Trujillo on an overnight bus that arrives at 5 am! Oh, yet another adventure. The trip is winding down, just 5 more days and I will admit, I am looking forward to home in some ways but not in others, I’ll leave you to guess which is which.
Gus, thanks for another wonderful adventure, you always keep me laughing and never let me take myself too seriously (unless you'll know you can use it against me later!) I'll be sure to have new loafers when I see you next!
See you from Trujillo!
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Yve
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Hi Joe! So today was read-all-of-Joe-and-Dina's-Blogs Day! Quite an nice change from sitting on the couch and watch TV as I patiently wait for my knee to heal. I think I was able to bring myself back to Peru and Mexico temporarily! But now I'm back in my SF apartment, realizing that I much rather be there with you. I remember climbing in Monterrey and those nasty thermal baths full of not really hot water and hair!Continue to find adventure in each remaining day,and I'll see you in a few days! yve