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Published: September 30th 2018
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Well, this is going to be the gut-buster - 16km, two passes at 4,400m+ and about 10 hours. The first pass is about 4 hours in and Marcia recommends Linda takes the horse with Adrian, the assistance guide for company. That leaves me with 5 young fit things and Super Marcia. She is awesome. We stop often and she alternates between the font and the back of the pack, we don’t get too spread out, within a couple of hundred metres. The track is good, well formed, not steep with nasty big steps but it is so hard to breathe. Even after a rest I am gasping for air within about 6 paces. But at no stage did I think I would not make it under my own power - I just didn’t know how long it would take.
As we get nearer the summit, Marcia give us coca leaves to chew so we all look like hamsters, or perhaps guinea pigs, with bulgy cheeks. It is like chewing a teabag but I think it does work, giving us more energy and relieving some of the altitude symptoms. The guide has mentioned that each coca leaf has about 0.0001g (
or some other very small number) of ‘cocaine’ in it so we are going to have to get through a tree’s worth for any hardcore effect.
It is a fantastic feeling to get to the top of the first pass of Pucapujaccasa at 4,400m but it is so cold we stand there for 20 seconds and then hide out of the wind. We can see our lunch tent in the distance and it only takes about 30 minutes of gently downhill to get there. Lunch was great - can’t recall what it was but it was great! A local lady and her son turn up after lunch with bottles of Powerade to sell us!
Linda joins us on foot and we head off across the undulating plains to the second pass. This is big open country with tussock and quite a few sheep and lambs. Walking on the flat and downhill is fine but even a couple of steps up hill takes my breathe away. However, we make it to the second pass, Kuychicassa, at 4,450m. It is surprising to see cacti here as the cloud swirls around us. Now we only have about 4 hours to camp...
The first hour or more is downhill, steep and loose gravel which really slows me down however Marcia hangs back with me. The only time I slip is at the same place she did, moments earlier. Linda had gone on ahead, not stopping for the view at the summit and the ‘young ones’ were bounding along somewhere in between. We catch up with Linda so Marcia races ahead while Adrian babysits us. Last stop before camp is the Wind Gate, an small old temple overlooking the Sacred Valley. People still leave offerings there. However I am tired and cold and focused on our tents below. A gentle one hour stroll gets us home to camp at Choquetacarpo.
We get settled. I’d like to say we had a shower and changed out of our smelly clothes but the truth is we just layered up with more smelly clothes!
The brief interlude between afternoon tea (cocoa and popcorn) and dinner is filled with a very competitive game of cards.
I have been lucky not to have been affected too badly by the altitude or the other bugs. It has been a tough day and we are all in
our sleeping bags by about 7:30 but I have a sense of how Sir Ed must have felt when he said ‘we knocked the bastard off’.
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Rusti
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Quarry Trail
Gaynor - missed writing to you on this and a couple of others, but today they appeared on my computer! What an amazing experience, and to be shared with a sister! It had its challenges, but I can feel that you loved it! Photos are great!