I wanted to escape Cusco and do a good hike in the mountains, alone. The area around the giant snow peak of Ausangate captured my imagination, but initially I thought it might be too much to handl on my own. Tours do it in ~6 days, with pack horses. But then I found the website of a couple who did the circuit in four days, and I was sold. I set out on my motorcycle with a compass, lots of food, and a new alpaca hat, scarf, and mittens. Sans guide, my routefinding consisted of keeping the giant glaciated mountain on my left until I got back to the beginning. This rule of thumb served me well; when presented with choices between trails or valleys to follow, I told myself, Hug the mountain! This way, I only had to backtrack once. I completed the 62 kilometers and four high passes in three days.
The hike had a lot of potential to be no fun at all, but it somehow managed to be amazing. It's now the rainy season here and rain there was. And snow. And freezing rain, wintry mix, hail, sleet, and everything in between, for 85% of the time I was out. Part of the reason I covered so much ground so quickly is that it's just more pleasant to hike while it's raining or snowing than to sit around getting wet and cold. And since the clouds spitting all this precipitation on me were constantly hiding all the views, there wasn't as much to stop and look at anyway. If the weather had been beautiful I'm sure I would have basked in the sun, gazing at the views, and taken a full four days to finish. Also, on the first afternoon I passed by a group of alpaca herders' huts below the first high pass and aroused the ire of some wolfish guard dogs, one of which bit me while I was trying to talk to an old woman who only spoke Quechua. (It didn't break the skin through two layers of pants and one of socks, but the bruise is florid.) Despite all this, it was a wonderful hike. I felt good, in touch with my vitality, thanks to good high-energy food planning and to these incredible mountains.
Within my cloud-and-precipitation-limited viewscape there was plenty of alpine majesty to keep me in awe. The bare slopes north of the massif quickly gave way to a variety of mountain landscapes. I moved through these zones up and down, over and over. First came series of wide, marshy valleys threaded-through with tarns and teeming with herds of alpaca. The alpaca sported little tasselish earrings; I was curious whether the color identified the alpaca's owner, but an old man who walked with me for a few minutes on the first day told me they were purely decorative, as were the tufts of wool left unsheared over the chest and hips. There were alpacas of every color and level of rasta-hood in these herds. They are incredible animals. No matter how many hundreds of them I saw in the three days, my admiration for their lithe grace and my amusement at their small, quizzical faces never diminished. Above the alpaca valleys tumbling mountain streams led up to higher, narrower valleys strewn with boulders and small hills. Sometimes there were lakes, one, two, or three in the same valley, of a variety of colors: turquoise, aquamarine, or even charcoal. Hanging over these lakes were glaciers whose torments could be heard in deep booming cracks from time to time. Even in these high valleys there were huts and alpaca corrals. I'm not certain whether people live at such high elevation year-round, but if they were only seasonal residents, this was the season. I saw faces shyly peeking out of the 4-foot-high doorways as I passed by. In the lower valleys people greeted me cheerfully as "amigo!" but these isolated mountain-dwellers were retiring and unresponsive to my greetings. However, there were a brother and sister, Wilfredo and Lisdiana, about 8 years old, who visited my campsite on the second night as they drove their herd of 386 alpacas up the valley. They were friendly.
Wilfredo tried to teach me to whistle loudly as he did to herd the alpacas, and he also warned me that the boulder beneath which I'd set up camp was not a good place--there was a devil who lived there, and I should move. To avoid packing everything back up, I showed him a pair of beans a woman had pressed into my hand in Cusco after selling me a scarf, telling me they were a male and female pair and were for my protection. Wilfredo was grudgingly convinced. The pair of beans worked, apparently, for when the Wilfredo and Lisdiana came to visit me the next morning I was still there, safe, sound, and warm, eating oatmeal and reading D.T. Suzuki's "Introduction to Zen Buddhism." Above these wild valleys rose the high passes in a variety of colorful talus, mud, and shale, with streams snaking down and humped ridges always trying to hide the best route. The trails I was following invariably disappeared and reappeared later on. I attempted to analyze alpaca habits versus those of human trekkers to read which trails would lead me beyond the pass, rather than to some isolated grazing ground. From the passes the shoulders of snow peaks loomed through the clouds on both sides, reminding me in their impassive, potent energy of Wordsworth's experience in "The Prelude" of Mont Blanc pursuing him across the lake in his rowboat. Climbing the passes, which were between 16,000 and 17,000 feet, required incredible stamina and breathing discipline. When simply coughing or clearing your throat leaves you out of breath for 4 or 5 inhales, breathing no longer feels like an involuntary function--it must be concentrated on constantly. I credit sheer beauty and inspiration from the landscape for propelling me over these passes in high spirits despite the challenge. And arriving at the top, with a whole new view opening up below (even if it was only a quarter-mile view), was an incredible experience each time. On the second day, climbing the second pass, I suddenly noticed that I could see my shadow on the snow, and immediately thought of sunburn and snowblindness. I paused to put on sunscreen and sunglasses, even though there was still a layer of clouds in front of the sun. But despite my efforts and the fact that the sun was only in evidence for less than an hour, I came away with a somewhat bad full-face sunburn and irritation of the eyes for the whole next day from mild snowblindness. The same lack of air that makes breathing so difficult makes the sun that much more of a threat. But! Simply two more things to file along with the dog bite as minor unpleasant bits of an inspiring adventure.
Within my cloud-and-precipitation-limited viewscape there was plenty of alpine majesty to keep me in awe. The bare slopes north of the massif quickly gave way to a variety of mountain landscapes. I moved through these zones up and down, over and over. First came series of wide, marshy valleys threaded-through with tarns and teeming with herds of alpaca. The alpaca sported little tasselish earrings; I was curious whether the color identified the alpaca's owner, but an old man who walked with me for a few minutes on the first day told me they were purely decorative, as were the tufts of wool left unsheared over the chest and hips. There were alpacas of every color and level of rasta-hood in these herds. They are incredible animals. No matter how many hundreds of them I saw in the three days, my admiration for their lithe grace and my amusement at their small, quizzical faces never diminished. Above the alpaca valleys tumbling mountain streams led up to higher, narrower valleys strewn with boulders and small hills. Sometimes there were lakes, one, two, or three in the same valley, of a variety of colors: turquoise, aquamarine, or even charcoal. Hanging over these lakes were glaciers whose torments could be heard in deep booming cracks from time to time. Even in these high valleys there were huts and alpaca corrals. I'm not certain whether people live at such high elevation year-round, but if they were only seasonal residents, this was the season. I saw faces shyly peeking out of the 4-foot-high doorways as I passed by. In the lower valleys people greeted me cheerfully as "amigo!" but these isolated mountain-dwellers were retiring and unresponsive to my greetings. However, there were a brother and sister, Wilfredo and Lisdiana, about 8 years old, who visited my campsite on the second night as they drove their herd of 386 alpacas up the valley. They were friendly.
Wilfredo tried to teach me to whistle loudly as he did to herd the alpacas, and he also warned me that the boulder beneath which I'd set up camp was not a good place--there was a devil who lived there, and I should move. To avoid packing everything back up, I showed him a pair of beans a woman had pressed into my hand in Cusco after selling me a scarf, telling me they were a male and female pair and were for my protection. Wilfredo was grudgingly convinced. The pair of beans worked, apparently, for when the Wilfredo and Lisdiana came to visit me the next morning I was still there, safe, sound, and warm, eating oatmeal and reading D.T. Suzuki's "Introduction to Zen Buddhism." Above these wild valleys rose the high passes in a variety of colorful talus, mud, and shale, with streams snaking down and humped ridges always trying to hide the best route. The trails I was following invariably disappeared and reappeared later on. I attempted to analyze alpaca habits versus those of human trekkers to read which trails would lead me beyond the pass, rather than to some isolated grazing ground. From the passes the shoulders of snow peaks loomed through the clouds on both sides, reminding me in their impassive, potent energy of Wordsworth's experience in "The Prelude" of Mont Blanc pursuing him across the lake in his rowboat. Climbing the passes, which were between 16,000 and 17,000 feet, required incredible stamina and breathing discipline. When simply coughing or clearing your throat leaves you out of breath for 4 or 5 inhales, breathing no longer feels like an involuntary function--it must be concentrated on constantly. I credit sheer beauty and inspiration from the landscape for propelling me over these passes in high spirits despite the challenge. And arriving at the top, with a whole new view opening up below (even if it was only a quarter-mile view), was an incredible experience each time. On the second day, climbing the second pass, I suddenly noticed that I could see my shadow on the snow, and immediately thought of sunburn and snowblindness. I paused to put on sunscreen and sunglasses, even though there was still a layer of clouds in front of the sun. But despite my efforts and the fact that the sun was only in evidence for less than an hour, I came away with a somewhat bad full-face sunburn and irritation of the eyes for the whole next day from mild snowblindness. The same lack of air that makes breathing so difficult makes the sun that much more of a threat. But! Simply two more things to file along with the dog bite as minor unpleasant bits of an inspiring adventure.
These four photos are small due to technical difficulties, but you can find them and 66 more photos of the hike at:
http://www.facebook.
Circumambulation.
ReplyDeleteAw crap! That's what I meant to say. Okay, changing from "circumnavigation" now...
ReplyDelete