Cordillera Huayhuash

: Thanks to fellow hiker Dawn for this map of the route we took – a route that was planned and carried out by the folks at Huascaran Adventure travel company based in Huaraz, Peru. It was a good mix of the low routes that most other groups take but also of some alpine routes which made for stunning views of the surrounding areas. The cost was $600 per person for the 10-day hike

: Elevation profiles of each day of the hike. Thanks again to Dawn for providing us with these stats

Huaraz/Acclimatization Hikes

: To get to Huaraz from Lima, I took a bus with a company called Cruz del Sur. It was about a 9-hour ride. Here’s an anti-sexual assault ad by the company to prevent unwanted hanky panky in transit

: This was another PSA they had at one of the stations. It says something like, “Let’s combat some of the myths about the vaccination against covid-19.” 1. The vaccine doesn’t modify or alter my DNA. 2. The vaccine won’t make you sick with coronavirus. 3. Even if I get vaccinated, I need to keep taking precautionary measures

: Huaraz has a population of about 120,000 and sits at 3,052m

: Strollin around town

: “Gorda cachonda” – something like “fat horny girl”

: Market area

: Fruit on the street

: Street vaccinations against covid-19 as well as a vaccination for children 9 and above to prevent cancer in the uterus

: How ’bout a sexy oil change followed up by…

: …a nice juicy sex burger?

: So, the majority of the Huayhuash trek is up between 4 and 5000 meters which is quite high. To prepare yourself for these extreme altitudes, it’s recommended you spend about three nights in Huaraz while doing day hikes up to surrounding points of interest such as Laguna 69 (4600m) and then heading back down to sleep. I personally did not visit Laguna 69 (though I would’ve liked to), but can’t understand why in the world – out of all the possible names they could’ve chosen – they would’ve named it Lake 69. Place must’ve been discovered by 6th grade boys or some shit

: One of the day hikes I did was up to a place called Laguna Willkacocha. I didn’t have a GPS or anything. What I had were the verbal instructions given to me by Paulino (owner of Huascaran Travel) on what bus to take out of Huaraz and where to get off as well as this map he drew of how to hike to the top of the mountain. Believe it or not, I made it up there with no real problem

: This dead plant laying across the trail really caught my attention. Looks so strange with all the curlicues

: Nice views of really pretty rolling green hills on the way to the top

: The not-super-inspiring Laguna Willkacocha at 3700m

: On the last day before the start of the trek, the members of the group met up in the Huascaran office to then go do a day hike together up to some other pond whose name I can’t even remember right now. Just before getting to the lake, some local bumpkin was charging a “troll toll” to cross through this here gate. Everyone, especially our guide, knew he wasn’t an official representative of any local community and that it was a scam but just threw him some coins anyway because we didn’t want any problems and all felt bad for the guy

Day 1

: On Day 1 we got picked up from Huaraz at like 4 or 5 in the morning for a 5 or 6-hour drive out to the Cordillera Huayhuash mountain range. This is where we were dropped off and is the area that became our campsite for the first evening

: View from the campsite

: View of the campsite down at the bottom of the valley as seen from one of the nearby mountains we climbed up just to get some practice for the days to come. They say that the winter (May through September) are the best months to go hiking in Peru because (although a bit colder) it’s typically a lot less rainy. I’d say for the most part we had good weather, but it did rain here and there. This first day was probably one of the rainiest

Day 2

: Sunrise as seen from the campsite. I’m just gonna admit stright up that I don’t know the names of any of the campsites I stayed at and don’t know the names of any of the mountain peaks that surrounded us throughout the journey. That said, my ignorance didn’t deter from my overall enjoyment of what I’d have to say is one of the most beautiful regions in the entire world

: As I walk through the valley of the shadow of…something or other

: A plant that looks like Barney the Dinosaur’s boner

: Walter the horse man in the red hat and our guide Edwin Lazaro on the right. If you don’t want to hire an agency like Huascaran to arrange your hike in the greater Huaraz area, you could hire someone like Edwin directly. Edwin is an expert in these mountains and prefers climbing over trekking. His native language is Quechua but he speaks perfect Spanish and a passable English. He can be reached on whatsapp at +51 928 949 932

: Big uphill

: Snack spot

: Snack enjoyed in the aforementioned snack spot. What the fuck does “extruded” mean?

: Ya pasa por los aires el condor

: Big fluffy sky

: Wide open spaces

: Heading towards camp

: I think that that’s a bull. Not sure though. Some kind of animal with a hairy penis near camp

: Horseys at the campsite

: Horseys at the campsite as portrayed by fellow hiker Renee

: Couple people from the local community coming by to collect money from us for staying on the campgrounds. This was a daily occurrence. It was kind of annoying and would be ideal to pay one big fee at the start of the trek and that be the end of it, but that’s not the way it is. Nevertheless, this is better than the way they used to do it twenty years ago. Back then, it wasn’t an official thing and there weren’t people going around during daylight hours to formally collect the money and hand out receipts. Back then, guys with machine guns would show up outside your tent in the middle of the night and tell you to pay them money for protection. And as the story goes – can’t verify if it’s true – some Israeli guy didn’t wanna pay and thought the guys were just bluffing but they ended up blowing him away right there on the spot and I guess his hiking buddies had to carry his dead body back to civilization

: Sunset

Day 3

: Nice start to the day

: Spinal Tap

: Head for the hills

: Mini lake

: Looking back at the lake after having passed it

: Bit rocky up on the alpine route

: Looking back down on the valley through which we’d just come

: Descending

: The ground

: Some rain rollin in

: Lunch that’d been prepared and carried by Chef Hilario, the guy there in the red

: Lunch view

: Back to steppin

: Yours truly in all my rain gear

: Final descent of the day

: “Heeeeeeee had white horses, and ladies by the score…”

: Campin time

Day 4

: Sunrise at camp

: Makin our way away from camp

: Mirador Tres Lagunas

: Proof that I was actually there in this incredible place!

: The locals know how to chill

: Walter the horse man would manage to fall asleep at any time of day in the most ridiculous positions

: Here’s a POV shot of me trying to chill out on the rocks as hard as all the locals

: The final push towards camp

: Boggy ground

: If you zoom in, you can see camp down there in the middle of the valley

: Anus-flavored tea

Day 5

: Another nice start to the day

: Donkey caravan comin over the pass

: Keep on keepin on

: There was an enormous herd of livestock in this area being tended to by a pair of children – a boy and a girl – each no more than 7 or 8 years old

: Hot springs at the campsite

: Guides and donkey men having an impromptu football match at the campsite

Day 6

: Fellow hiker Lukas petting a dog while enjoying a morning dip in the hot springs

: Dogs at the campsite that were up growling and howling at the moon in unison in the middle of the night

: The day before, I spent about 3-4 hours soaking in the hot springs. That night we got a bit of snow and the temps had dropped below freezing and the clothes that I’d left out to dry on the top of my tent were frozen solid the next morning when I awoke

: Lukas petting another stray pup

: Heading up towards the pass

: Approaching the pass

: Pretty sure the name of this pass was Cuyoc Pass and is 5000m in altitude

: Heading back down

: Camp there in the middle of the field ahead

Day 7

: Hiking up away from the campsite

: Looking back down on camp

: Big super steep ascent up to San Antonio Pass (5050m) – the highest pass of the trek

: Where we came from as seen from San Antonio Pass…

: …and where we’re heading towards

: Lukas in one of his several failed attempts to do a handstand at the pass

: Edwin, our guide, checkin out the view

: Making our way down the other equally-steep side of San Antonio Pass

: Suck it!

: We all stopped and took way too many photos here in this area

: Such an awesome view

: Finally back to some reasonably flat terrain after the never-ending descent from San Antonio Pass

: Another one of Walter’s favorite positions to lay in

: Walking along the river

: Entering a village called Huayllapa at the end of the day where we’d…

: …end up camping on a soccer field at a local school

: Dogs that kept boning right next to my tent

: Was walking through the village looking for an open store to buy some snacks but they were all already closed. I stopped this one random lady in the street to ask her if she knew of any shops that were open and she just happened to be the owner of one of the stores and told us to follow her there. She unlocked the place just for us, sold us some stuff and then went on her merry way as we went off on ours

Day 8

: Climbing up and out of Huayllapa

: Looking down onto the valley that we’d just hiked out of. That is a herd of sheep there just right of center of the photo

: Shepherd

: Kinda hard to see, but there’re a bunch of stone walls all over this hillside. And when a couple of us were sitting here having a water break, we saw a flock of sheep bowl over a section of one of the stone walls that’d been containing them and make a break for it as some agitated shepherd chased after them, yelling and chucking stones

: More ascent

: Little descent

: This was the longest day of all out on the trail. Think we hiked for ten or eleven hours this day

: Little more descent before a massive ascent that eventually leads to…

: …Yaucha Pass (4850m). That dog there had been following Lukas, befriender of canines, all day

: Peaceful

: I let the others walk ahead of me on that ridge up there

: And then walked it myself, enjoying the serenity of my surroundings

: View at the other end of the ridge

: Beginning a very steep descent down towards Lake Jahuacocha

: Slowly but surely making our way down. If you zoom in close enough just above Hilario’s head, you can see all the tents way down there at the bottom of the valley

: The home stretch

: Finally made it to camp!

Day 9

: The view inside the food tent. This is where we ate our breakfasts and our dinners at camp

: On Day 9, we kept the same camp as the night of Day 8. There were no set plans for the group this day and we were all free to do whatever we wanted

: I ended up taking a 2-hour hike up to the rim of Lake Solteracocha where I ate a snack, laid down and took a little nap

: Some stone huts with thatched roofs down there on the bottom left of the photo

: Edwin showing off all the trout he caught that day in the river which we’d later on be eating for dinner

: Lunch: Causa Rellena, which is like a mix of potato and tuna with some other stuff in there. I dunno, google it if you’re interested in finding out more. It tastes pretty good, but this photo is shit because all the light in the food tent during the day was this strange red color

: Coca leaves for making coca tea and getting a coffee-like buzz that’s said to help fend off altitude sickness

: A cloud that I thought’d looked exactly like a puppy’s face

Day 10

: Bittersweet last day. Sad that the hike was coming to an end and that I’d probably never see anyone from the group ever again, but excited to get some laundry done, take a shower and sleep in a bed

: Nice valley

: Very brief forested section we walked through, the only of its kind I remember passing through during our ten days out on the trail

: Different group making their way down to Llamac on horses

: The last big descent

: Approaching the village of Llamac

: In Llamac from where we’d shortly after be boarding a bus for a 5 to 6-hour ride back to Huaraz

: Group photo we’d taken that morning before leaving camp