Inca Ice and Lupins

Inca Ice and Lupins

The assistant cook woke me at 5:30 a.m. with a steaming hot cup of coffee he’d brought to the door of my tent. This came as a surprise as previously the only time I’d had coffee delivered to my bedside was when I was in hospital. I’d slept solid for more than nine hours despite the cold and the lack of a proper bed. Miraculously the need to get up to go to the non-existent toilet in the middle of the night hadn’t arisen.

Breakfast was wonderful. Porridge and omelettes, hot and full of the energy we would need to survive another day’s trekking. From what I’d read in the trip guidance notes before I’d even left my comfortable home in England I’d known that this would be the day to make or break me. It wasn’t going to be a great distance to walk (approximately 13 kilometres) but we would be ascending a further 800 metres to an altitude of 4,300 metres. So I panicked a little when I found myself gasping for breath after the morning’s first couple of hundred paces. But this turned out to be only a temporary episode of fear and exhaustion and like with many things, just getting started was the tricky part.

Early mist was clearing as we set off from the campsite around 7:30 a.m. The Peruvian Andes were always a vision of overwhelming beauty at that time of the day as snow-capped peaks and the rays of the sun penetrated the wispy cloud cover from opposite directions. A steady climb to a rocky ridge warmed our bodies enough to allow a few stationary minutes to watch caracaras circling high over the valley of the Rio Blanco.

From the top of the valley we followed an old Inca canal for several miles. The gentle gradient of the path was easily managed though we were making good progress in our ascent, striding along as Bobby our Inca guide gave a detailed talk on the flora and fauna we passed along the way. I was surprised to see cattle and horses grazing in grassland on either side of the canal, despite the area being almost totally void of human life. Twice we stopped to allow packs of mules to pass as solitary traders led them laden with sacks of rice and beans from one hidden community to another. For five minutes we watched a condor hovering above the second pack. Bobby said it was waiting for one of the mules or one of our group to die so that it would have something to take home to feed its family. I cleaned my glasses and adjusted myself to a more upright posture in the belief that it would make me appear healthy and unappetising to carrion scavengers.

At that stage all that slowed our progress was the need to take photographs of the gorgeous scenery all around us. Inca Bobby encouraged this, suggesting that advancing slowly but steadily was the best way to avoid the acute mountain sickness that could strike at any time. For the whole morning the snow-covered Mount Humantay (which rose to 5,473 metres) lay ahead of us, its glaciers and waterfalls sparkling in the sunshine.

The specimens of plant life pointed out to us had been predominantly small and hardy, and a little shy. But as we walked higher into the mountains, lupins grew in greater and greater abundance, often covering large areas with their mauve and yellow flowers. But these weren’t the soft soppy lupins that have English garden slugs licking their lips. These were industrial strength boys, more akin to buddleia bushes, with their blooms emerging in clumps from woody branches.    

We were accompanied by a support team of small but super-fit Incas who wore clothes that really didn’t suit the harsh climate. Their cooking equipment and all the tents were transported mostly by mules, but they carried some of the kit themselves. Although lovely friendly people, they refused to have photographs taken. I would have loved a picture of the little fella who ran up and down those mountain tracks in plastic flip-flops with a gas bottle strapped on his back. I would have loved to have talked to them but the few words of Spanish that I knew (‘sausage, egg and chips please’ and ‘may I buy a tube of your haemorrhoid preparation?’) were totally useless. They all spoke in a very strong local dialect that even a Spanish speaker in our group struggled to understand. But gracias (correctly pronounced as ‘grassy ass’, as it is in Leeds) did the trick every time.

The cooks and porters we had left packing up at the previous night’s camp had whizzed past us round about the place we had stopped to look at the condor, and had arrived at Soray Pampa well over an hour before us. They greeted us with hot drinks, and the cook announced in his best English that lunch would be ready in fifteen minutes, so we had time to freshen up. This really meant there was an icy stream where we could wash our sweaty hands and faces before taking our seats in his spotlessly clean dining tent. Under the circumstances I would have been content with a sandwich and a bag of crisps, but what we were given was king fish (not kingfisher) fried in quinoa, and beef stew with sweet potatoes and vegetables. Every meal on the trip was accompanied by a large bowl of unsweetened, unsalted popcorn because it was particularly good for reducing the likelihood of altitude sickness. In fact, all of the food they gave us was beneficial in this respect.  

Mealtimes, as well as snack times, always included a bowl of coca leaves. Two or three of these, when added to a cup of boiling water, would make a tasteless tea to boost energy. Coca plants grew wild in many of the warmer places we had visited. It’s from their leaves that cocaine is extracted, but apparently twenty or thirty kilograms of leaves are required to create enough of the white powder to keep the average addict happy for an hour. Inca people had been drinking tea from coca plants for thousands of years without suffering any adverse effects, so first-world countries’ government representatives arriving to destroy them had caused great bitterness. The problem with the plant lay in the first-world countries’ own back yards, not in Peru. Anyway, their energy-boosting tea was insipid so I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever become addicted.

Less than a kilometre into the afternoon’s trekking we arrived at a stone shack with a rusty corrugated iron roof that claimed to be the last shop before Machu Picchu. Being the dedicated group of mountaineers that we were, we resisted the temptation to buy a crate of cerveza Cusqueña. We were put off by the thought of having to trek back to reclaim the deposits on the empties. Shortly afterwards, Inca Bobby announced that at that point we had well and truly embarked upon the Inca Trail. Wooden signs indicating the way to Mount Salcantay and demanding that we take our toilet paper away with us were the only mark of other humans having been there before us.

As the path steepened Inca Bobby told us to set about it at our own pace, no matter how slow, and to stop whenever we felt the need. I did exactly this, counting fifty paces and then pausing a couple of minutes to get my breath back as we trudged up a mountainside strewn with huge boulders of glacial moraine. Before embarking on the trip I’d poo-pooed the travel company’s insistence that walking poles should be taken, but as I huffed and puffed along in the high Andes it became clear that I would never have managed without them.

Having already spent several days hiking through what had seemed like paradise, it was hard to believe that as we climbed up the valley to the east of Humantay, with Salcantay (rising to 6,271 metres above sea level) dominating the view at the front, the scenery became increasingly spectacular. I stopped momentarily to look back at the landscape we had traversed. The shivers and the lump in my throat were nothing to do with altitude sickness but were the overwhelming symptoms of being in such a wild and beautiful place. I was loving every second of a journey that I’d previously thought might kill me. Everyone in our group found it tough but there was a special camaraderie that kept us going, making jokes and laughing at the pain and breathlessness. An Andean fox skipping along a track parallel to ours took a few seconds to stop and look at us. I imagined it to be laughing too.

Although partially obscured by cloud we could still see Salcantay’s glaciers, as well as those that crawled down the brutally carved valleys high on the peaks to either side of us. Scenery admiration stops became less frequent as we concentrated on crossing the fast flowing meltwater streams and weaving through the labyrinth of moraine that littered the valley.

On reaching the campsite at Salcantay Pampa there was a general feeling of elation and exhaustion within the group. From there onwards it was impossible to turn back, so even though the trek’s most demanding stages still lay ahead of us, I knew that I was going to complete it. The only alternative was to sustain injuries serious enough to require being flown by helicopter to the hospital in the Inca city of Cusco. At the ripe old age of fifty-four, my feeling of self-esteem was as high as the mountains that surrounded me.

Evening activities comprised of eating and keeping warm. Aubergine grilled with alpaca cheese, followed by creamy chicken stew and rice, was washed down with glasses of hot rum made by the cook’s mother especially for us, according to the cook.

While we were having dinner we heard great rumblings in the not too distant distance. Apparently these were avalanches caused by gravity’s effect on the lower reaches of the glaciers. I loved hearing this. It was exciting. But in the oil lamp’s dim light, Inca Bobby’s face showed sadness as he explained that the snow and ice on the surrounding peaks had retreated to a worrying degree during the previous ten years. It was heartbreaking to think that the immense beauty of the Andes was threatened by the effects of climate change.

Salcantay Pampa’s altitudinal location was such that it wasn’t very far from the Moon, so we had a good session of gawping at the sky. Up there both atmospheric and light pollution were approximately zero so the heavens were as I’d never seen them before. Millions and millions of stars made the cosmos above us appear as a blurry white soup rather than its usual black with white spots. The Milky Way really was milky.

Inca Bobby knew the names of stars I’d never heard of before. I suspected he might have made a few of them up to impress us. But out in the cold an hour was enough, so wearing every item of clothing that I had with me, including hat and gloves, I climbed into my sleeping bag in the tent that I was sharing with Dave from Huddersfield. I couldn’t say with any accuracy how low the temperature fell that night where our tents stood on rough grassland adjacent to the bottom end of a glacier, but I knew it was serious business as the contents of my water bottle froze before I went to sleep.  

I was surprised to still be alive when I woke up eight hours later. Most of me had been comfortably warm during the night but my early morning face felt frozen. Thankfully, a drop of Inca coffee from the already busy kitchen tent soon sorted that out. I didn’t so much drink the coffee as rub my cheeks and forehead with the hot tin mug. At 6:00 a.m. light began to fill the sky from behind the vastness of the mountains surrounding our site. Frozen tent walls rattled in sync with the snores of the trekkers contained within. This was the perfect time to go for a walk alone with my thoughts, a few small shivering birds and Salcantay.

Again breakfast was spectacularly good, particularly if considering the cooks’ working conditions. It was better than what I would normally have had in the luxury of my kitchen at home. Prepared in a tent at the top of the world, in sub-zero temperature and yet being both healthy and delicious, it was a culinary miracle. But the cherry on the cornbread was that I didn’t have to prepare it or wash up afterwards.

Unsurprisingly, the scenery around us continued to be spectacularly good but the fact that it became even more spectacular in a severe jagged way as we followed the glacial moraine to the east of Salcantay was astonishing. At Pampa Japonés we were on a level with the most beautiful mountain I’d ever been in the company of. The pampa was so named because in the 1970s it had been the base camp of a Japanese expedition to climb the mountain and take the ancient Inca gold from where it had been concealed in a cave many centuries before. The local people hadn’t worried about the treasure being stolen because they had total confidence in the peak’s inhospitality. But the Japanese looters weren’t to be beaten by a mere 6,180 metres of ice-encrusted mountain, and after one failed attempt they went home to fetch their helicopter. With this they managed to get their hands on the gold, enrage the Inca people and significantly sour Peruvian-Japanese relations.

From our path leading to the highest point of the Chiriasqa Pass we saw beneath us a pair of aquamarine glacial lakes. Bobby told us the colour came from minute rock particles suspended in the water. The particles were commonly known as ‘rock flour’ ground from the bedrock by the descending glacier and carried along by meltwater streams flowing into the lakes. On arrival there it just lolls around forever, reflecting sunlight to give the water a milky aquamarine hue. The lakes contained no life other than microbes. Seeing the harshness of their habitat, I had to take my hat off to those microbes.

It would have been dangerous to venture any nearer than 200 metres from the glacier’s edge. I suggested that it might be a bit slippy, but the combination of gigatonnes of ice and rock creeping down a mountain and the gradual warming as the sun gained height required a lot more than a couple of shovels of grit to make it safe.

The final stretch of the ascent to reach the pass was utterly gruelling. The cold air, the lack of oxygen and the steep incline made every individual step a big struggle. Inca Bobby’s words encouraged us. If with each movement we merely put the heel of one boot level with the toe of the other, we were at least moving forwards, and frequent rest stops were essential. Slowly but surely we made it to the top, a small gap in a ridge (or arête) that straddled the highest points of two back-to-back and absolutely enormous glacial valleys.

There we were 4,950 metres above sea level, which was the highest point of our entire trek and the highest I had ever been without the aid of an aeroplane. Bobby told us we should be proud of ourselves and when talking to anyone about it in the future, we should emphasise that we had done the extended Salcantay route which had taken us to an altitude 1,000 metres higher than the highest point on the Classic Inca Trail.

In Cusco the day before our trek began we had all bought tasty sugary energy snacks to compliment the healthy stuff that Inca Bobby’s team provided. In a small food shop near the famous Plaza de Armas I discovered that the Peruvian equivalent of an Oreo biscuit was called a Black Out, and I couldn’t resist buying a couple of packets. As each of us in the group reached the top of the Chiriasqa Pass, Inca Bobby put his arm round our shoulders and asked if we were alright. ‘I’m going to have a Black Out,’ I answered. There was a brief look of panic on his face until I took the biscuits from my rucksack and offered him one. There followed a period of great swearing and laughter.

There was a lot of laughter, due partly to our joy at having made it, and partly to our madcap suggestions for elevating ourselves a further 50 metres so we could say we’d reached a height of 5,000 metres.

A period of silence followed that nobody had suggested, it just happened. Finding myself in an elevated wilderness with nothing around me but bare rock and ice had affected me as much emotionally as getting there had done physically. It had been the toughest feat of physical endurance I’d ever known and I sensed I would never experience anything to match it. Apart from the members of our group, there was absolutely no evidence of the existence of the human race. There were no fences, no buildings, no domestic livestock, no litter. Just nature in its rawest form and an eerie stillness. I felt like I was on the Moon.

I would have loved to have stayed longer but while we weren’t moving we were getting cold, so after thirty minutes of euphoria it was time for us to adjust walking poles for the steep descent to Sisay Pampa, which was almost as challenging as the earlier ascent had been. Concentration was crucial as we took a rocky and strenuous route through meltwater streams, mud and ice.

As clouds darkened to obscure mountain tops, I stopped for a minute to turn and have one final look at Chiriasqa Pass. Before I set off again snowflakes began to fall gently, as did a few tears.

Image:

Me having a Black Out.

More photos:

Inca Ice and Lupins