Peru 2024 Pt 7: Finding Grit and Moving on

This is part of a series, the rest of the story can be found here.

Mountaineering is a sport dependant on good conditions. Many outdoor sports are like this, but most don't increase the danger exponentially with poor weather like mountaineering. A lot of people have successfully summitted in poor weather, but many others have died in it. Health is another player in mountaineering that you can affect change toward, but we ultimately don't have complete control over. Weather and health have to be lined up for a safe summit attempt. This is a story about making decisions when bad weather and bad health are present.

Coming back from Pisco was pretty exhausting for all of us. Pushing hard physically and mentally for 15 hours is hard on your body and right about the time we were crossing the rock band on our way back, I started getting nauseous. This is somewhat normal when you haven't eaten much real food, choosing instead to eat 100 calorie gels, bars, electrolyte drinks, and some candy. As much as I wish I could say I have an iron stomach, I have a very week traveler's stomach and get sick often while traveling. I couldn't eat much food when we got back but I ate slowly and put away as much as I could muster before going to bed. I'll spare you the details, but it was an awful night. I woke up and took a shower, trying to turn myself around before breakfast.

That morning, as we sat around the table in the cook tent eating breakfast and drinking coffee, I broke it to the guys that I needed a day to rest, ultimately throwing in my towel for the next mountain goal - Chopicaclqui (which also happens to be the mountain that brought us down here in the first place). Alan said he didn't think he had it in him to head up another mountain that would take us 4-5 days. After discussing our options amongst ourselves and our cook Amador, we decided to take the morning to rest and hang out at the refugio and send our stuff down on donkeys. We would then meet come down after lunch, set up camp, and essentially have a rest day. The following day we would get a ride to the trailhead of Yannapaccha, a mountain in the same valley that should only take us one overnight camp and two days to summit, getting us back a day earlier than originally planned. It wasn't a great plan, but I seemed doable.

We ate and hiked down, which was really an enjoyable hike, and met up with Amador who had hiked down before us to secure our gear. We set up camp and had dinner in a really cool meadow with cows and donkeys roaming around everywhere. Beat of all, there were bathrooms! Well... sort of. There were toilets without seats which was not ideal, but that was better than a hole in the ground.

The next day, we sorted our gear, having brought enough to do eight days in the mountains including a semi-technical mountain, ate breakfast, and left for the Yannapaccha trailhead. The road winds up the hill much like a toddler with a crayon, slashing back and forth for 45 minutes to the trailhead. Then the hiking trail traverses across a hill heading upward. The clouds came in all morning and had started to pour icy sleet on us. When we finally got to camp, you could barely see 30 feet out. We set up tents in the rain, crawled in, and tried to wait out the rain. It was miserable.

The few times that the rain let up allowed us to check out some of the views from the camp, which were amazing. The glacier was very cool and very broken, creating ice falls throughout and making it look menacing. With wet gear though, it wasn't safe to climb in the cold. On top of the weather, other members were beginning to get sick too. Things were unraveling pretty quickly. We made the decision to not make the attempt and to contact our driver and have them come early. Sometimes things just don't work out. Most mountaineers have a rough ratio of turn around to summits and it often hovers around d the 1:1 mark (or 50% success). This is par for the course. Some people might have continued to go up but we were content with our decision to not risk hypothermia with wet clothes an just bail off the mountain.

We hiked back to the van that was waiting at the trailhead. The van took us to Amador who was down at the bottom of the valley and who made us some hot water for tea and coffee before packing his own stuff and loading it into the van. The ride from the valley to Huaraz is a cool drive but we lastly just zoned out, still recovering but glad to be on our way to the hotel again.

The next day we decided to take a "rest day" which turned out to be a fully packed day of laundry, walking around the city looking for Pokemon cards for our kids, and other small errands. My watch and phone both said I had Ober 20,000 steps that day, so I'm not sure much rest was taken. Most importantly, we finally made it to the Casa de Guias (House of Guides) which in an information center and trip coordination service that connects you with guides. You meet the guides at the office which also keeps them from trying to hoodwinked you into paying more than you need. It seems like a great system and is totally worth stopping at right away when you start a trip like this.

More about what we found out at the Casa de Guias in the next post!