Day Two

That wake up call came, in the form of Fredy holding two cups of Coca tea outside our dome in the darkness.

“Buenos dias, Noisy Muchachos,” he whispered gently.

When I heard this, my crusty eyes cracked open and the striking soreness in my legs was already evident. All I could think about was how physically unprepared I was for this journey. The second day would be the most uphill and the most downhill. We would climb up 2,500 feet, then down 5,500 feet, over 15 miles. The first day was pretty rough, so this scared motivated about half the team into riding horses up the pass. But I, the brave and heroic mountaineer, opted to suffer on foot, just as the Incas intended.

We didn’t have much daylight for the first hour. And for a while nothing was said. At breakfast, Fredy had timidly described the uphill part of this day in three chunks, with two stopping points in flat areas. He kept saying the first two were not bad. Totally manageable. He would not say much about the third section.

Early that morning during the first uphill section, someone broke the ice and I finally met my fellow travelers. Two girls were from Switzerland. One was a die hard hiker, having already climbed many mountains in Europe and Kilimanjaro. Her friend, also a good hiker but spoke less English, seemed like she would rather be smoking cigarettes on a patio somewhere than be on this hike. The others were from Florida, one of whom had never been on a hike before. After learning this, my ego toke another devastating blow, worse than the sound of Fredy playing the flute behind me as I hiked. As someone who grew up hiking in Colorado, I suddenly felt immense pressure to not be the back of the line.

The second stretch I was only out-paced by the Swiss girl. This path was narrower and steeper, with switchbacks carved into the mountain side. I dragged my lumbering body up the path, one step at a time. My legs and lungs burned with equal fervor. Another hour or two passed. I stumbled into what looked like a good stopping point at the top of the switchbacks where I found the Swiss girl admiring the view. She looked completely fine.

“You are a good hiker!” she complimented me.

I had to pause for a moment to consider if this was sarcasm, because she looked like was ready for a job interview, while I can only imagine I looked like a corpse covered in condensation.

“Thanks, you too,” was all I could muster. Then I turned to admire the view as well. The narrow, sweeping valley below us was truly stunning. It was also a shock to see how far we’d come. An ant trail of hikers stretched into the distance, going all the way back to the sky dome camp, now the size of a quarter held at arms length. There were maybe six or seven groups hiking along with us from various trekking companies and independently. Add in the horses, cooks, and crew who jogged along, it was closer to 100 souls dispersed along the trail on any given day.

As the rest of our footbound crew made their way up to our vantage point, horses began to pass us. Probably some mules too. Gun to my head I could not tell you the difference. One thing I do know is they are very sure-footed. When they approached, we were told to hug the mountain to give them space. Some carried riders, some carried saddlebags. But none were spooked and they confidently trekked the path no more than a couple feet wide in places.

We continued on the second leg, where the path led through a shallow, rocky river. The trail had flattened off significantly. Now it felt like a leisurely stroll through shallow water. Not far up the river, the path opened into a wide, vibrant green meadow. The sun now peaked out of the clouds and cast a golden glow on the wild grass. Steep mountain ridges capped with snow enclosed this slice of paradise on all sides. Scattered through the meadow were boulders the size of small houses. These were just flakes off the colossal Salkantay peak that towered behind scattered clouds like an omniscient titan of the continent. Through the eons these mammoth chunks of granite came crashing down into the valley with a sound so thunderous none could ever replicate it. Now they stand in stoic silence. A silence that echoes in eternity.

During this section of the hike I was listening to music alone. Primarily the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. As I came over the shallow ridge to discover this heavenly valley, all the violins of Howard Shores orchestra played at once and transported me to Middle Earth in an instant. Gandalf (in the form of a Peruvian man) was leading me through the Misty Mountains. For a minute or two I didn’t feel my legs or my feet or the bags under my eyes. It was pure elation.

On a smaller rock in the meadow, I ate a snack and rehydrated as the rest of the crew trickled in. We didn’t stay for long, as the third and final leg of the uphill awaited us: to the top of the Salkantay pass. This leg was the shortest but also the steepest. It seemed less than a mile, but the air was awfully thin. The top of the pass was 15,000ft. On this less than a mile of uphill I took maybe ten breaks. Many people passed me. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. Not enough oxygen was reaching my brain for me to form a thought.

The lush green meadows and mountain sides of 20 minutes ago were a distant memory as we were surrounded by nothing but rock faces. And of course, the ever present, ever indifferent, Salkantay peak. It was a long time to go a short way, but I still think the hike to Humantay Lake was tougher. Around 10am we reached the top of the pass. 15,092 feet: the highest point I have ever stood on Earth. Now, and at no point during the day leading up to now, did Salkantay look any smaller or any more mortal. We stood at 15,029, the peak above us stood at 20,574, less than a quarter mile away.

Here we rested, took some photos, and had a pre-lunch lunch. Soon after we arrived, Monika, her dad, and her brother arrived on their horses from the morning. Over sandwiches they caught me up to speed. While their bodies rested, their minds did not. Perched high on a horse on those narrow paths was vertigo-inducing. To add to that, Monika’s horse had the temperament of Frank Costanza, constantly biting other horses, jockeying to the front of the line when there was no room to pass, and just generally being an asshole. Monika had never ridden a horse. The Spanish speaking horse handlers gave little instruction on how to ride a horse. So her morning was filled with stress and terror while mine was filled with oxygen deprivation and wonder. Nevertheless she survived.

Wow, what a day. Feeling pretty accomplished. Hiking four miles up to 15,092ft. Now a leisurely nine and a half miles downhill over 5,500 vertical feet for the next seven hours to wrap up the day.

Down the other side of the pass was a long gulley that had been cleared out by an avalanche or landslide in recent years. A trickling creek etched a humble path in the bottom of the gulley from some hidden alpine lake. The scattered rocks were covered in moss and lichen with hues of red, green, and orange. The treeless, colorful, barren terrain reminded me a bit of the Scottish highlands in the fall, but really there was nothing quite like it.

The rocky gulley gave way to a wide, marshy valley for a while. The trail was muddy, and still caked in horseshit, but it was mercifully flat. A while later we stopped for lunch, which was another magnificent feast. Now some of our lunch spots featured cute, savvy dogs who knew how to get an easy meal. We were happy to oblige.

The path descended further into a thick fog. We now entered the high rainforest, still at 12 or 13 thousand feet. Down and down we hiked for hours and hours under the dense canopy. A few times there was an opening wide enough to reveal we were hiking high on the left side of a great ravine, where many of the alpine creeks converged in the marshy valley above, now fed this growing river in a dense jungle.

There were not many stops on this stretch. Just a beeline for the campsite. Downhill in the mud for eight miles. Our boots and bottoms of our pants were caked in it now. Each step was a stabilizing one, to avoid slipping or my knees buckling. And with each step my knees groaned at me, and my thighs were not any happier.

Finally the trail began to flatten, and we saw a bridge we had to cross to reach our new huts for the night. The end was in sight. My legs were on fire. The cruelest part of the day, was one last, gentle incline to reach our huts. But what tremendous huts they were. Propped up on stilts, embedded on a steep hill overlooking a vast jungle. Each hut wasn’t exactly a dome, but they did have floor to ceiling windows overlooking the misty mountains.

At dinner, I rubbed my aching thighs and calves, thinking about how much I didn’t want to wake up at 4:30am again, and how much I wanted a beer at the end of all of this. I apparently was not alone, as one of the Floridians came back to the table with a few large beers to share she bought from a booth in the corner of the lodge. We started to shake the rust off and get to know our fellow Noisy Muchacho hikers a bit better. It was during this dinner that Fredy congratulated us for getting to the end of a long day, but warned us that while the uphill was over, the greatest dangers waited for us the next day.