Sunday, January 25, 2009

Telluride to Moab 04


Comming soon Telluride to Moab bike adventure.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Phil's Journal - Peru '08

This is the story of an adventure trip taken to the Peruvian Cordillera blanca during August and September 2008. The company we used was a family owned business head-quatered in Huaraz, Peru called Cordillera Blanca Adventures and the cost per person was around $US1700. Included in this price were
The ride from Lima Airport to a hotel in Lima
The overnight stay in Lima
The minibus ride to the bus station
The bus ride on a luxury bus to Huaraz
Accomodation at their house while we were in Huaraz
A guide for the acclimatization hikes while in Huaraz
Two all expenses paid four-day treks in the mountains. The trekking team consisted of two guides, a cook and the lead Guide for three people
The bus ride and connecting transport back to Lima Airport.
The only additional expenses were
The cost of the return airfare from Philadelphia to Lima (around $850)
The equipment we rented in Huaraz (very nominal)
The cost of meals we had while in Huaraz.
So for under $US3,000, three of us had the adventure of our lives, something for which we have been moved to communicate for others, and which we intend to repeat. We can’t say enough about the efficiency, cost effectiveness, safety consciousness and generosity of the tour company, their employees and sub-contractors.
The protagonists of this adventure were Phil Cox (aged 56), Anthony Pires (aged 60) both of whom live in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and Lenko Kovach (aged 71), who lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Phil is still working full time with a Johnson & Johnson company, Anthony is semi-retired and Lenko is fully retired. Both Lenko and Anthony have lean and wiry builds, exercise frequently and are very fit by any standard. Phil on the other hand is big-boned and heavy, had started Tae Kwon Do classes earlier in the year and does some endurance exercise, mainly bike riding on weekends but did not enjoy the same level of fitness as the others. Despite the age differences, the order of fitness bears an inverse relationship to age, with Lenko generally leading the pack on any outing around our neighborhood and Phil bringing up the rear. The fitness edge of the older members of the party combined with the weight difference provoked some concerns about how well Phil would do in the high mountains, including with Phil himself. The only advantage Phil enjoyed was some high mountain experience in Switzerland in his late twenties (almost 30 years ago!). Lenko had been to the Cordillera Blanca three years previously with his son and had come back with glowing reports of the experience, and which inspired the other two to make the trip.
Leading up to the excursion, we intensified the training by going up and down the steepest slopes we could find in the neighborhood; Spring Mountain (vertical drop about 300 feet) in Montgomery County, and a hill in a county park in Chester County. We were able to get some acclimatisation to mountain climbing and break in new boots and other gear, but there was no way we could acclimatise ahead of time to the altitude we were going to experience. Both Anthony and Phil had been advised by travel doctors to take Diamox, a drug originally prescribed for the treatment of glaucoma. Its mode of action to prepare people to be able to function at high altitude was explained as lowering the pH of the blood, which drives out a larger proportion of carbon dioxide, which in turn, allows the blood to absorb a higher percentage of oxygen. We were advised to start taking the drug as soon as we were above 8,000 feet and take it daily until we reached the highest point of our climb, at which point we would no longer need to take it.
The day of our departure arrived on August 24th, and everybody was low-key and relaxed. The only hiccup in the trip from Philadelphia to Lima was a 2 hour delay in Miami, which meant that we arrived very late in Lima. The tour company arranged a ride from the airport to a hotel in the Miraflores section of Lima, and then another shuttle from the hotel to the bus station for the bus ride to Huarez. In between, we had the morning to wander around Lima. Being the first trip to Latin America for Phil & Anthony, neither were too sure what to expect but Lima looked to be a well-kept city, and although the majority of its citizens are not wealthy, the basic necessities are provided. There was some evidence of the favellas on the outskirts of the city where not all of the refugees from the Shining Path guerilla movement’s activities in the mountains had returned to their original hometowns. The government has obviously been tackling infra-structure problems in a logical order with a fairly decent highway system, electrification, provision of clean drinking water and universal education. There were other signs of modernization, namely the laying of fiber-optic cable along the main highway to the interior. We were only out of cell-phone reach once we were well off the beaten-path in the high mountains. However, when it comes to sewage treatment and waste-disposal, there is still a way to go.
The 8 hour ride in a luxury bus from Lima to Huaraz was a study in contrasts. The main highway ran parallel to the coast-line for the first 100 km. The terrain was sandy desert with little vegetation of any kind. Most of the little precipitation this area comes from the fog that rolls in off the ocean and in fact, the view from the bus was often obscured by the fog. After a couple of hours, the highway turned inland and both the terrain and vegetation changed as the bus made its way up a river valley. There were small villages every few miles where the locals eked out their living on relatively small plots of land. Most of the ascent into the mountains occurred after night-fall, and so the only way to follow the progress was to monitor the altitude using Phil’s watch. The highway climbed to a 4,000 meter (~13,200 feet) pass and then descended into Huaraz which is situated at about 3,000 meters (~ 10,000 feet).
The tour company met us at the bus station and took us the short ride to their house where we stayed when we weren’t in the mountains themselves. We stayed in basic but comfortable bed-rooms; Phil & Anthony sharing a room because they snore; Lenko taking a room by himself because he can’t tolerate snorers. The following morning, we woke up with a slight headache, normal for those not accustomed to the altitude, and we each began preventive measures in our own way; Phil and Anthony started the Diamox tablets, and Lenko drank the herbal teas.
Huaraz is nestled in a valley between the Cordillera blanca (white mountain range) to the east and the Cordillera negra (black mountain range) to the west. As the names suggest, one is covered with snow, while the other is not because it is not high enough to provoke the precipitation. We passed the first full day in Huaraz wandering around the town, exploring the sights, sounds and smells. Huaraz itself was pretty much destroyed during an earthquake in 1971. Our host family experienced the earthquakes and only narrowly escaped with their lives. There are therefore no buildings in the city more than 30 years old, and most are constructed with reinforced concrete pillars which withstand earthquakes much better than the traditional mud-brick buildings which are common in the more remote areas and still being constructed. The market in particular was fascinating and can only be described as an assault on all the senses. It ran for several blocks and everything conceivable for this part of the world was on sale. The stands selling fruit and vegetables were appetizing; the open-air butcher shops and fish-mongers without niceties like refrigeration less so. Due to the side-effects of the Diamox (a diuretic) and old age, we scheduled our coffee breaks and lunch judiciously at restaurants recommended by our guides. While the food was good, we chose not to think about where they most likely acquired the raw materials.
In the afternoon, we took a short taxi ride to the thermal baths at Monterey. The water contained several minerals, with at least some iron judging by the color. It was a pleasant and relaxing time with the clientele roughly equally divided between locals and adventure tourists from every corner of the world. With Lenko initiating contacts with total strangers and total strangers initiating contacts with Anthony and Phil, we befriended different members of a french family which had taken a year off from jobs and school and were driving around South America in a motor home.
The next day was our first exercise at altitude. The tour company drove us to a point around 4,000 meters altitude in the Cordillera negra and the guide led us back down to the town. The walk took us through traditional Quechuan farmsteads where they were using centuries old techniques to grow, harvest and winnow their crops. It was the time of year for threshing the harvest to separate the grain from the chaff. A pair of donkeys were tethered to a pole and walked around in circles to thresh the straw. The women in particular were in their traditional dress; the tall hats and multiple skirts. This was in contrast to the school-children who were just getting out of class while we were walking down toward the town. They were all in neatly pressed school uniforms that could have been easily mistaken for any Philadelphia parochial school. On the recommendation of the tour guide family, Phil brought a 48 pack of pencils to distribute to the children; all were gone by the time we re-entered Huaraz.
The guide then took us for lunch at an upscale hotel which served regional specialties. The regional menu had either rabbit or guinea pig as the main course. There was a wheat and vegetable soup which was pretty good to start. I guess we all had too fond memories of guinea pigs as pets as we all had the rabbit for the main course. We were served a drink called chicha morada, made by soaking purple corn and adding sugar and lemon. It looked like grape juice and was very refreshing.
We napped for the rest of the afternoon and then went back into town for dinner, and ran into a parade of high-school kids celebrating some sort of event. They had built papier mache statues of cartoon characters, most of which were out-fitted with fireworks. The best that could be said of these contraptions was that it was clear that no HAZOP had been performed on any of these, and our hope was that the burn team was on duty at the local hospital. At the very least, a significant number of the kids had to have gone home with burn holes in their sweat-suits. With all the dancing around and general merriment, they could have been from anywhere. It seemed clear to us that many of the indigenous traditions will disappear within a generation or two.
The following day was our first real work-out. The tour bus took us to Churup where we climbed about 1000 meters to Churup lake (4500 meters). It was pretty good climb with a couple of steep parts where Jose, the guide laid some ropes to help us get up. We had lunch at the lake with a spectacular view of Churup mountain. We were joined shortly after we arrived by a pair of young, delightful and very athletic Brazilian ladies, who very charitably agreed to be photographed with us while we could only wistfully contemplate that our days of being able to pursue them, in any sense of the word, were well past. For Anthony and Phil, this was the highest we had been to date. We were all relieved that we didn’t appear to have any issues with the altitude, although there were a couple of steep and difficult parts that gave some unease.
As with many mountains we were to see over the next two weeks, Jose would nonchalantly mention that he had climbed Churup, and when asked by which route (the one up the jagged edge at about a 45° angle, or the one up the 80° face requiring a highly technical climb), he would calmly reply, "both". We were to learn over the next two weeks that Jose had been one of 8 of 200 Peruvian guides to be certified by Swiss Mountain guide examiners when they visited Peru one year. Not only was he very a very able and experienced climber in many disciplines, his main qualification was to be able to judge the ability of his clients and lead them appropriately and safely. We therefore felt completely comfortable with his skills, judgment and leadership.
Jose checked our equipment that evening and we each had a couple of things we needed to rent, all at a very nominal fee at one of the local mountaineering stores.
The following morning, we set out on the first trek. The minibus dropped us off inside a National Park where we were met by a donkey driver with 4 donkeys and a couple of horses. For three of us to go into the mountains, we had two guides, a porter and a cook. All of our gear was loaded on to the donkeys and horses and we set off carrying just our water, lunch and a few incidentals in our day packs. We set off ahead of the cook, the porter and the junior guide, but even though they were carrying a significantly heavier load than us, they caught up with us during our lunch break and zoomed ahead of us to set up camp at the Moraine. We hiked about 6 – 7 kms and about 1,000 meters vertically; a pretty good workout for us. The pictures are necessary to describe the scene. Dinner was a potato and vegetable soup and trout, potatoes and vegetables for the main course. It was clear that we were doing trekking first class.
On our second day of the trek, Jose took us on a conditioning hike to the top of one of the moraines. It was a very pleasant stroll through alpine meadow with the occasional alpine wild-flower. At the top of the moraine, we had a spectacular of the mountains, including Ishinka, the peak we were to climb in a couple of days, and a tarn, a glacial lake formed by the moraine. The meals were also a daily highlight;
Nuts and cereal mixed with papaya and oranges served with hot orange juice for breakfast
Avocado, salsa, boiled potatoes and vegetables for lunch
Soup and stew for dinner.
One of the other high altitude ailments is lack of appetite. We never had that problem!
After lunch, Jose checked out our harnesses and crampons. Phil still had the harness he last used almost thirty years ago, but embarrassingly, couldn’t remember how to assemble it but Jose had no problem.
On day 3, we, or rather the trekking staff moved camp to the glacier camp, an additional 300 meters or so to about 4700 meters. After lunch, Jose took Anthony and Phil up to the glacier to train them on how to climb using crampons. Lenko complained of not having slept the previous night and retreated to his tent instead, a harbinger of things to come. Jose was an outstanding teacher and Anthony and Phil proved willing students. Jose assured us that the first 50 meters we were practicing on were about as steep as it gets on the glacier and we went to bed feeling confident that we would summit without too much problem. We were in fact in for a tougher day than either of us imagined.
We went to bed early hoping to get as close to a full night’s sleep as possible before a 3 am start. Alas, none of us slept well, if at all. Breakfast was very light, a smart move given that bath-room breaks on the mountain are a non-trivial undertaking and certainly not too environmentally friendly.
Even before starting out, Lenko was complaining of having difficulty of moving around and was surprised that neither Phil nor Anthony were experiencing the same problems. Phil offered his opinion that it was altitude sickness something that Lenko still strenuously denies to this day. Phil & Anthony had been taking their daily Diamox and didn’t appear to be suffering any altitude related symptoms.
We hiked up to the glacier and put on our harness, crampons and gaiters and were roped up for the climb. We had the perception from the previous day that the first 50 meters would be the hardest, but unbeknownst to us, there was another wall right behind it that went up at a 45° angle for 200 – 300 meters. Fortunately, we couldn’t see it because of the darkness because if we had, we might have turned around right then. As we got higher, Lenko was having more and more difficulty until even on shallow slopes, he had to stop to rest after every half dozen or so steps. It took all of his will-power and a lot of assistance from Jose but Lenko and the rest of us made it to the summit (5530 m). We all agreed that it was the hardest thing we have ever done and the view from the summit was its own reward.
The descent was not as difficult as expected. Crampons are a wonderful invention and Jose had trained us well. There were a few anxious moments crossing a slab of rock covered only by a very thin layer of ice. Jose looked at it and assured us that the crampons would hold and mercifully he was right. A downhill slide of 200 meters onto rocks was the alternative if he had been wrong. We descended the rest of the glacier, removed our crampons and harnesses and then descended the remaining half hour to the camp utterly exhausted. We then packed up the camp and descended another hour and a half while the guides & porters re-set the camp at the base camp. After a ten hour trip to the summit and back followed by another hour and a half descent to the main camp, we slept very well. Phil didn’t realize how badly wind-burned he had become during the climb and descent. He wondered why it didn’t occur to him to apply sun-screen before setting out for the climb, but it is counter-intuitive to apply sun-screen at 2 am when we started out. That and we were all wearing broad-brimmed hats.
The next morning, we didn’t feel terribly hungry despite the tremendous expenditure of energy the previous day. The guides and porters dismantled and packed the camp in the same time that it took us to pack our clothes. The 3 hour descent to the van through gnarled, red-barked red-wooded trees was very pleasant. Lunch was waiting for us at the van. The ride back to Huaraz was also a cultural experience. The traditional agriculture and dress of the quechuan people were on display in the high pastures. The women were the herders; there were women herding a half a dozen sheep or a sow and her litter or a couple of cows. Unimaginable in our world. A one or two acre plot of land was being plowed by a wooden plow pulled by a pair of oxen. Both men and women carried huge loads of straw on their backs to their barns. While the men and women were dressed in traditional attire, the children were all wearing their neatly pressed school uniforms.
We arrived back at the family home in the early afternoon, took our first shower in five days and the organized our laundry. It was amazing to be able to watch the US Open live on TV while in such a remote location. Tony and Phil went to their favorite pizza restaurant where their appetites returned with a vengeance. It seems as though the best restaurants in town were all owned by Swiss mountain climbers who came for the mountains but never left. After that, we all slept for about 12 hours.
The following day was a rest day and we took the opportunity to get our laundry done in town, and visited the local artisanal market to bring back hand-knitted alpaca wool souvenirs. The alpaca wool is so much softer than sheep wool and the hats and sweaters we bought were amazingly cheap. Once again there was entertainment on tap; there was a demonstration of university students and faculty making its way down the main street accompanied by heavily armed riot police. The demonstrators were solidly middle class so there was no skull-cracking to be seen. Huaraz seems to be a pretty lively town; two demonstrations and a parade by the high school students in the few days we had been in Huaraz.
The rest of the day was spent lazing in front of the TV watching the US Open. Tony and Phil were feeling in pretty good shape; Lenko was still feeling very stiff, possibly due to being anaerobic on the mountain for so long a couple of days earlier.
The morning after the rest day, we set out for the second trek to Pisco. We drove through the town of Yungay which had been destroyed by an avalanche during the 1971 earthquake. A large chunk of ice broke off from the glacier and roared down the valley at more than 200 km/hour and completely buried the town. Over 25,000 people were buried in the rubble, and only 19 survived. Rather then retrieve the victims, the local officials covered the town and declared the area a memorial.
We continued the drive up the valley alongside Huascayan, the tallest mountain in the region and stopped at the house of our cook Alejo and his family. We were introduced to his wife and family and photographed the children. We arrived at a plateau where we were met by a donkey team. We made the 700 meter climb in about three hours and the cook and porters had already set up the base camp. The Piscu base camp (4800 m) is very popular, and a permanent latrine had been built, but it was in very sad shape and needed serious repairs and maintenance. We were grateful for the port-a-potty that our porters had installed for us. There was a light sleet outside so we spent the rest of the afternoon lazing in our tents.
There were about 20 – 30 other climbers at the camp, some of whom had come gringo style like us with cooks & porters, and others who had carried all of their equipment by themselves. They were all from alpine countries (France, Switzerland, Canada) and we were to learn pretty quickly that they were not only much younger than us, but they were also all in much better condition for this type of adventure. They were all planning to make the 1000 meter climb from the base camp to Pisco summit starting at 1 am. Based on our experience at Ishinku, we knew we weren’t up to this amount of climbing and asked the guide to put our next camp on the glacier so that we would only have 500 meters or so to climb on the final day. We were very much the AARP climbing group.
The following morning the cook and porters loaded their packs with about 40 kgs of materials plus our tents and clothing to stage a camp on the glacier at about 5200 meters. We were glad that we hadn’t done this stretch of the climb during the middle of the night as the first couple of hours involved scrambling over the rocks and up and down the loose dirt slopes of a moraine, a non-trivial exercise even in daylight. At the bottom of the glacier, we put on our gaiters and crampons, and roped up to begin the climb up the glacier. Once again, the higher we climbed, the more difficulty Lenko was having. It was a fairly steep climb up the glacier and we crossed a number of crevasses but it was not technically difficult. By the time we arrived, Alejo, Julio and the porter had pitched the tents and a hot drink was waiting for us. Alejo made us a hot meal which we ate in our tents because of the light snow outside. Lenko decided that he wouldn’t go to the summit and we thought that that was a wise decision.
Jose told Anthony and Phil that we would set out at 1 am for the summit before we climbed into our sleeping bags to try and get a few hours sleep before setting out. Around 1 am, Jose woke us up to say that the weather and visibility was bad and that he would have another look at 3 am. Meanwhile, we could hear the clinking of the piolets and harnesses of the first groups from the base camp passing our camp on their way to the summit.
At 3 am, Jose came by our tent and announced "Tony, Phil. Crampons on. Five minutes". It was a go. We groggily emerged from our warm sleeping bags and slipped on our clothes and went outside where Jose and the other guide attached our crampons and harnesses as if they were dressing a couple of kids. After a cup of hot tea, we roped up with Jose in the lead, with Phil and then Tony with Julio, the junior guide bringing up the rear, with the visibility being about 50 meters. We made pretty good progress for the first couple of hours but then we ran into a patch of snow with a thin ice crust which supported the weight of anybody weighing less than 90 kgs, but Phil with his 115 kgs sank through the ice crust and ended up knee deep into soft snow. This was like walking in quick-sand, and Phil endured ten to fifteen minutes of a huge expenditure of energy to advance only about as many meters. Jose eventually found some more solid ice but the effort in this soft snow had taken its toll, and Phil was exhausted and needed to slow down very significantly. It was a case of the lungs and the rest of the body were still in good shape, but there was nothing left in the legs. Since he still wanted some reserves left to get back down, at Tony’s suggestion, we turned around. Tony, although still moving like a cat over the terrain, wasn’t too disappointed at not summiting as the visibility was still very poor and we wouldn’t have seen a great deal had we arrived at the summit. However, I think the guides were disappointed that we didn’t summit after they had made such an effort to establish the camp on the col to give us the best possible shot to do so. However, we felt that we had given it our best shot and above all, we wanted to have enough energy to get back down safely. Not to have summited only detracted slightly from the magnitude of the overall experience.
The descent back to the camp was easy and uneventful and we had breakfast before packing up the camp. It took us about 3 hours to get back down to the base camp with the scramble back across the rocks, scree and loose dirt of the moraine. There was a particular stretch of very steep, loose dirt up which we had to climb, and we had learned which surfaces would hold while were climbing (rocks which didn’t move with our weight, and loose dirt with no pebbles), and those which were treacherous (rocks which moved under our weight and the worst of the lot, a mixture of loose dirt and small rocks which functioned like ball bearings). Anthony and Phil ascended this stretch without incident, but Lenko needed assistance. In most other alpine countries, a cable or some other aid to hikers would have been installed here. By the time we arrived back at the base camp, the porters had already pitched our tents and we scrambled in to sleep off the efforts of the last eight to ten hours and shelter from the light rain.
There were a number of groups who had made the climb from the base camp, passed our camp on the col on the way up and summited and descended by noon. We consoled ourselves that most of the these climbers were less than half our age and enjoyed the proximity of high mountains in their home countries. They too were sleeping off their 12 hour climbs. Lenko from his tent heard the bass and baritone snoring from Anthony and Phil’s tent. Anthony awoke around midnight to hear a couple talking in their tent twenty or thirty meters away, with the conversation eventually trailing off to be replaced a low, loud moaning for four or five minutes. Apparently this couple, which we believed to be a pair of young Canadians, based on the position of their tent the following morning, had suitably recovered from their climb. Phil slept through the whole episode.
The next morning, Lenko and Phil walked up to have a closer look at the refuge built by the Italian Alpine Club on a ridge above the base camp. It is a solidly built stone building with a slate roof, not unlike the alpine huts in the Italian Alps. On the path down, Phil saw an animal, roughly the size of a rabbit with a bushy tail, dart into a hole in the undergrowth. After describing the animal to Jose, it was most likely a viscacchia, the Peruvian version of a marmotte. The donkeys arrived and we packed up the camp and descended to the valley where the minibus was waiting for us. I think there was a miscommunication because one of the options was to continue the hike to Llanganucco, a pair of lakes in the valley and have lunch there. Anyway, we had a lunch (a hot lunch yet again) in the valley, and then continued on in the minibus and stopped at the visitor’s center between the two lakes. The view out over the lakes and between the mountains was spectacular. One of the local peasants had a llama which we were permitted to photograph for the donation of a sole (about 30 cents). I asked Jose why llamas weren’t used more often as pack animals and he said that llamas can only carry about 40 kgs; horses and donkeys carry substantially more.
We arrived back in Huaraz for a much-welcomed shower and a celebratory dinner at yet another Swiss-owned restaurant in town. This represented the end of our adventure and from there, we boarded the bus back to Lima airport the following morning.

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