From Cusco, I flew back to Lima and then spent 8 hours on a bus to get to Huaraz, the base for exploring Huascaran National Park. I settled into a hostel and the next day we spent the day on an acclimation hike to Lake Churup which was 14,600 ft high. I started to get slightly lightheaded toward the end of the hike, but I didn’t have a headache or anything like that. Well, it wasn’t until later back in Huaraz that my headache started to surface. It actually turned into a pretty bad headache by the time I was ready to go to bed. I made some coca leave tea and then fell asleep instantly.
I woke up and felt really good. No headache. I continued hydrating to help combat any more elevation sickness. My hiking group came and picked me up in a big passenger van early in the morning and we drove for several hours through rocky bumpy terrain while I had to pee so badly from hydrating. Eventually, we made it to the beginning of our journey. The van dropped us off around lunch and we ate and then started about 5 hours of climbing. I had a lip of chewed coca leaves in for the whole climb because that is apparently what the locals (and Incans) have used for elevation sickness for hundreds of years. The weather was good and the climbing wasn’t too bad, but I learned a lot about elevation sickness during this first leg.
We finally made it to our first base camp. It was right on the edge of the snow line and let me tell you, I had a screaming headache! I really was miserable so much so that I thought I would have to tell the guides I couldn’t go on. But I just sat there all light-headed and stupid with a lip full of coca leaves and did my best to try and control my breathing. Not being active and just being able to focus on my breathing actually helped a decent amount and I was able to calm myself enough to figure out a couple of things. At the elevation level my lungs don’t know how much they should be working so I have to make sure that they are working more by manually breathing deeper. I also learned when eating that it is super hard to stay at a tolerable elevation sickness level when you have to stop breathing to chew. So eating was a miserable slow experience. After every bite, I would take a couple of deep breathes to maintain my sickness level and to ensure it didn’t go any further.
During that first real hike at elevation, I realized that I could feel the elevation sickness creeping on and if I just controlled my exertion level enough I could keep the levels from getting to a life-threatening, need to stop, level. And let me tell you just sitting there with a throbbing headache in both temples and at the base of your neck just beating 100mph it’s a scary thing and I realized early it wasn’t about me being a baby, but about the consequences of long term cerebral damage. I was not optimistic that I would make it much further. We had our tents set up and I eventually got to sleep and that was nice. I slept pretty soundly actually. I said a prayer hoping that the sleep at elevation would help lessen the elevation sickness.
After that first morning, I didn’t feel good at all. I had hoped that a night of sleep at elevation would do good to help me adjust, but I almost felt worse after the sleep. The lesson I learned here was that when sleeping I am unable to make sure I am manually breathing deeper than I think I need to. Instead, I breathed at a normal level and that didn’t get my brain enough oxygen. I looked really bad and the guides used an oximeter to test my blood oxygen level. The meter read 80% which I now know means if I was at a hospital they would put me on oxygen. Up there I had no context and the guide said, “I think it’s okay” in a Spanish accent and so I kept going. Before that, I was considering telling them I couldn’t go on, but I just kept forcing myself to take deep breaths.
Surprisingly it actually felt easier to maintain my elevation sickness level and stop it from encroaching into dangerous levels on the second day. It helped that it was only a 4-hour hike of 800 meters so I’m sure that helped. However, I did get very tired using the crampons and ice picks though because I was so inefficient with them. I really didn’t enjoy the technical portions of the hike because it was difficult and foreign. Under intense elevation sickness is not the most conducive environment to learn new skills. Also, it felt like we would hike up a snow crest and I would be excited to get to camp, but every time there was another even bigger crest before our destination. Eventually, we finally go to our camping spot. I was, again, was miserable when we got there. I’m sure the oxygen levels in my brain were the main cause but an intense sunburn couldn’t have helped.
We had dinner and I continued my nightly ritual of starring out at the mountains and manually taking deep breaths until my headache relegated enough for me to focus on other things like eating or unpacking my things. After dinner, I continued starring and breathing. The plan was to wake up at 1 am to begin the push to the summit. The guides would wake up early and check the weather conditions to see if it was feasible. I contemplated staying up all night just breathing intentionally to ensure that my head would be good for the last push and additional elevation.
The guides deemed the weather too bad at first so we reassessed every half hour for about an hour or so until they officially canceled the summit attempt. I have to say I wasn’t that upset. I had my doubts I would have been able to make it with my head regardless. This way I also got to get some sleep as well. In the morning I felt decent and I had the guide take some pictures of me with the mountains in the background. The picture above shows the summit of Huascaran which is the tallest mountain in the tropics in the whole world. It stands at 22,205ft. It is also the mountain in the Paramount Picture’s logo. My journey, however, ended at just a little over 18,000ft. Chopicalqui, the mountain we were attempting to climb, is 20,846ft high.
We started our descent down and we decided to go even deeper into the valley than the original plan just to get out some of the weather that caused us to cancel our summit attempt in the first place. The climb down was actually more technical than the climb up based on the route we chose and we ended up on a patch of really steep ice that required climbing down backward with full use of ice axes and crampons. I actually slipped and ended up falling down the edge of the ice wall until Alex, my climbing mate, dug in with his ice ax and stopped me from falling. I’m glad he was experienced and alert otherwise my fall could have been much worse and I could have dragged others down with me. I ended up with some scrapes on my arms since I was only in a T-shirt at the time. Climbing down like that felt like an eternity and I honestly wondered if I was strong enough to hold on and complete the whole thing. I was exhausted, but when there isn’t a choice you usually are strong enough.
We eventually made it to the rocks where we took our crampons and harness off. We grabbed the gear we left at the first base camp and changed into our hiking boots or basketball shoes if you’re me. It was so nice to not have to worry about slipping on ice, but now I realized how bad going down hurt my knees. Eventually, we were down into the valley where we had dinner and camped the night.
In the morning we had breakfast and packed up the tents. It is incredible how much better I felt after sleeping the night at a lower elevation. It’s funny that lower elevation now meant something still over 14,000 ft. If I were to do something like this again I am definitely going to spend more time acclimating so I can feel that good at 14,000 ft when I start the climb rather than on the backend. Anyways we made it back down to the road and ate some lunch on the last day and the van came by to pick us up. After a couple of hours ride back, with some pit stops for lake views and ice cream, I was back at the rental place returning my gear. A hot shower after that adventure felt so good. For dinner, I bought myself two steaks, and then I went to bed early. The next day I took an easy day and ate some good street food and went to a spa and relaxed in a eucalyptus sauna with a buddy from the hostel.
Now that you have read this whole mess and seen most of the pictures you can watch this video of the mountain climbing experience. Fewer details, but better views in the video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WcNUqWnHaHmws7Rm7
…and that’s a wrap on my Peru trip. It was an incredible experience and it was so nice to get back out in the world enjoying God’s creation. I hope you enjoyed hearing about it! God bless!