View of the Huandoys from high on Huascaran
“To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward that mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.”
— Sir Francis Younghusband
I was dreaming about lofty mountains, when I was suddenly awakened by an early morning phone call. “Hi. It’s me Glenn.” “Hey Glenn! Where are you?”
“I’m back in Phoenix. My knee was sore and I got robbed, so I decided to come home.”
“Oh man! What a bummer!” I replied, in a state of shock. I had been planning to fly to Lima, Peru in two days, and he was going to meet me at the airport. I was completing a small construction project to help pay for the trip, and since he had more time than I did, he had left two weeks earlier. He had planned to scope out the situation, and have the logistics figured out when I arrived.
This was my first trip out of the country (not counting a few short trips to Mexico), so I had been extremely excited to go, but I was quite concerned about the current situation. My Spanish vocabulary consisted of about four words, and I had heard many stories about the hardships of traveling in Peru. Now, I was faced with the reality of traveling alone and not having a partner for the big mountains. But the two of us had been planning this trip for more than a year, and the thought of turning back now was unbearable. So I decided to stick with the plan and go alone.
The departure lounge at LAX felt like a foreign country’ as I sat alone, reading my book and listening to everyone else speaking very rapidly in a strange language. I had chosen Aero Peru because it was the cheapest available flight, and it looked like I would be the only gringo on the airplane. But, as I boarded the plane, I was elated to notice a group of Canadian climbers who had been waiting impatiently while their flight stopped in Los Angeles. They had all chosen to wear their double leather boots to avoid overweight fees, and most of them were wearing the original Patagonia jackets, so they were quite easy to spot. The Canadians were very friendly and their Spanish was almost as bad as mine, so we decided to join forces to secure the transportation to Huaraz. Their group was quite large, so we hired a minibus at the airport and headed off into the high Andes.
Peru is an incredible country with some of the most amazing geography in the world. There are dozens of 6,000 meter (19,620 ft.) peaks and hundreds of steep free-flowing rivers that carry the water from the high mountains to the jungles of the Amazon or the stark deserts of the Pacific. The road to Huaraz starts along the beach in Lima and follows a spectacular coastline through the harsh landscape of the Atacama Desert, which is one of the driest areas in the world. The rivers that flow from the high mountains irrigate the valleys, and lush vegetation grows out of the fertile soil, but the rest of the landscape is almost void. There is a farming village at every oasis, and a few small cities by the large rivers, but the rest of the land is just miles and miles of empty dust with a cactus every ten miles or so. The morning fog was starting to clear as we cruised along the magnificent coast in our little bus, and the endless expanse of the great ocean appeared almost magically out of the dense fog. Some large birds were surfing the air currents in front of the huge waves that moved ever-so-smoothly before crashing violently into the rocky shore, and a few small fishing boats bobbed up and down in the ever-moving ocean. The rules of the road are very different in Peru than they are in the States, and our little bus honked its horn loudly as it blasted through the small villages at highway speeds. The blast of the horn meant run for your life, and the locals had quickly adapted. After a hundred miles of coast, we headed east and followed a small river as it wound its way through a very colorful steep-walled canyon. This river flows from Cordillera Blanca (Spanish for “White Range”) and forms many spectacular waterfalls as it plummets about 14,000 feet on its way to the Pacific Ocean. The minibus chugged along as it climbed out of the canyon and finally reached the high plateau between the Cordillera Blanca to the east and the Cordillera Negra (“Black Range”) to the west. The rolling hills resembled the prairies of North Dakota, but the high peaks that towered above them made the mountains of Colorado seem very small. A few thunderclouds loomed on the horizon and a quick-moving squall dampened the air and left a perfect double rainbow to enhance a view that was already stunning. The last of the dozing climbers awakened suddenly, and we all tried to identify the large peaks of the southern Cordillera Blanca, which were glowing brightly in the last rays of the sunset and beckoning us to stand on their summits. Pepi’s Place in downtown Huaraz had already become famous in the climbing world and seemed like the best destination for cheap housing, so we instructed our loyal driver to take us there. Pepi was the son of a hotel owner in Huaraz, and his parents had given him the top floor of their hotel to experiment with his own business. He was very excited about the recent interest in climbing and had decided to go for the low-budget crowd. Peru was very cheap in 1978 and Pepi’s Place was the cheapest place in town. For ten U.S. cents, you could sleep in a large room (with about thirty other people) on a mattress supplied by him and use his showers and toilets. It was the equivalent of an indoor camp IV (Yosemite’s walk in campground) and the social center of the local climbing community. The Canadians seemed to have their own agenda, and I didn’t want to barge in, but Pepi’s place made a great base camp, and I soon met some other travelers who shared my ambitions. I spent the first day exploring the streets of the incredible high altitude city and met a couple of backpackers who were interested in trying to climb an easy peak. Claus was a hardcore backpacker from Austria. He’d been wandering the high mountain trails of Peru for a few months and was being beckoned by the high peaks. His gear was quite marginal, but his spirit was strong and he was used to the high altitude. Tim was a California boy who was also traveling alone and had bagged a few peaks in the Sierras. Together, we became a team and decided that Nevada Pisco would be our first goal. I fell asleep that evening dreaming about high mountains and awoke in the middle of the night to the laughter and chatter of a few drunken European climbers who had just returned from a busy night. One of them was Alan Rouse, whom I had read about in a climbing magazine. He was a very friendly British chap who told me a few stories about some routes that he had done in the Cordillera Huayhuash. I listened in awe. He died in 1986, when a big storm left him stranded near the summit of K2. He had reached the summit before the storm, and was the first Brit to climb that infamous mountain. I was very sad when I heard the news. It was 1978, but John Ricker had already written a guidebook, Yuraq Janka: Guide to the Peruvian Andes, which recommended Pisco as a great warm-up and acclimatization peak. It was 18,800 feet high — almost 5,000 feet higher than anything I had ever climbed — but that was why I had come here, and the route sounded fairly easy. Freeze-dried food did not fit in our budget (and the markets didn’t sell it anyway), so we loaded up three-days worth of canned fish and pasta and prepared to embark on our first expedition. “Go to main park tree blocks that way about sis o’clock and look for truck go to Yanama,” Pepi told us in his broken English. “Tell dem Pisco, and dey leave you by trail. Cost about ten soles (five cents). Buenos suerte (Good luck).” Claus and Tim were already used to the high altitude, and I decided that three days at 12,000 feet was sufficient, so we packed our bags and prepared for an early departure. The truck arrived about seven o’clock, and by eight, it was packed to the gills with a few more climbers, many locals, some cows, and a large number of goats and sheep. We were very happy that we had arrived early and secured a spot near the front of the truck, which had a roll bar to hang on to and a bit of standing room. The truck finally left, but it made a couple of more laps around the park as the driver yelled out the name of the village that was our destination. The load seemed to be full capacity already, but I guess that concept is just a relative term, and the driver wanted as many fares as he could get. A few more people jumped on, and the crowded vehicle finally lurched down the empty highway toward Yungay and the big mountains. The sun was shining brightly and glistened off the high glaciers of Huascarán and the three spectacular summits of the Huandoys. Some of the locals tried to converse with us, and we managed to convey a few thoughts in spite of our bad Spanish. Most of our fellow riders were very poor, and to them, the idea of doing anything energetic that didn’t provide money seemed very foolish. “You climb the mountain por gusto (pleasure)?” asked one of the peasants who spoke a little English. This frivolous waste of energy seemed to amaze him. He would hike up to the glacier with his burros to retrieve ice that he could sell for profit, but the idea of expending energy and risking one’s life to climb a mountain for fun seemed to baffle him. Most of the locals called us loco gringo alpinistas, but they were very friendly and seemed to be somewhat in awe of us. After a few miles, we left the main road and headed up a very steep and rocky jeep trail that wound it’s way between Huascarán and the Huandoys. As we entered a steep canyon that separated the two giant mountains, the scenery was truly incredible and offered intermittent glimpses of the high peaks that towered above us. A very large rock wall that had probably never been climbed loomed above on the Huandoy side, and a few lushly vegetated streams cascaded off of the huge walls and sprayed the green valley with a fine mist. “I like these trucks a lot better than the buses,” remarked Claus, as we bounced along the rocky road and struggled to keep our balance. “They are not as dusty, and I’d rather stand up than sit in those horrible seats.” He had been traveling in South America for a few months and had experienced plenty of bad transportation. The truck suddenly came to a screeching halt. A small line of vehicles was waiting impatiently for the local road crew to remove a large boulder that had fallen onto the road. The blocked area was one switchback above us, and we watched in amazement as the bulldozer driver accidentally pushed the giant boulder over the edge of the steep embankment. The huge rock gained velocity as it bounced down the steep slope and finally crashed into the side of a truck that was not too far in front of us. The owner of the truck was obviously very angry, but the path was clear, so we drove around him as he argued intensely with the road crew. Our heavily loaded truck lurched from side to side as it struggled to climb the steep road, and another high mountain appeared over the ridge that had been blocking its view. “Pisco! Pisco!” a few of the other passengers yelled, as they poked us and pointed to the snow-covered peak. A few moments later, the truck came to an abrupt stop, and we were told that this was where we would start our climb. I dug out my copy of Yuraq Janka and quickly reread the route description. “I don’t see any trails, but it looks like we want to head up that ridge,” I told Claus and Tim, and we shouldered our heavy packs and started scrambling up toward the glacier that covered the mountain. “Wow! Look at that!” Tim exclaimed, as he pointed to a giant bird that was soaring nonchalantly in the crystal-clear skies of the high Andes. It looked like a small airplane, but it was actually a Giant Condor, the biggest bird that any of us had ever seen. We watched in awe as it gently circled above us, and its presence greatly enhanced the magical mood that the high mountains had already given us. The air was thin, but the excitement of those great peaks invigorated our very souls, and we moved rapidly upward in the warm afternoon sun. We camped under a large overhanging rock and spent the last hours of daylight preparing our gear for an early morning climb. None of us had ever experienced a glacier before, but I had carefully read Hazards in Mountaineering, by Wilhelm Paulcke and Helmut Dumler, and felt somewhat aware of the dangers that lurked in this unfamiliar terrain. The moraine at the bottom of the glacier was the crux of the climb, and it consisted of a seemingly endless field of very steep little ridges that were formed by the ice, dirt, and rocks that were dragged under the receding glacier. Some of the slopes were about forty-five degrees and were definitely the most dangerous part of the climb. Huge boulders hung in limbo on the steep slopes, waiting to come crashing down on anyone who was unlucky and careless enough to ignore the risks. No one wanted to be in their path when they left their perches, so we climbed very carefully up and down the steep ice and dirt with our crampons and breathed a huge sigh of relief when we finally reached the glacier. We were the only climbers that day, but the weather had been clear for at least a week, and a very obvious trail wound its way up the ridge to the summit. The sculptures that had been formed by the wind, sun, and ice were truly incredible, and our small group enjoyed them in total amazement as we wandered through this new frontier. The sun was shining like a welding torch, and the biggest hazard of the climb seemed to be sunburn. We were above 18,000 feet, but I was very happy to be wearing a straw hat and a thin shirt. My head was throbbing from the high altitude, but the excitement of the big mountain and a bit of summit fever pushed us quickly forward, and we arrived on the summit before ten. The view is one of the main attractions of Nevado Pisco. It is very close to the magnificent — and also very difficult — south face of Chacraraju and provides incredible vistas of the other large peaks in the range. My headache started to ease, and the weather was perfect, so we lingered on the summit for nearly an hour. We had just climbed the stairway to heaven and wanted to stay, but the nights were very cold at this altitude, and the trepidation we had about crossing the glacial moraine again was weighing heavily on our minds. The warm sun had made it even more hazardous, and we saw a few rocks fall, but we managed to cross safely. After we set up camp for the night, we enjoyed a huge dinner and a relaxed evening basking in the glow of our achievement. The dawn was clear once again, and we arose early and hiked casually back down to the road. Another truck drove by within a few minutes and we bounced our way back to Huaraz. We were tired and a bit sunburnt, but our spirits had been touched by the Gods of the high mountains, and they had left us in an exuberant state. Pepi’s Place was hopping with a constant stream of mountaineers who were returning with exciting tales or planning new excursions. A very good fish dinner with a quart of beer was less than a dollar, so we had grand fiestas in the local restaurants every evening and explored a few of the local hot springs. Two other Americans had checked into the hotel while I was gone, and we soon met in the crowded bedroom. Pete and Chris were from Arizona and happened to know some of my acquaintances back home, so they invited me to join them on their next expedition. We also met an experience Austrian climber named Hanse, who decided to join us. They had heard about a relatively new route on Alpamayo that sounded very good and somewhat reasonable for our skill level. It was a moderate route in a remote valley, but the logistics were a bit more complicated than for Pisco. A six-hour bus ride dropped us at a small cafe in the middle of nowhere, but a delivery truck supposedly stopped there in the afternoon and took riders into the valley. After a sketchy lunch and a few hours of waiting, a flatbed truck arrived, and the owner of the restaurant told us to jump on. Pete spoke a little bit of Spanish, and the driver seemed to understand our map, so he agreed to drop us off at the point that Pepi had recommended. The truck was loaded with sacks of flour, cases of Coca-Cola, and a few other staples, but there was plenty of room for four gringos. The sacks of flour made decent pillows, and we made ourselves very comfortable as we bounced along the high-mountain road in the bright sunshine. “This is where you wanted to get off,” the driver shouted out in Spanish. “Good luck.” He stopped the truck and pointed to an empty valley. Pepi had told us about a small village in this remote valley that would probably have burros for hire, but it was nowhere in sight. As we loaded our heavy packs, it seemed like we were watching the only sign of civilization drive away down the dusty road. “Wow! This is definitely the middle of nowhere,” Chris exclaimed. “I sure hope we find a village.” We stopped to ponder the vast emptiness of the remote plateau that would be our home for at least a day. We trudged along in the warm afternoon sun, and as we entered the valley, we spotted a lone herdsman, so we stopped and tried to ask him about the village. The people of the high mountains still speak Ketchua, the old Inca language, but most of them understand a little bit of Spanish, and the word burro caught his attention. “Si, burros,” he replied with a smile, as he pointed up the valley. Soon, we found a small village and decided to set up our camp just outside of it on a grassy meadow next to a small stream. That evening, we ventured into the village and inquired about hiring burros for the next day. They seemed to understand burros and soles, and after about an hour of bartering, we reached an agreement. Then, we wandered back to our camp to enjoy a good dinner and a very quiet evening. The clear dark skies of this remote plateau provided the perfect ingredients for incredible starlight, and we gazed in awe at thousands of stars and constellations that none of us had ever seen. The morning was clear and sunny and we quickly ate breakfast and packed up our camp in anticipation of the burros, but they did not come. After about two hours of waiting, Pete wandered into the village to find out what was happening. He returned after about an hour in a somewhat disgruntled mood. “I didn’t really understand what they said, but they know that we want burros. They said that they will be here tomorrow, so we’ll see.” It was a relaxed day in pristine surroundings, but we did not feel very relaxed. The perfect weather wasn’t going to last forever, and we had come to climb a mountain. The next morning dawned clear and bright again, but the burros did not arrive. “I’m quite sure that they understood what we want,” remarked Pete. “They have all the time in the world and are just playing games with us. And I don’t want to sit here any longer.” Everyone agreed, and we sadly loaded our ridiculously heavy packs and started walking toward the base camp. Within moments, two strings of burros arrived, and their owners started arguing about whose burros would carry the loads. They grabbed our packs and placed them on the reluctant animals. Soon, though, they resolved the argument, and we breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then, at last, we headed off toward the big mountain. The trail followed a small creek, and we trekked up a remote grassy valley that was very sparsely populated. The sun was glimmering off of the glaciers of the high peaks, and while the burros struggled with our heavy packs, we had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery and take photos. The grassland became lush as we climbed higher, and we gasped with excitement as Alpamayo came in to view. It was more spectacular than we had imagined, and the late afternoon light was glistening off of the huge cornice that marked its summit. “Wow! Look at that cornice! It’s huge! I think our route goes right next to it,” remarked Chris, as we all shivered with fright. Most of our experience had been on desert rocks, and at that moment, the new hazards of the high mountains seemed overwhelming. We stopped at a high alpine lake near the base of the big mountain, and said goodbye to our burro drivers, who wished us luck and rushed off in the late afternoon light. The summit was hidden from our camp, but the constant sound of ice and rocks crashing into the lake reminded us of where we were, and sleeping was very difficult. The crud that I had contacted at Pepi’s Place had come back to haunt me, and I laid awake with gurgling lungs and an angry stomach. We awoke at four to prepare for an ascent, but my cough was getting worse, and my intestines were still angry. “I’m really sick, and I’m just going to slow you down, so I’m gonna go down to a lower altitude,” I told my companions, as I stuck my head into the frigid air. “I’ll sleep in and then start walking, so I’ll see you in Huaraz. Good luck. Be careful.” My friends started up the glacier in the early darkness, while I returned to the comfort of my tent to await the dawn. There was another route back to Huaraz that was easier to negotiate, but the penalty was a twenty-eight-hour bus ride at the end of the journey. My survival instincts could think only of the present, so I packed my gear and started walking toward Pomabamba. My cough eased as I lost altitude, but my intestines continued to gurgle, and the twenty-five-mile trek was interrupted by numerous stops. My energy level was fairly low, but the path was mostly downhill, and the scenery was still great. Occasionally, I turned around, gazed at the high peaks, and tried to imagine how my friends were faring on the big mountain. I wished that I were with them to share the adventure. My map showed a high alpine lake a short distance from the trail and my strength was returning, so I climbed over a small saddle and camped alone by the shore. The glaciers were calving and the crashing ice was very noisy, but my exhausted body fell asleep instantly, and I awoke refreshed in another incredible place. A very tired and dirty climber came walking into Pomabamba the next day and stopped at a very large house to inquire about lodging. The owner of the house was having lunch with his family and informed me that it was not a hotel. But he offered me a seat on his porch, and one of his sons brought me a portion of fresh fish. After a delicious lunch, his son led me to a local hotel, and we were followed by a parade of local children. Pomabamba was a beautiful village, with adobe houses and clay-tiled roofs, and the way that I was treated made me feel that very few gringos had passed this way before. The owner of the hotel told me about a local hot spring, so after I settled into my room, I walked off to explore it. It was a very pleasant bath, and while I was soaking in one of the pools, I was very shocked to see Pete, Chris, and Hanse walk into the building. “Hola amigos! What happened?” I asked. “I think we were on the wrong route, or else it is a lot harder than anything that we have ever done,” Pete answered. “The scenery was awesome, but it seemed really dangerous, and we couldn’t see a clean route to the summit. There was a lot of falling ice, and a large chunk nearly hit us, so we decided to bail and come here.” We had a happy reunion at the hot spring and bought our bus tickets for the next day. “Wow! Claus was right about trucks being better than buses,” I said, as I struggled to breathe in my cramped seat. The bus was completely packed, and there seemed to be more dust inside than there was outside. After a few hours of bouncing along, I was finally overtaken by fatigue and managed to fall asleep. “OK, I confess. I did it. I did it!” I dreamt that I was being tortured, and I couldn’t get off of the bus unless I confessed, but it was just a dream and the torture continued. When I awoke, the bus was stopped with a flat tire, and everyone rushed out into the fresh air while the driver removed the tire and repaired it. The tire was completely bald and some threads were showing through, but it was quickly patched and we were back in the torture chamber much too soon. About twenty-six hours (and four flat tires) later, we arrived in Huaraz and stumbled up the stairs to our mattresses. One of the Canadian climbers, Oswald, was a doctor and when he heard me coughing, he prescribed a few days rest and an antibiotic. He was also looking for a partner to climb Huascarán, so we started to plan the logistics. While our route up the biggest mountain in Peru sounded fairly easy, it required a few nights of camping on the glacier, so we decided to hire two high-altitude porters to help us. Pepi helped us find them, and they arrived at our hotel, ready to embark, the next morning. One of them did not seem very well equipped, but he assured us that he had climbed Huascarán before and had everything that he needed. We accepted his word and boarded the bus. The one-hour bus ride took us to what remained of the old city of Yungay. A huge avalanche, triggered by an earthquake, had buried the entire city in 1970, and only a handful of survivors had stayed in the ominous graveyard setting. One of the survivors had a string of burros, and he was very happy to haul our gear up to the glacier. After our packs were unloaded, he chipped out a few blocks of ice from the glacier and hauled them back to the village to sell for refrigeration. We camped at the base of the glacier and enjoyed a very pleasant evening in the shadow of the mountain that we hoped to ascend. It felt great to be healthy and back on a big mountain, and the weather was still perfect, so we started walking up the glacier at dawn. We meandered through a great maze of crevasses and amazing sculptures that the wind and sun had formed from the melting ice. The conditions were perfect, and the route was obvious, but I could only imagine what it would be like to cross this glacier after a fresh snowstorm with bad visibility. That night, we camped at the base of a large ice fall called the Candeletta, which was the biggest hazard of this route. I had stripped down to a thin shirt and straw hat during the day, but the temperatures plummeted when the orange ball touched the horizon. We quickly donned our winter parkas and sipped tea while we watched the alpenglow explode on the three summits of Huandoy. We awoke early and continued upward through another maze of ice that was even more spectacular than the one we’d traversed the day before — and also a lot more dangerous. The Candeletta was formed by a large glacier that was moving over a steep slope. The changing gradient of the slope had broken the glacier into large chunks of ice called seracs, which gradually moved down the slope and could be very unstable. The lead porter was very strong, but about halfway through the ice field, we started to notice that our first impression of the other porter had been correct. His pace was slowing, and it was not a good place to stop, so we shared part of his load and urged him onward. We were all roped together, so the slowest climber set the pace, and we trudged onward for another hour before we reached a spot that looked safe enough to take a break. Oswald was learning Spanish very rapidly, and he was communicating quite well with the porters. “He is very tired, and his head is throbbing,” Oswald said of the weakened porter. “But I don’t see any critical symptoms. We can’t send him back through the ice fall alone, and it isn’t that much farther to camp, so he wants to keep going.” We had a short lunch and distributed most of his weight before continuing onward. The elevation of camp two was about twenty-thousand feet, but the air was warm, and we all took siestas in the bright afternoon sun. We were camped at an altitude that matched or exceeded most of the local peaks, and the sunset views were astounding. The fiery alpine glow was even better than the night before, and after a hearty dinner, I slept like a baby and awoke in the dark to prepare for the summit. “Hey Oswald! It’s time to go. How are you doing?” I asked. “Not so good. I’m really tired, and I didn’t sleep very well. The porter is also weak, so I’m going to stay and watch him and take a rest day,” he replied. “Sorry to hear that. I guess I’ll go alone then. I feel good, and the route looks easy from here.” “Good luck. Be careful.” After a quick breakfast, I shouldered my pack and headed off alone in the crisp morning air. The first rays of the morning sun sparkled off the summits of the high peaks, and I watched in awe as the dawn erupted in this spectacular landscape. The air was getting thinner, and I struggled to set a pace that I could sustain. I tried one breath per step, and then two, but I still got winded, so I finally tried one breath per step for about thirty steps and a short stop for hyperventilating. The rhythmic breathing was somewhat hypnotic, and my body settled into a mild trance as I wandered ever higher. “Awe!” What a beautiful world, and what an awesome place to be wandering. Time seems to stop for a moment, and the only things that seem to exist are the mountain and me. Breathing is hard, but it feels good, and the cold wind feels fresh on my face. The summit comes into sight, and I trudge onward with a new burst of energy until I reach it. The upward journey is finally over, and I sit down on my pack to enjoy the view. Two hundred degrees of mountains span from north to south, and I am standing above them all. It would be easy to spend the whole afternoon here. But the breeze is cool, and I remind myself that I am alone, and my journey is only half finished. Heading down is like a dream, because the path is easy, and the views are the same but different as I look down instead of up. Each mountain creates a giant shadow, and the contrasting light in the deep valleys is constantly changing. The sun is still shining brightly as I wander back into camp and greet my friends, who are just awakening from an afternoon siesta in the warm sun. Oswald and the strong porter headed out early the next day, while I took my turn at nursing the sick one, who was starting to get used to the altitude. They reached the summit early, and we wandered back down through the ice fall to another incredible camp. The next day’s journey brought us back to dry ground, and it was a very welcome sight after six days on the ice. A quick bus ride took us back to Pepi’s Place, where we enjoyed a very happy reunion. Pete and Chris had just returned from a very exciting journey up one of the Huandoys with some of the Canadians, and Hanse was eager to go to Bolivia, so we shared a great dinner with lots of beer and great stories and started to plan our next adventures.I was dreaming about lofty mountains, when I was suddenly awakened by an early morning phone call. “Hi. It’s me Glenn.”
“Hey Glenn! Where are you?”
“I’m back in Phoenix. My knee was sore and I got robbed, so I decided to come home.”
“Oh man! What a bummer!” I replied, in a state of shock. I had been planning to fly to Lima, Peru in two days, and he was going to meet me at the airport. I was completing a small construction project to help pay for the trip, and since he had more time than I did, he had left two weeks earlier. He had planned to scope out the situation, and have the logistics figured out when I arrived.
This was my first trip out of the country (not counting a few short trips to Mexico), so I had been extremely excited to go, but I was quite concerned about the current situation. My Spanish vocabulary consisted of about four words, and I had heard many stories about the hardships of traveling in Peru. Now, I was faced with the reality of traveling alone and not having a partner for the big mountains.
But the two of us had been planning this trip for more than a year, and the thought of turning back now was unbearable. So I decided to stick with the plan and go alone.
The departure lounge at LAX felt like a foreign country. I sat alone, reading my book and listening to everyone else speaking very rapidly in a strange language. I had chosen Aero Peru because it was the cheapest available flight, and it looked like I would be the only gringo on the airplane.
But, as I boarded the plane, I was elated to notice a group of Canadian climbers who had been waiting impatiently while their flight stopped in Los Angeles. They had all chosen to wear their double leather boots to avoid overweight fees, and most of them were wearing the original Patagonia jackets, so they were quite easy to spot. The Canadians were very friendly and their Spanish was almost as bad as mine, so we decided to join forces to secure the transportation to Huaraz. Their group was quite large, so we hired a minibus at the airport and headed off into the high Andes.
Peru is an incredible country with some of the most amazing geography in the world. There are dozens of 6,000 meter (19,620 ft.) peaks and hundreds of steep free-flowing rivers that carry the water from the high mountains to the jungles of the Amazon or the stark deserts of the Pacific.
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