After the trauma of the altitude issues with Wooksie, we didn’t take the decision to push on with the Inca Trail trek lightly, but we knew this was probably our only chance to do it, but the chances of failure were quite high for Wooksie. We checked into the pre trek meeting in Cusco the night before, looking forward to meeting our fellow adventurers.
We gathered in the meeting room to find we were travelling with 2 Canadians, 2 Swiss, a Dane and a group of 7 from one US family. During the introductions we discovered the Americans were from Utah and Mormons, brilliant, we were spending 3 days trekking with a bunch of bible punchers – could this get any worse.
We confirmed we were all in good health and ready to go, so next morning we were picked up at our hotel at 4am, and headed to Ollantaytambo trail head, the place where all those group photos of enthusiastic people are taken. However, we were one Canadian short, one of them had started to suffer from altitude sickness the night before and decided not to go.
When we got there it quickly became apparent there was a problem. The guide went to the Wardens office to collect our passes and didn’t come back. We then noticed huddles of guides around the office in deep conversation.
Our fellow adventurers formed huddles and started to speculate on what was wrong, had someone died on the trail, was there a guide strike, had Machu Pichu collapsed, were the porters on strike?
Eventually our guide returned, gathered us together and did an athletic leap up on to a table. The trail was closed, apparently this had never happened before, but there had been a fire at high altitude on Dead Woman’s Pass and it was impassable.
I put my head in my hands in total disbelief, for 22 years we had been looking forward to doing this trek, and the day we get here it is closed for the first time ever, I just couldn’t believe my luck.
Later when discussing with our fellow trekkers, they all joked about what a desolate image I cut, but it really did feel like my cursed ability to wreak chaos and disasters had caught up with me again. To be honest, it was a bigger disaster for the Americans, who had booked a year in advance, but they presumably accepted it as an act of God!
It then transpired that the guides and wardens were plotting an alternative option. There was an old trail which went around the mountain rather than over the top through Dead Woman’s Pass.
Obviously, the trekking company didn’t want to lose the revenue and we all wanted to go, so a plan was hatched to take this alternative route that still delivered us to the Sun Gate to see day break over Machu Picchu on the 3rd morning. There was also a chance that the Pass may open later that day once the fire was under control.
We set off along the route, which initially takes you alongside the train line that runs to Machu Picchu, we then crossed the river and followed the a relatively gentle trail along the side of the valley. I was amazed at the size of our operation, for every trekker there were at least 2 porters carrying the camping equipment, food and cooking utensils.
In Nepal the treks used established wooden camps, so I was a bit surprised to see that the entire trek carried it’s own supplies and equipment over the mountains, these little Peruvians were strong!
After a mile or so we started our first climb up into the hills and it became immediately apparent that we had another problem, Wooksie had been making reasonable progress but as soon as we hit a climb she slowed right down to a crawl, she is a woman of steel and never moans, but I could see in her face she was hurting.
After a couple of painfully slow ascents, it became obvious that she was in no fit state to climb the Dead Woman’s Pass and that this fire, and the alternative route may have been the luckiest break ever.
We started to see the failed trekkers making their way back down, individuals that looked like they had been broken by the experience, some walking, some on horseback and in once case, hardly conscious.
As the day went on, I became more and more grateful that the Pass was closed, in fact my big concern was that they may declare the Pass open. I was watching the guides intently as there was a lot of radio communications going on. One trek was attempting the Pass to see if it was safe.
We stopped for lunch in a large shed, the timing was perfect as we missed out on walking through torrential rains. Whilst having lunch the pioneer group that had tried the pass came in, it was impassable.
The fire had burned up the vegetation which binds the rocks together on the mountain side, without the vegetation the rocks were lose and the forces of gravity were causing them to dislodge and cascading down the hillside, so the risk was not the fire but the threat of being hit by a falling rock.
With this information I was even more grateful we were taking the old route, and after lunch we visited one of the Inca terraced hillsides to amaze ourselves at their engineering and landscape shaping skills, whilst Wooksie rested under a tree. She was getting stronger all the time but not strong enough to climb a mountain and now we knew that she would be able to make it on this lower route.
Then we headed off for more walking and we made it to our first camp late in the afternoon, 10km covered today, but we knew it would be tougher the next day. One of the best thing about treks is the company of our fellow travellers, our Mormon companions turned out be really great people.
It was actually me that invoked the conversations about the Mormon lifestyle and values, unlike the common view of Americans that they are insular, uneducated and don’t travel, these guys travelled a lot. The grown up children had all been missionaries in Central America or Africa, were really well educated, and seemed to be able to talk about anything, so were great companions.
At the end of the trek I was left reflecting how our drift away from religion meant we had lost many good values.
That night, the porters set the tents up, set up the canteen and cooked an amazing meal then challenged the walkers to a football match, which we declined !
We had a great time chatting with the others over dinner. Some of the younger trekkers were very disappointed about missing out on the climb, but Todd, the father of the Mormon family was struggling with a bad knee and Wooksie were relieved, I’m not sure either of them would have made it.
