I saw snow today. Did you?

I don´t really know what the weather is like back in Detroit, but I´m pretty sure that people were using the golf courses for golfing instead of cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing (or walking on tennis rackets as the Israeli I met in the bus put it). In Cashapampa, Peru, it´s a different story. Although I don´t know whether or not they have golf courses, if they were to, they would have kept the clubs in the bag today.

(By the way, Cashapampa might be one of the greatest names for a city I have ever come across)

To get out of the chronological order of these email journals once again, I would like to give you a recap of the 3-day, 31-mile trek I completed this morning in the Andes (My guide book says the trek is typically completed in 4-5 days and, even at that time, lists it as a moderate-to-difficult venture). While I´m not a natural-born mountain man, I wouldn´t consider myself a greenhorn when it comes to the outdoors (staffed a trip to Algonquin Park, family hiking trip to Canadian Rockies, plenty of skiing experience, two brothers with Ramah tripping staff experience, seen ¨Alive¨).

I organized the trip with a guide from the Casa de Guias in Huaraz on Thursday morning (aka met two Canadians who were planning on doing the same trek and a guide) and prepared to leave the next day. The trail that we were on is the most famous trek in these parts and is considered one of the most beautiful in the world (it´s called Santa Cruz Trek). Now, there is a lot that happened on this trek, and telling you about everything would take too much time (plus the internet cafe is going to close soon and I have a bus to Lima to catch).

A cross between Curly, Smeegel, and Drake Savage

By far, the most interesting and controversial figure of our quartet of trekkers was the guide (what´s controversial about two French Canadiens who don´t support separatism?). Let me give you a little bit of background on Victorino.

He´s been a guide in these mountains for thirty years. He was part of the first graduating class of official guides and worked as a porter and donkey driver before that. In 1984, he and guide friend of his scaled the 6,700+ meter Huascaran Mountain in 12 hours and made it home for lunch. When he takes tourists on this mountain, it takes seven days. (He says it´s a world record and that he has the newspaper at home to prove it. I´m not going to doubt him on this one.).

He said that his father, grandfather, and uncle all died while climbing mountains in this range. He has three sons, but his wife won´t let them become guides because she doesn´t want them to die in the mountains. She´s already accepted that Victorino is going to die in the mountains.

He also likes repeating the same thing over and over again. I heard the same story about how he set a world record about six times. He also repeated the same joke about how he goes at a Guide pace while the tourists all go at at Gringo pace (guide pace is about 70 times that of a Gringo pace). The first time it might have been funny. But at the end of the trip it got demeaning.

He also likes thinking about what Victorino wants and not what the clients want. Like when he goes off on his own 400 meters ahead of me, when he doesn´t really explain anything about the trail or mountains, and when he decides to burn his plastic trash in a camp fire (part of the zero trace policy involves carrying a trash bag for your waste).

Here´s the line that I have been saving up to close this section. I thought of it as soon as I saw him: He knows these mountains better than he knows his sons. He said he has done the Santa Cruz Trek about 400 times in his life.

Hypox-Ian

I am so happy I got to use that pun in this blog. So, I don´t really know what elevation we were at in Baños, but I set a new record for heights I climbed to. At 4,750 meters (over 15,000), I now know what it feels like to be in thin air. When I go skiing, I have never really felt the different in oxygen at altitude. As I neared the top of this mountain, I did.

I would have to stop every few steps just to catch my breath. But, using the one-step-at-a-time philosophy, I reached the summit.

I´ve never seen so much livestock in a national park

I don´t think I´ve ever seen any livestock in a national park. In the United States and Canada (places where I have national park experience), I don´t recall seeing cows grazing in fields as campers trek through the wilderness.

In Huascaran National Park, it would be unusual if you didn´t come across a cow or donkey every 400 meters. That´s actually what helped keep me on the trail. And these animals roam on their own and aren´t really tended to by any type of human or herder.

It´s also popular to have donkeys and horses go along with trekking trips to carry equipment and be there in the case of an emergency.

I don´t care if I am lying in shit

I´m not sure if my body has been pushed like it has the last few days. When I completed hiking for a day, I would be so relieved that I would simply collapse. However, I had to fall over in a way to avoid the manure and cowpile that dots (more than dots, actually) that campsites. Two days, I was so exhausted that I told the Canadians: ¨I don´t care if I am lying in horse shit because it feels so good.¨ Also, given how numb my body was from all the walking, I probably wouldn´t have noticed it.

I threw a snowball today

Nothing really to add to that one, except that it missed its intended target.

Ruby would be proud

We spent two nights in tents and both nights we were in our tents before sunset.

Wanna get higher

So we passed a campsite near the peak of Punta Union called Taulipampa. My obvious reaction was: wanna get higher? (Towlie from South Park if you don´t understand)

Well, that´s about it so I don´t miss my bus.