Peru 2005: Day 5 — Over Dead Woman’s Pass

DAY 5: Inca Trail, over Dead Woman's Pass

Starting a Long Day

This was the longest day and the hardest day by far. Wakeup call was at some ungodly hour (5:30 I think). In spite of the nonstop rain, the inside of our tent remained dry. So, at 5:30am (I think) the porters started bringing around the plastic bins of hot water (one per person) to rinse off the trail slime and wipe one’s face. Shortly thereafter, in the rain, they came around bringing the table with them and all the fixin’s for coca tea and hot chocolate. I was starting to learn the Milo con Leche con Sucar to make the tasty wake up treat. No more fever for me at this point.

I shrugged on my clothes for the morning (for the record: long convertible hiking pants, waterproof rain pants, hiking shirt, wet fleece sweater and rain shell and alpaca fleece hat). Steph had on my comfy fleece lined wool hat (in place of her itchy scratchy wool hat) and one more layer on the top.

When we got to the mess tent for breakfast, we got our real surprise. Within 24 hours it appeared that 1/4 of the trekkers had gotten sick and weren’t really eating. The signs seemed to be dysentery-like (vomiting, diarrhea) and not altitude related. Breakfast was tasty (although I forget what it was) and warm and the mess tent was fairly dry.

After breakfast, I got my second surprise. The porters were carrying the chemical toilets down towards the nearby stream to dump them and clean them out. Forget uphill and dig a hole….I believe they even rinsed the toilets in the stream. Nasty.

Well, on the trail early (6:30am, I think) we had 1,000 downhill then nearly 4,000 uphill then another 2,000 feet downhill and nearly 8.5 miles to go. We started down back towards Huayllabamba and through the tight washed out donkey-ox-mud-feces trail and past a small village and several football (soccer) fields.

Huayllabamba Checkpoint

Stopping in Huayllabamba and a little warmed up at this point, everybody took a chance to adjust and prepare the the climb uphill towards lunch. That last shot was taken at the Huyllabamba checkpoint. This is where our guides handed in our trail passes and all the porters were weighed in. Yes, that’s right, the Peruvian government is doing a great thing and making sure porters don’t overcarry. I believe the weight limit is 40kg per porter (which is still a hell of a lot of weight!) but I am surely wrong on this number.

Although there was a slight mist of rain, people were glad to have removed a layer of clothing. The constant slow and steady uphill meant a lot of body heat, which meant the rain was drying as soon as it hit us. Regardless, for the record I was still wearing the same stuff…although I did unzip my rain pants up to my knees and then tuck them inside my socks to allow my socks to wick some moisture away (boy howdy was I styling!) I also made sure my pit-zips were wide open, my rain shell front was halfway down and my fleece was opened up as well.

Climbing Towards Lunch

The climb was fairly gentle up towards our rest stop that day where Steph and Meredith chomped on apples. Since Steph and I were hanging in back the entire time, we didn’t have to stop too long (and get chilled….turns out to be a great plan). The trail this morning can be psychologically divided into 3 sections. The first section was mellow and gradual (to the rest stop), the second section was a stairmaster on crack, and the third section was somewhere between a stairmaster on crack and a stairmaster on a triple soy latte.

So, anyway, the trail picked up and got busy working our booties shortly after the rest stop. We finally got to see row after row after row after row after row after row (x100) Inca steps. It was mostly tree-covered and “shady” (from the rain) and probably would have been a gorgeous hike on a clear day. Still hanging in the back-of-the-bus and encouraging our fellow travelers to keep on treading (some were suffering altitude nausea at this point) we snapped this picture of a few drowning trekker-rats.

Along the way up a super steep crack smoking delirious section of steps (the Incas believed that all steps should be 18 to 24 inches in height….making the walking stick a gift from the Sapa Inca himself) we came across a women being laid on the ground rather quickly. She was on top of a poncho and a guide was lifting her legs in the air up towards her chest. Behind us, Jim (our ER doctor) offered his help. We left the scene (nothing for us to do) and continued scaling 24″ steps at our leisure. To finish the story, turns out this woman was NOT drinking water (something you have to remind yourself to do in the rain) AND she was suffering from hypothermia. In her dehydrated, hypothermic state, they got her on a porter’s back, he carried her up towards lunch (30 minutes+ away) where they stabilized her and then carried her back down the mountain towards Huayllabamba (and most likely off the trail).

As we got close to lunch, 2 things became painfully obvious to me. First, we were getting higher up and so the wind was coming down the valley a little faster. Without as much tree cover, we were getting cold! Second, my stomach was not happy (in a TooMuchInformation sort of way). Steph mocks my pain in this photo….but my pain was real.

Not many photos from the next part, since the rain was heavy and the wind was constant and I was cold and I had to find a bathroom or ruin my only pair of rain pants. At last, shivering and desperate we came across our guide at Llulluchapampa. They told us two pieces of news. First, the good, there was a bathroom about 200 yards away. Second, the bad, we still had 10 minutes of hiking up the unprotected high altitude alpine meadow (marshy windy rainy cold) to get to our lunch tent.

Well, along with the good news comes more bad. I managed to get inside the bathroom shelter (ceramic tile lined concrete building) to find the toilets were the squatting types. Sure, they flushed, but when your legs have just taken you from 9,500 to 12,500 feet they don’t hold a squat so well. The real bad news (TMI…skip to the next paragraph if you are squeamish) was whatever had tripped up my stomach caused me to “expel with quite a bit of force” as I squatted there. Details? You want details? Well if you really do….I have never in my life peed out my nether regions in such a manner with such distance. Thankfully, I had a completely full pack of kleenex and several unused handiwipes.

After that, I wasn’t feeling too hungry for lunch. We started trekking up through Llulluchapampa and the wind tunnel valley towards our mess tent. It was a good 10+ minutes and we were cold, beyond shivering even. The valley around there is flat bottomed and wide and climbs steadily towards a dead end (above which sits Dead Woman’s Pass). We were extremely relieved when we finally found our mess tents, at the end of the Llulluchapampa valley at some 12,800+ feet.

Lunch at Llulluchapampa

Well, the mess tent was a mixed blessing indeed. The clouds were descending, the snow level (typically 16,000 feet) had dropped to 13,500 and the wind was blowing. We zipped up the mess tent but it was not warm, we were not dry, and it was definitely drafty. As we sat there for lunch, the situation was clearly deteriorating. I was not getting any warmer (in fact, I was drinking tea as fast as they could bring it) and I was not able to eat much more than the double-shot of immodium. For the record, Steph ate more than me for the next several meals…something that is absolutely inconceivable!!

There was one piece of outstanding news out of all this. Our guides had intelligently made the porters wait for us at lunch. The porters had been told to set up a tent with all of our bags waiting us. This would allow us to change at lunch (and also gave the 40 or so porters a dry place to stand).

Change is what I did!! And the tent with the porters was toasty warm (lots of bodies) and quite cramped. Both Steph and I found our duffel bags in a sea (literally…a 20ft diameter tent with a central poled roof that was full of standing porters and duffel bags 3 layers deep) of duffel bags.

I put on just about everything I owned for the hike up to the summit. For the record, I had on the following gear at this point: long convertible hiking pants, waterproof rain pants (the same), medium weight thermal top, technical t-shirt, black medium weight thermal turtleneck, long sleeve button down, fleece (wet) and rain jacket, gloves and fleece lined alpaca hat. 6 layers….and I was to remain cold for another 15 minutes and 200 vertical feet.

With everyone changed and the mess tent in a complete state of disarray (the wind had uprooted poles, knocked several poles down forcing us to hold the tent walls up and had even sent one pole INTO the tent when the fabric gave way)…I shall digress for one moment.

Digression: Surviving Blisters

Remember I had mentioned earlier about surviving blisters. Well, after a decade and countless methods I finally figured it out. In the past I have tried every single thing. I have tried awesome shoes, cheap shoes, heavy shoes and light shoes. I have tried thin socks and thick socks. I have tried single, double and triple socks. I have tried synthetic and natural (wool) fibers. I have tried capiline and wannabeline and all sorts of liner socks. I have tried blister gaurds with some success (compeed works the best) and moleskin (SUCKS) and vaseline.

And I finally figured it all out.

First, I went to REI and spent 2 hours trying on every single shoe they had. I was looking for the deepest heel cup imaginable and certain brands just don’t have that. With every pair of shoes, I tied them both tight and loose and then stood on my toes on the 45 degree vertical “rock” they have there. If I felt ANY friction or heat on my heel, I tossed the shoes aside. The poor sales poeple thought I was nuts (but they aren’t the ones to have to hike 30 miles with blisters 2 inches across….seriously…I get blisters that are as big as 2 inches when I’m hiking….and they bleed…and it sucks).

Second, I broke them in with 2 months to go. Steph and I made weekly hikes of 8-10 miles with plenty of vertical. I actually don’t think that this helped all that much in the grand scheme of things.

Third, I tried lots of different liner socks. Not all liner socks are made equal, mind you. I have found a pair that really seemed to do the trick…the gobe liners by wigwam. The reason??? They are 100% polypropiline. “Polypro” is some darn slippery stuff (it’s not teflon good, but it’s a close second…someday they’ll figure out how to make durable fibers from polytetrafluoroethylene [PTFE = teflon] but they haven’t yet). The difference seemed to be in that last 5%. Most liner socks are a blend of nylon (terrible high friction material) and polypro. Those liner socks don’t work for me, and start hot spots after about an hour of hiking. On our test hikes, these 100% polypro socks appeared to be doing the trick.

Finally, and most importantly, along with a fresh pair of liner socks, I put antiperspirant on my feet every morning. Smelled good and worked in two ways. First, the antipersp kept my feet from becoming too wet—making the skin soft and more susceptible to blisters. Second, the antipersp acted as a dry-film lubricant, further enhancing the slip between my skin and the polypro liners and the hiking socks and the boot heel cup.

So, between the 100% polypro liner socks and the layer of antiperspirant (which also acts as a slip-agent) I succeeded in hiking the Inca Trail WITHOUT A BLISTER!!! Never would I have though that was possible (just in case, I carried more blister bandaids on me than the entire group combined, actually). It worked….. for me. Turns out steph got some monster toe blisters in her shoes (toe point is too narrow me thinks), but I had plenty of blister cushlin/compeed band-aids to help her out.

Time to hike up Dead Woman’s Pass

Satisfied with that my blister solution had survived the toughest uphill section en route to lunch, and wearing 6 layers of upper body clothing, I was ready to set out on the trail towards the summit. Looking up from our lunch spot at Llulluchapampa, we could swear the summit was very close indeed. We were wrong…false summit.

Anyway, with the rain still beating down (and turning to sleet as we climbed higher), I looked back at our lunch site 200 feet below. I then looked up ahead at what we thought was the summit. You can see the line of hikers on the trail approaching the false summit, and this is a light day at the start of the wet season…it gets much much worse than this. Did you notice in that last shot how low the clouds and and snow are?

(Side note: as the porters passed us, a few of them were carrying radios in their spare hands. As if the weight held to their backs with their left hands wasn’t enough, the right hand was carrying a radio circa the 1980’s. One of the porters passed by listening to a football [soccer] game. I had to ask, couldn’t resist, who he was listening to. Turns out the Cusco Burros were playing….and winning. Go Donkeys!!!)

Well, we suffered our disappointment when we arrived at that false summit and caught up with Kathy (purple poncho and Rebecca (green poncho) and looked up at the real summit up ahead. By this time we had crested above 13,000 feet and were feeling tired. Not so much altitude tired, but full day on your feet climbing up thousands of feet in the rain with GI-tract issues tired. In fact, that last picture was taken in full on driving sleet. No joke, this was the real deal and we were going to summit this Dead Woman and her frigid Pass or else….

We got into a rhythm with Kathy, me, Steph and Rebecca in a line. We would count 50 paces (actually, 100, because Kathy started counting and she only counted on her left foot!!!) and then take a short break. We were all warm enough from our exertion and were simply exhausted from both the altitude and the Inca steps. Thankfully, it was turning to snow at this point and I made sure to grab a handful and throw it back towards Leslie.

At one of our rest breaks, I snapped this gorgeous panoramic of the Llulluchapampa valley behind us.

And finally, one last push of 50 paces through the snowy Inca steps and a blast of wind over the crest and Kathy in front of me and catching up to Elizabeth and Steph behind me and we were there. From the top we could look all around and see the Andes surrounding us. Steph got both of my hiking poles at this point so that I could snap this fine portrait of her at 13,750ft. The problem is….her face almost froze that way!! Ouch.

I also took time to snap this MOVIE while walking backwards up the summit with no trekking poles (notice that Steph has both of them) as we got to the top. It was worth the risk of destruction to my poor little Canon A70 as the snow and wind pelted us.

Immediately after getting to the top, we took shelter from the wind off to the right side of the trail. We weren’t cold (6 layers and all), but we were wet all the way through. My feet remained a little bit dry (wouldn’t last), but my gloves were soaked through (they were supposed to be water proof). The good news is the gloves were still providing warmth and my camera was still working enough for…..

The money shot of Steph and I on Dead Woman’s Pass (13,780) in our matching raingear.

The way down to Pacamayo

Then came the way down (no pictures, sorry). At this point, the trail is partly “real” Inca and mainly archeologist reconstructed. It is tough to do this section of the trail justice, so I will lay it out in some powerpoint-esque bulletpointy format for ya (especially you manager types).

• It takes about 2 hours from the summit to get to the next camp site. The first 30 minutes of this are steep (near vertical) steps.
• During those 2 hours, you will descend from 13,800 to approximately 11,900 feet. I would estimate that 90% of that descent is on granite stone stairs.
• From the summit, one cannot see the trail (stairs) down until you get to the absolute edge…they initially descend at greater than 45 degrees.
• The average step size is 12″ with some short sections averaging near 24″. I’m not kidding, and I am very glad I am 6′ tall with reasonably long legs. You ex-gymnasts out there would have fun managing this section.
• With an average of 12″ per step and a 3,000 foot descent, you can pretty much count on doing 3,000 stairs at a rate of 25 per minute, which is quite a brisk pace (at altitude) when you think about it.
• Parts of the trail down are over 10ft wide. This is a a bizarre concept for a trail built no later than the 1500’s….a set of stairs on a steep mountain slope that are wide enough for a M1A1 Tank (the trail did serve a military purpose and the Incas simply planned ahead).
• Even in the constant rain, the rocks were surprisingly not slippery. The granite simply did not grow moss, providing us with one very lucky fact.
• Because (99%) archeologists are not engineers, at certain reconstructed sections the trail becomes the river (and vice versa) in the conditions we were hiking. From what I have seen on this expedition, the Incas were experts at managing water and would never have allowed such a trail-travesty. The Incas are surely rolling over in their collective graves over the water-on-the-trail and other associated drainage failures.
• (See previous) During these river-like sections, it became impossible to not get one’s legs shin deep in a running torrent of cold water. Even taking the dangerous approach of bounding quickly down these sections, I still could not manage to keep my feet dry.
• There are some flat sections, and they last about 5 minutes apiece until the next set of stairs.
• The way down is harder than the way up….this I can confirm.
• About 5 minutes from the summit, there is a short flat section and a rock formation on the left side in a small meadow. This makes a great spot to take a pee. Unfortunately, about 1 minute further down the trail is a small toilet shack on the right hand side. From those that chose to use this option, I understand they regret not having taken the same naturalistic option as me. Incidentally (as another side note), the Inca Trail Rangers would do everybody a world of favors if they could note where the “real” bathrooms are on the trail map. I would have gladly suffered the stank of the toilet shed to save the mountainside a little wear-and-tear.

Well, all that done, we did manage to get down to camp as dark approached. During our little reverse-stairmaster hike our little group (Rebecca, Steph, Myself) had to pop some Vitamin IB (IBuprofin) to ward off some nasty headaches.

And it so happened that shortly after one of those advil stops, we were starting to whine amongst ourselves a little bit about the pain and cold and stairs. We soon got a zen-slap from the most amazing dog I have ever seen. You see, this dog had passed us after lunch on the way up to the pass. This little scrawny dog had made it all the way up and then down the 3,000 stairs to the camp below. This little scrawny dog was now hoofing it back up to the pass in the reverse direction and we didn’t hear him complaining!!! Out of sheer awe and respect, we (actually Rebecca) kicked down a little powerbar to fuel him on the way back up. That dog rocked….and has all my respect! You do it, pooch!

Pacamayo Camp

Anyway, we stumble into the Pacamayo camp and it is getting dark. We find our tent (tent number had changed yet again….I bet you forget we had even been assigned a number) and drop gear and run to the bathrooms. There are 2 bathrooms at the Pacamayo camp site. The lower stone walled (thatched roof) bathroom has a single male and a single female toilet. These are the sit down toilets with one exception, they have no seats. This exception is common on the Inca Trail and is fine (ceramic is more sanitary than plastic anyway, and just as cold) except that the toilet bowl is awfully wide for narrow bottomed folk. The upper bathroom has 4 toilets per gender. Both bathrooms get cold, dark and drafty at night and are always smelly. (TMI: The same problem I had prior to lunch, evidently others were having, as there was….uhhh….certain types of matter located in places on the toilet and surrounding tile walls that I would typically discredit as impossible in most ordinary circumstances. Seriously gross. Thankfully, they hose the bathrooms down at Pacamayo at least every other day from the looks of it.)

After our bathroom jaunt, Steph decided it was a good time to sit and look pitiful in our tent. I couldn’t blame her, after all a scrawny malnourished dog had just shown us up and done the summit twice in less time than it took us to hike down once. We did manage to catch a short nap in our warm (dry) tent prior to dinner. As the sun was going down that night, I grabbed a picture of our fellow trekkers watching the sky from their tent. The Pacamayo camp site is heavily terraced and I would estimate that 200 to 300 trekkers sleep there nightly.

Tea time in the tent was a welcome time to dry off and warm up. With the candles and the bodies, it always was cozy in the mess tent. Tonight was special, though. Unbeknownst to the head guide (Ruben), the cooking staff had a special treat. These crazy porters had packed in the necessary ingredients to make (not one, but two) cakes for Kristina and Jenna’s birthdays. Somebody had even packed in streamers and balloons and a competition was started to see who had the lungs (and bloodflow to the brain) to blow up a balloon at 11,900.

Needless to say, everybody crashed early that night (and I had trouble eating once again). Whether it was from the altitude (unlikely) or the exertion or the dehydration (drinking water in the rain seems silly, as we should just absorb it through our skins in osmotic fashion), both Steph and I had some good size headaches going on.

Depressingly, I woke up in the middle of the night and had no choice but to gear up for the 75 yard uphill trek to the bathroom shack. En route I saw another depressing touch of Inca Trail reality….a porter with the same need as I simply peeing into the Pacamayo creek. Worse, his choice location was only 10 yards up from where our kitchen staff drew our water. By the next morning, the number of sick (and Cipro imbibing individuals) in our trekking group would rise above 50% and keep climbing.

But on the good news front, as I walked back to the tent, I got an amazing site (too dark for a picture, sorry). At our altitude, we could look down the Pacamayo valley towards the Urubamba River Valley. The Urubamba River valley was socked in with low clouds. Above that 10,000 feet of clear sky and then high broken clouds barely touching the highest peaks around. The moon was peaking through and lighting the tops of the lower cloud layers and reflecting to light the various peaks and valleys in the intermediate layer. It was almost as if the sun had risen in the middle of a black-sky. (10 minutes of marveling at that and I shivered my way back into my cozy sleeping bag).

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