Peru, day 13 (Sept 21)

This was the one day I felt like the elevation had affected me, but only in the morning. I didn't sleep well the previous night (too cold and a nasty cough!) so woke up feeling a bit...off. Just before breakfast I started feeling nauseous and I couldn't even stay in the meal tent. I had to walk around breathing deeply to stop myself from throwing up. Ok, if you have a sensitive stomach, STOP READING NOW!!!! :)

I take daily medications, so I'd already taken them with some hot coca tea. I wandered around trying to stop the nausea, but eventually lost that battle. As I was throwing up I noticed the most beautiful flower hanging over the nearby stream. Here comes the icky part....I HAVE to take my meds...so I had to look through what I'd thrown up to find them. Then wash them and take them again. Ugh. I don't know how I did it...except I had to! Seen Maria Full of Grace? Yea, kinda like that...but easier. Someone finally gave me a gravol, and that helped. Within in hour I was feeling great! Here's that flower I saw (I went and got the camera after and took a picture). It doesn't look as amazing in the picture as it did in real life...but the colours were so vibrant and the reflection of the sky and mountains in the water...well, it almost made puking worth it. Almost.

Here's mom in our tent packing up our stuff. The early morning started off foggy, as usual, but cleared up as we were finishing eating. Or at least, some people were finishing eating. I knew it was a mistake to not eat, since today was our big climb...but I just could not keep anything down. I had plenty of power bars and electrolytes with me.

Here's a view of the valley we stayed in. The clouds are covering the beautiful glacier right above us. Today we were going to ascend to 16,000 feet (about 5,000 meters)! I was scared. As were most people. That's high, and some of the members of our group were already suffering. But I was also excited. This was going to be a great accomplishment. The blue tent in the foreground is the cook tent, the large brown one is the meal tent and then of course all the rest of our tents. The smaller blue tent in the back is the "bad one" that mom and I got out of the way the first night out! :) You can also see the horses in the background.


One thing we learned very quickly is that at this altitude the air is COLD and it hurts to breath it in. It was suggested to us to put our bandannas over our mouths and breath that. It helps keep the air warmer, and also helps you with your O2 and CO2 levels (not sure that's actually true, but we did as we were told!). It did help, but after a while it just felt too claustrophobic to walk with the bandanna over my mouth, so I pulled it down. That's Roberto off to our right. He was about 45 years old, but looked 70! But man, could he hike!!! He was very funny. Spoke almost no English, but communicated very well with hand gestures. He was always telling us to go a different trail than Wilbur...Roberto is Wilbur's uncle. Sometimes his trails were better ... sometimes not! :)



Now you can see the glacier! It was fabulous! It looked so close, like you could reach out and touch it. Of course, the reality is that it was far away...but look at it! That's mom. She struggled, but made it. I was amazed, but I was out front with only a couple others. Mom was farther back with the rest of the pack.

We hiked for about 4 hours and then stopped for lunch. At that point we were still about 1,000 feet from the summit of the pass. After lunch we continued on our way. Up this high the vegetation was...odd. Very few trees, and those that were there were twisted and really dark. There also started to be a lot of moss. The air was full of moisture and the fog seemed to be here to stay.

Most of the day I hiked with Clasina, Jean, Maureen, Carol and Toni with the rest of the group much farther behind. We just fell into this fabulous rhythm...not thinking, just placing one foot in front of the other. It is amazing how difficult everything is, even just walking, when you're up this high. Even the porters, native Peruvians were huffing and puffing. Made us feel better. We finally reached the summit...or what we thought was the summit. But it in fact turned out to be one of three summits! The first group had been here awhile when the other group caught up. Ken, Kim and Anne had been riding most of the day. Kim and Anne were really really sick. We knew they were...but just not HOW sick. So here is everyone taking a break.


After that first peak we went up and down for the next two hours crossing over the other two summits. Here we are descending into the first high valley after the first peak. We passed several lakes. They were beautiful and pristine, and looked bloody cold! :) These pictures really don't show how beautiful it was. Take my word for it, it was amazing.

Since we didn't talk much this day, I had a lot of time to think. And reflect. This was one of those days that...was hopefully life-changing. I was able to think about the pain in my life, what I wanted out of life and how I was going to get there. I can't explain it, but this day changed me in some ways.

Here I am at 16,000 feet. The trail actually only went to about 15,850. I looked up and there was a cairn up on a ridge about 200 feet above us. I was determined...so I scrambled all the way up, took the rock I'd brought with me from Bend and put it on the cairn. I put all my pain and loss into it...and then put it away. Then I sat there and cried for a couple minutes. Sigh. It was good though. I can't always retain that feeling of freedom, but if I close my eyes and think... I can get back there. Have I said sigh? :)

Then something terrifying happened! Really truly. It still makes my heart beat faster to think about it. Kim was very sick, and had been riding all day. We were coming up to one of the summits ... I think it was the last one... and her horse stumbled! He fell to his knees, almost rolled over, and threw Kim off. Now, if this was flat land that would be one thing. This was on the side of a very steep mountain with huge drop-offs close by! It was terrifying! I was impressed with the horse handler. He went straight for Kim and tried to break her fall. Thank all that is holy, is was in a spot that was grassy with these grass hillocks. 100 feet back and she would have been thrown in a rock section! Man, it was scary. Kim handled it well...but we all knew she was just in shock. That lasted until we got into Aguas Calientes and then it caught up to her, and she lost I for a few minutes. It was really scary. Needless to say, she walked for a long time after that. So did Ken. The poor horse felt really bad, you could tell. He tried very hard to stay on his feet, but just couldn't

Here is that later group after passing the last summit. Standing from left to right is: Anne, Carla waving, Ken and Rudy. Kneeling are Kim and my mom. As you can see, the fog stayed with us most of the day.

However, it cleared up for about 3 minutes...just enough time to get this picture.

After crossing over the three summits, we started descending very steeply. It was tricky, technical terrain. Again, I was amazed at how well I was doing, how good I felt! Having eaten nothing for breakfast, and feeling as rough as I had, I thought I was going to hit the wall. i never did. In fact, I was consistently in the first pack...and wasn't pushing myself. We came down, down, down and eventually camped at about 14,000 feet. It was again, a pretty high campsite, but we couldn't go any farther. We camped right next to an old abandoned farm. Pretty cool. Literally and figuratively. The next day was going to be a long day of descending down to the valley...