Before arriving in Huaraz, we’d planned to take the opportunity of being in such a fabulous location to do several hikes into the stunning Cordillera Blanca mountains. However, after being struck by altitude sickness which left us feeling weak and vulnerable, we had fewer days available than we’d hoped. We decided to book onto a one day trip to Laguna 69 – widely regarded as the best one day walk in the area. We booked with Sechin tours (mostly because they offered the cheapest price) to transport us to the start of the trail where we would then walk at our own pace and return to the van before being taken back to Huaraz.
It was an early six am start, but we were glad that the minibus not only arrived on time, but that it was new and comfortable. To get to the trailhead we were to be driven for 3 hours. What we hadn’t realised was that an hour and a half of that would be on an un-paved road. It wouldn’t have been so bad had we not all been so desperate to pee for an hour and fifteen of that. As it was we were unceremoniously bounced about until we thought we could take it no longer when, thankfully, we pulled over for a photo opportunity. Oh look, is that a tree over there? I’m just going to go and investigate a little further…
When such distractions were taken care of, we looked about and realised how stunningly beautiful our current location was:
Only ten minutes further up the road we arrived at the trail head. We would have, our driver told us, seven hours to make the walk up (3 hours at a slow pace) spend some time at the lake and descend again. This sounded pretty reasonable because, after all, this is graded as an easy trek. This is the walk that people do to acclimatise before going on a real hike. As three reasonably fit individuals, we couldn’t imagine that it was going to pose too much of a problem for us.
The trail head is at 3,700m and the lake is at 4,600m. We didn’t know this before we set out. We didn’t know we have 900m of vertical climb to achieve (at altitude) in only 3 hours. And we certainly didn’t realise how steep it was going to be.
The driver accompanied us along the valley floor to the start of the trail. The scenery was beautiful but even along the relatively flat path we were already getting out of breath. No problem, we can take it at our own pace. Our own pace had us quickly left behind the rest of the group. The driver left us once we reached the steep section of the trail.
Looking up the steep mountain side at the series of switchbacks we would need to take, it became clear that Sam was starting to struggle. She’d spent a day longer than me recovering from the altitude sickness and her weariness was palpable. One hour into the walk it was becoming clear that we’d entirely underestimated the difficulty. We stuck to our steady pace, taking frequent breaks and forcing ourselves to drink plenty of water. The others in the group were moving further and further in front and we could begin to see members of groups behind us starting to catch us up – not exactly a morale boost. We did try bribing a pair of donkeys with some jam sandwiches to carry us up the rest of the way, but they just weren’t having it.
Up ahead we could see the crest of this particular hill and the scenery beyond appeared to level out. Add to the fact that a glacial waterfall was running off of this plateau and I figured that the lake could only be just up and over the top. I hung on to this idea and used it to encourage Sam up the toughest part of the climb. ”You’re 95% of the way there, you’ve done most of the work, just this one last push.”
Rather predictably, I was wrong. The top of the ridge presented us with a large open valley surrounded by steep craggy mountains. The rest of our group had disappeared beyond view at this point and we looked around in vain trying to work out where the path would take us. It couldn’t possibly require us to walk up one of those steep craggy faces. There is no way this ‘easy’ path would ask that of us. Besides, it had already taken us two and a half hours to get to this point, we couldn’t be expected to scale that in only half an hour.
As it turns out, we were. We spent the next 45 minutes quite literally dragging ourselves up an incredibly steep, rocky path with no idea how much further we might have to go. We were out of breath, headachey, nauseous and fed up. It was at this point, when we really started to wonder if we might not make it to the top, that Alan came back to rescue us. He’d strode off ahead and reached the lake half an hour before us. After waiting for fifteen minutes and we still hadn’t materialised he came back to find us, carry our bags and offer much needed moral support. With his help we made it to the top and were greeted with this view:
It was far more spectacular than I had expected and than my photos can capture. It was absolutely worth the hike but, oh boy, was it tough.
Related posts:
How brave you all are,I am so impressed , hope Sam is O k , Hoorah For Alan he must be an asset.
The color of that water is amazing. Sounds like an incredible experience.
Erik\’s last post…Northern California- Day Five
It was even more stunning in person! I wish my camera could capture the depth of the colours and the sense of achievement for making it up there!