Adventures of a Wandering Thirtysomething

Day 2 of the Inca Trail and we started really strong. Decent sleep at camp – marred slightly by barking dogs and crowing roosters from the local farmers – meant we rose early and headed out just as the sun began rising over the valley.

Today was the most challenging day of the entire hike. With 3,200 feet of elevation gain and very thin air, even the toughest of athletes would be humbled by the slow and steady pace you must maintain to get to the summit without losing your legs, your lungs or your lunch.

Unlike Day 1 of mostly dirt trail, the Day 2 trail is largely stone stairs all the way to the top. So, you plod your way through beautiful mossy green forests, next to babbling streams and on the edges of mountains focusing on taking just one more step to keep making progress upward.

Matt really found a good pacing system today. On Day 1, our guide “Abe” and I set a pretty swift pace, which resulted in beating all other groups to camp, but in Matt feeling pretty awful by the second half of the day. Today, instead of trying to keep pace with us, Matt found his own system of moving a bit slower and taking short rests as needed, and he not only looked 100% better throughout the day with no altitude sickness or exhaustion, but also managed to stay just about 20 minutes behind me.

From 6:45 a.m. until 10:45 a.m. we picked our way along the trail, breaking for lunch for an hour to recharge before we hit the final, and most challenging, section to the summit. The last 1,200 feet after lunch were the most challenging of the whole day – an extremely steep section that seemed to go on forever. Despite being fairly energetic all day, even I started to run out of gas with about 100 yards to go. Right about the time I thought I might just have to baby step the last bit, a gal named Liz from Utah started a conversation right as I caught up with her. The conversation was exactly what I needed – the distraction of talking as we walked helped me pick up the pace and make those last 100 yards with ease.

Matt, true to his personal pace, made it to the top just 20 minutes behind me. As Abe and I waved to him in his final steps to the top, he held back tears – so grateful to have not gotten altitude sickness and to have made it through the most challenging part. He went straight to the summit pole and hugged it while Abe snapped his picture. I was so incredibly proud of both of us for crushing it all the way to 13,700 feet.

After all that uphill, it was straight downhill the other side of the mountain to camp. Those dang stone stairs again that made our quads and butts scream now made our knees and ankles creak as we picked our way along the uneven stones for 1,500 feet. Poor Matt caught a slippery stair and fell down on a cactus, but aside from his slightly bloody hand we otherwise made it through the day unscathed. We are tired and have some sore muscles, but mostly we are so happy to have accomplished such a challenging hike.

 

View to the bottom of the valley where we started the day