Time to leave! We had seen enough of Huaraz and especially in the mornings we’ve almost always had beautiful weather, so we could enjoy the stunning view to the surrounding 6000+ m giants. But we had come here for cycling, right? So, let’s cycle again.
Our target was another crossing of the Cordillera Blanca on 4800 or 4900 m altitude near Pachacoto and the Nevada Pasto Rury. The main road upwards along the river towards Lima lead us in 4 riding hours to Pachacoto where we took a left turn and started cycling up the Pachacoto river. These kilometers from Huaraz were OK for cycling, nothing that would make you enthusiastic, but good cycling. Quite some mad dogs still and many (crazy) car and bus drivers torturing their vehicles through this pothole street. Industy had settled here and gone again, leaving a big environmental mess behind, what a great contrast to the untouched regions of the Huascaran National Park ahead of us.
After an hour or two on the gravel road leading us from Pachacoto (read Pajacoto) towards the park enty named Carpa we decided to call it a day and have some workout of a different kind: Having pitched the green tent in the green countryside 50 m from the road and put on some more insulation promising clothes we started to walk around and sling for a while in this empty place. A nice spot to sling was only 150 m away, namely the drop to the river north of our campsite.
Our technique got better and better and so did our slings. The ones we had built just consisted of a leather patch and two shoe strings, but I had found a website with loads and loads of slinging material, instructions how to build them, how to sling, history about slinging and even small movies of people slinging: www.slinging.org
I tried some Greek style slinging as demonstrated in this shortclip on YouTube:
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The following morning an early start brought us to the gates of the Huarascan National Park pretty early. We paid the obligatory entrance free without cyclist-discount to get into the park, refilled our water bottles and started a relaxed stretch of cycling through a wide valley. Being inside the national park we found some nice farms at the bottom of the valley while slowly climbing upwards ourselves. A caravan of tiny looking cattle crossed the valley like small ants carrying ant-eggs – a nix mixture of black and white. Slowly they progressed while we went up one s-curve after the other, progressing slowly vertically.
A shepherd came down with a group of 80 sheep and four dogs. He must have been close to the end of his life – maybe 60 or 70 years old, a life spent in this magnificent environment, between the mountains and valleys, always caring for the wellbeing of the animals and moving them to new places where they can find the precious green that keeps them alive.
The huts they’re still living in are really basic. A round fundament of nature stones, built into the uneven hillside, covered with layers of insulating and water resistant grass. A small canopy allowing to sit outside even when it rains. And a mind-blowing view on the valley and the snow and ice covered mountains on the opposite side.
I have to admit that this style of life has something to it. Tempting. Probably until recently there hasn’t been a road, no traffic, no tourists. There’s still no electricity, no tab water and similar excrescenses of modern life.
We, too, continued in our down to earth style of travel, resting here and there for a short slinging or stone throwing session or to photograph what would be a major tourist attraction in other countries: cave-paintings from long time ago just beside the trail!
Further and further we climbed up towards the 5000 m mark and when we had almost reached the top of the pass we took a turn right towards the Nevada Pasta Rury, towards a tattered old man, one of a few glaciers still remaining but having a hard time, like a veteran from a time long ago with a colleague or friend dying every day, getting lonelier and lonelier.
There we cycled, first. But after 2 or 3 km of cycling the car gravel road ended and we had to start pushing our bikes over the bed of this old man who had already retreated to higher, cooler regions and left nothing but a gray and black solitude behind, just an idea of his once so great times when his white veins of ice filled the valleys like water the body of a river and even more glorious times when the giants of the Andes were at his feet like principes to the feet of their king.
Next to a small lake I had to rest, I took the sling and painted nice circles onto the water surface. We tried to catapult the stones over this probably 70 to 90 m long lake and succeeded! Really amazing … and depressing if you pick up a stone with your hand and realize that without this cool tool, the sling, you can only throw 40 to 50 meters!
Now we reached the bottom of the glacier, a massive lake on 5000 m altitude with the ice flowing right into the water and massive pieces of ice crushing into the blue lake every 30 minutes. Still 2 or 3 hours of sunlight left we went for exploration of the nearby area. The bikes were parked 6 or 7 m above the lake surface, so even if a giant piece of ice would crash into the water and start a big wave we wouldn’t lose anything, especially not our lives while camping there later on during the night.
Equipped with the DSC-H5 (Elmar) and Canon Digital Rebel XSi (me) we went for a shooting session and found an icicled ice-cave leading inside the glacier, wonderfully mirrored in the lake in front of it. Only ice, rock in all colors and water. We jumped over the drain of the glacier lake in the knowledge that probably a few months before all the places we walked now, had been covered by tons of deep blue ice, hundreds or even thousands of years old.
When it got colder we fled into the rapidly pitched tent to avoid hypothermia … something you should take serious if you’re on your own and far away from help. Every 20 minutes or so we heard the rumbling from the glacier that was communicating with us through clicking noises all through the night and didn’t have a clue what would expect us the next morning …
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