Weekly Summary –  0 Miles in 0 Runs. It’s off season baby! Had a great trip to Peru, did some dope mountaineering, drank some champagne, and stayed up too late. Good times were had by all.

Don’t forget, you can follow me day to day on Instagram and Twitter (@TylerCAndrews) and my daily training log on Strava (GPS included!). Don’t forget to follow my adventures STRIVE – where (starting in less than a month!) I’ll be leading groups of students on a journey of running, service learning, and adventure in Peru. If you’re interested, join us next year for the summer of 2019, when we’ll once again have programs for High School and College students, and even 10-day trips for adults and families. Take a look if you’re interested in an amazing summer experience!

Lunes, 28 de Mayo, 2018 – Woke up early for 09:27 flight from Logan to Panama City. A bit tired after a late night last night packing up all my crap, celebrating w/ the fam having some champagne and scotch, and eating a bunch of delicious thai food.

Folks gave me a ride and got there in plenty of time, even w/ a stop at the bank en route. Check in a breeze as I was flying business class and the airport was mostly empty as I guess there aren’t a ton of AM international departures. Hung out at the lounge and got some breakfast and then walked a bit to stretch my legs and listed to TAL before boarding.

Flight to PTY was smooth and comfy. Copa business class isn’t bad for a medium haul daytime flight like this. I had two seats to myself, so was able to doze a bit and put my feet up, had some great food and wine, and got a lot of work done, including writing the long VCM recap.

Arrived in PTY on time if not early and went to the lounge to get some wifi-work done before walking around the airport for a while to kill some time on my long layover. Finally boarded the flight to LIM and again had two seats to myself. Again, smooth flight w/ good food. Watched I, Tonya and Con Air – two fantastic films haha.

Arrived in LIM early and definitely set a PR of landing to out the door of the airport – nobody at passport control, my bags were the first ones out, and walked right through customs. Negotiated a cab down to 25 soles (from 60) and was in Pay Purix by like 11pm where Mariana was already asleep. Doot doot!

Martes, 29 de Mayo, 2018 – Welcome to the Andes!

Left Pay Purix at 4:45am to get our 07:10am flight to Cusco. Got to the airport and were checking in when, who do we see – Javi! We didn’t think we’d cross paths in the airport, but there he was right as we were getting ready to check our bags, so we were able to take some of his weight of extra gear and give him a hug.

Went through security together and hung around in the lounge until it was time to board. Walked right on to the plane – got upgraded to business class as it was cheaper than paying for an extra checked bag for Mariana, only $40.

Beautiful flight. Perfect views of Salkantay, Ausangate, and more. Very excited to get up there!

Arrived in CUZ and waited around for Ronnie to come get us as we were actually early – maybe the first time ever for a Peruvian flight. Beautiful sunny day, though, so no problem waiting in the sun for a bit. Tragedy is that the landside lounge at CUZ is gone. Bummer.

Drove up to Ukukus and hung around on the terrace where there were perfectly clear views to Ausangate. Amazing day and welcome to the mountains.

Javi got there a bit later and we made some plans to gather our gear together, meet w/ Ronnie and Marco, and get food for the trip. First, we headed to the San Pedro for an amazing lunch (lomo and milanesa con frejoles) and then walked around, went to get some gear from a few rental places (which were lacking a bit in what they offered, particularly snow wickets), got food, and then headed back to Ukukus.

Ronnie at that point told us that Marco was really sick and wouldn’t be able to go (at least not tomorrow). This changed our plans a bit as it meant we’d now be on our own in terms of cocinero, arrieros, etc. Bummer for Ronnie as I know he’d been looking forward to the trip.

Marco did come by around 7pm to talk about the route and give us a few pieces of snow protection. We ended up going back w/ him to his house as he insisted we take his gas stove as he told us the jetboil wouldn’t work at high camp. Ended up back at Ukukus around 8pm, grabbed a quick dinner of anticuchos on the street and hit the sack.

Miercoles, 30 de Mayo, 2018 – Started the day in Cusco as we had an early breakfast at the market w/ juice etc. and then packed up and met Hector to head out to Pacchanta. Ended up leaving around 09:30am and drove about 4 hours with a couple of stops to get there. Mostly good paved road until the end when we were on some very rutted dirt roads from Tinki to Pacchanta.

Once there, Javi and I negotiated w/ some arrieros to find a team to take us who knew the trekking route to base camp. We met an older guy who said we needed 2 horses and charged 480 soles for the 5 days including his day’s walk home as we were planning to finish in a different place (Javi was sure we were getting ripped off).

We had a lunch of fresh trout at the one restaurant in town and got 3 pizzas (cooked in frying pans) to go for dinner. Finally, about 4pm, we headed out of town to our first campsite at the laguna, about 5km away.

The walk was easy and clear trail through the valley through some farmland w/ increasingly spectacular views of Ausangate ahead of us. The day was perfectly clear and got cold quickly as we entered the mountains shadow. Tons of viscachas en route.

Arrived after just over an hour of walking and set up camp. Very cold! Glad to have dinner all taken care of so we could eat quickly and get in the tent. Early to bed just after dark.

Jueves, 31 de Mayo, 2018 – Slept very fitfully last night at the laguna outside Pacchanta as it was extremely cold and we had trouble w/ our tent between keeping the windows open and it getting too cold or keeping the windows shut and feeling like we couldn’t breathe. Brutal night. Woke up finally around dawn and it was still fucking freezing as the sun wouldn’t hit us for another couple hours due to the valley walls. Made a quick breakfast and hit the trail.

Had Julian and the 2 horses to help w/ most of the gear so packs weren’t heavy and it felt good to get moving and generate some body heat. Made our way up through familiar territory to last year on a absolutely perfect crystal clear day. Amazing views all the way to Salkantay and the whole cordillera and beyond. Continued up, up, up to Jampa pass at 5100m and stopped there. Amazing views of Jampa, Callangate, and more. Really beautiful.

From there, descended into the valley below on easy trail and then flat along a wide open floor full of alpacas. Made it to a small community and from there took a right and headed up a gradual valley towards Ausangate base camp w/ Mariposa and Ausangate looming over us.

Made it up by about 2pm (20km in 6 hours w/ breaks) so had plenty of time to chat w/ the other folks up there, take pictures of the mountains, and enjoy the spectacular scenery. We made dinner in the late afternoon and even got to try some (freshly hunted) viscacha that the arrieros had caught and cooked over an open fire. Not bad!

Early to bed w/ trek up to high camp tomorrow and quite tired as I’d barely slept the night before. Lots of farts in the tent as we had beans and lentils for dinner. Oops.

Viernes, 1 de Junio, 2018 – Up around dawn w/ a more relaxing morning as we had a shorter day of trekking up to high camp. Made breakfast and packed things up and then left around 9:30am.

We had a good bit more weight today since we had no horses and had to carry the tent and all our technical gear. Julian helped us port up a good amount of stuff but our packs were still significantly heavier. I figured this might be the toughest stretch as we had about 800m of gain and heavy packs and it did end up being quite challenging.

Trail started out fairly flat through the fields and then quickly cut up a rocky slope to a high point w/ spectacular views of Mariposa and Ausangate. From there, we followed an increasingly steep and rocky ridge up towards the Ausangate glaciar.

The trail turned to a moderate scramble for the last 100m or so until we got spit out onto a high snowy plateau where it was clear that we’d stop to camp.

It had only taken us 2h43 despite Javi saying we’d be shooting for 4-5 hours (the group of Americans had taken 6 hours).

We set up camp and explored the area a bit, climbing back high up onto the ridge to scout out the route for tomorrow.

The views were truly unreal. The sun on Mariposa across the valley, the giant intimidating glaciar and wall of ausangate. It was definitely the most epic and majestic campsite I’ve ever been at.

We prepped for the night’s summit bid, made some dinner, and crawled into the tent around sunset as it started to get seriously cold. Sleeping at 5500m is definitely a first – we’ll see how it goes.

Sabado, 2 de Junio, 2018 – Phew long day!

Woke up at 11p (technically on Friday night) for our midnight departure for summit bid on Ausangate. Slept fitfully on and off for about 5 hours in the tent. Not too cold w/ the three of us snuggled together but camp at 5500m makes sleep pretty intense. HR got down below 60bpm which is pretty impressive considering I don’t think it went below 70 sleeping at the Iliniza refuge at like 4800m.

Woke up, had coffee and some cereal, and then geared up. Put on crampons right away as there was plenty of snow at camp and headed off just a few minutes after midnight.

First hour or so was easy walking across the glaciar and navigating around some nasty seracs and crevasses. Got steeper as we approached the wall and we stopped just below around 5700m after about 90’.

Javi led the tricky first pitch around a gnarly crevasse and despite at first saying it was un-passable, we found a small snow-bridge and made our way up. It was about 3 rope lengths of decent climbing maybe 65-75 deg snow. Good conditions on the snow, w/ just a bit of powder in some spots to dig through for better purchase. We headed up and then traversed left under some rocks and seracs before finally reaching the summit ridge at about 5900m.

From there, the snow was extremely deep and soft. The going was slow as we traversed across the ridge, aiming for a high col from which the final push to the summit was made. After maybe 30 minutes of relatively horizontal movement, Javi said that we didn’t have time to reach the summit as the snow was simply too deep and the going too slow.

He let me lead for a bit, digging footprints into the waste deep powder, but Mar in particular was struggling w/ the effort at almost 6000m and w/ almost 400 vertical meters left and bad weather coming our way, Javi made the call to turn back. It was disappointing as I knew I could get there and plow through this crap but at the same time I knew we didn’t have the factor of safety given that it would take significantly longer than we’d planned and there was a big storm-front coming in later that day.

The walk down to the wall was easy and then we had a tricky downclimb where I led down as Javi belayed us from a sketchy reunion due to the soft powder. We made it down two rope lengths and then I built an anchor and belayed Javi down to us whence we downclimbed again to just below the crevasse. There, we ditched a snow wicket to rapel down the last 40m or so including the crevasse crossing. Probably the sketchiest part of the climb but we all made it down safely.

At this point, the sun was out and the views were spectacular and we all enjoyed the walk back along the glacier to the campsite. I think it was around 8am when we made it back to camp as the downclimbing of the wall took quite a while.

From there, we rested, packed up, and ate. Julian had been supposed to meet us to help carry some stuff down but hadn’t shown up, so the three of us divided the weight and made our way down to high camp. This was a fairly tiring walk as the terrain was steep and sometimes rocky. Mar was going quite slowly as she was pretty doot and wearing her heavy mountaineering boots which made the going more awkward, but we finally made it back to base camp.

We rested there and met up w/ some Italian climbers who graciously let us use their sat phone so we could call Ronnie and ask him to set up a pickup for us that evening from Finaya (as opposed to the following morning), so we could get out before the big storm came through. We had no idea if he’d gotten the message as the connection was awful but sent an SMS as well w/ details of where we were and headed down to the road w/ our fingers crossed.

I started to feel pretty bad as we came to the valley floor and by the time we set up camp I was feeling pretty sick. None of us had a ton of confidence that a car would show up and everyone we talked to told us different things in terms of how to get out of here. It seemed like our best bet would be to leave very early in the morning and walk ~8km to Chilca where we could get a combi at 6am to take us to Pitumarca and from there, on to Cusco.

I crawled into my sleeping bag at about 5pm and passed the fuck out as the rain was falling and soaking through our tent. I was then awoken around 6:30p to commotion as Javi spotted headlights and ran out to find that our messages HAD gotten through and a car was waiting for us outside. Quickly, we packed everything up, threw it into the back of the car, and dashed through the rain to get the fuck out of dodge.

We ended up giving a ride to an old campesino woman who was standing on the side of the road in the rain and rode for about 5 miles with the front door half open since the car was too full to shut it. Classic.

The road turned out to be long, winding, and narrow, and as we drove I was so grateful we weren’t carrying our 50+ pound bags along this through the rain the following morning.

The drive was about 3 hours in total to get back to the city and so somehow we were all in bed before 10p. We grabbed a quick meal at the pizza place next to Ronnie’s when we got back but otherwise we all just crashed. What a day!

Domingo, 3 de Junio, 2018 – Slept late and well and lazy day around Cusco. Weather was gross so spent a few hours in the afternoon catching up on work, etc. Felt much better than last night. So fucking grateful to be sleeping in a bed at Ukukus instead of in a tent in the middle of a freezing rainstorm at 4500m in the “puto culo del mundo.”

In the evening, went out to Papachos w/ Mar, Javi, and Ronnie. Amazing meal and were planning to go out dancing after, but after we went to another bar for a bit (something w/ pisco in the name next to Morena w/ live music), I started crashing hard and went back and fell asleep immediately. Great day and definitely recovery is going in the right direction.