We hadn’t seen too much white yet. But this should dramatically change the two days we fought against the elements on the way up and down 4890 m high Punto Olimpico pass. In the morning already when we put together the surprisingly dry tent at the back of Raul’s house could we see the snow covered mountains further up the valley.
Â
Â
So we bade Raul our farewell and started pedal stroke after pedal stroke. First through a little village, then we left civilization and entered the national park. Drizzles hit us every now and then on the way up, but nothing severe, so we could always continue pedaling. Every now and then we stopped to test our freshly made slings (from a small piece of leather and two or four shoe strings, really simple) but these test were in fact life threatening:
Â
Â
Â
During the first test stones left our slings in an angle of 270°. Slinging on the right beside our body the projectile could leave the sling to the far left, almost in a 90 degrees angle to the slinging direction but in a few cases it even left the sling to the back or to the right side. No place could be considered to be safe … the helmets had to stay on our heads.
Now two or three busses passed us at the very beginning of this days ride. We had heared that a taxi driver had come back very early in the morning from Raul, so the focus was on whether the busses would come back, too, and whether we then could make it to the pass today at all. But they didn’t come back, not for one hour, not for two hours and even after three hours we didn’t encounter a single one coming the opposite direction. But there was also no traffic coming through from the other side of the pass.
We kept cycling and came closer and closer to the snow. The white seemed to flee from us, it seemed to creep up the mountains to not get in contact with the black pneumatic tires of ours. Maybe it could hurt, who knows. But then small islands of snow got into our range and looking to the ground I squashed out the water of these pretty wet small snow islands on the road that strangely seemed to form in some places better than in other places. Not because of sunshine: there was no sunshine.
Then near one big lagua the sun suddenly appeared on the sky. The snow had gotten to a a closed cover state already and we had to ride inside the tracks of the busses in front of us to get further. But we decided to take this opportunity to improve our slinging skills and have a welcome change to the 5 to 6 km/h average uphill cycling.
Now continuing up the last 390 m in altitude we spotted some vehicles apparently stuck near what seemed to be the pass, Punto Olimpico. Almost like a small hole in the mountain this gate to the other side of the massive Cordillera Blanca seemed to be so close, I could almost touch it with my hands I though. But I realized I was so wrong! The snow on the road should get more and more, the road should get more like a small creek with water running down 10 to 15 cm deep at some places. Big rocks in the middle of the road under the water, and beside the water 10 cm of snow. Hard riding, sometimes unridable, merely pushable! But pushing caused another problem: wet feet. And wet feet in cold water or snow are cold feet - not only the altitude but the steep gradient, the harsh conditions made it harder and harder for us to get further.
We decided to take a break, to have lunch. Every now and then the rumbling sound of avalanches going down nearby glaciers or rocky walls draw our attention towards it. This street was amazing! In the middle of these massive 6000+ m high mountains, in the middle of glaciers and glacier lakes, leading up steep walls and over gravel terrain, sometimes dropping almost vertical into a turquoise lake. Stunning, scary!
The blue plastic sheet that served wonderfully as a tent footprint got put over a even snow field right beside the road. We parked the bikes in the now 15 cm high snow and unloaded the cooking utensils from the Ortlieb bags. As the meal, spaghetti again, was ready to be cooked, heavy snow showers set in. Suddenly the opposite side of the valley wasn’t visible anymore, the visibility went below 100Â m. We couldn’t just continue cooking, we had to act! We had to decide on what to do. The temperatures dropped, the fingers got colder, the weather even worse, minute by minute!
Elmar suggested pitching the tent. I agreed. We started tramping down the snow on an area sufficient for the inner tent, I took the blue plastic sheet over and started unpacking the tent while the three stakes got put together by Elmar. One bike on the front, the other at the back of the tent. “Vamos inside!”
The snowfall was so heavy that within 20 minutes the tent was hanging through, I had to hit the tent walls to get the heavy snow load off the tent. Repeatedly I had to do so and we were lucky that during the night the snowfall got less and less.
The next morning saw everything under a nice white snow cover, the tent, the bikes, some of our cooking equipment we had left outside. Dad didn’t see that much as he had been snow blinded from the 30 minutes of sunlight the previous day - he had a terrible night, I can tell you! Luckily we knew about the phenomenon and knew that it would probably get better again. Only this pre-knowledge helped him to avoid panicing and freaking out on 4700 m altitude.
190 altimeters left. Pretty easy even after this hard night - my feet got cold again and only by putting on all the shirts and other clothes I had could I avoid hypothermia during the night in my less than sufficient sleeping bag. We made it to the pass and only 100 meters afterwards the trail got blocked by a bus being stuck. Skid chain? They probably had never heard of it in this area. So some of the male passangers had to get off the vehicle and push while my father and I were searching for a way to pass in the 30 to 120 cm snow beside the road. First I had to compress the snow, then we had to take one bike after the other to get through. Not a single one of the men standing around helped us and I didn’t want their help either. We were fine carrying the bikes one after one and we had enough time. But in exchange I also didn’t want to help them with their bus. It’s part of the adventure, right?
Now the downhill that followed was long, really long and nothing but a wet and cold mess. The waterproof gloves soaked with the water coming from above, from the front and from below. Everything was wet, the small creek on the road, the foggy air and the rain coming from the sky. I was lucky to have my Gore-Tex Paclite jacket and especially lucky to know my Canon camera secure in the handlebar bag and the clothes and other equpiment in the panniers on the back of the bike. My father forgot to change his jacket, even though we had taken a 10 minutes break to change the disc break pads on the front of the recumbent. So at the bottom of a almost 20 s-curves spanning downhill the weight of his jacket had increased five-fold and he had to take it off and replace it with dry clothes and the waterproof Vaude jacket he still carried in his panniers.
Luckily the road got better and more flat as we continued towards Carhuaz and even the weather got nice for an hour or two on the way down. But then just 30 minutes from Carhuaz it got worse again, rain started and we even considered staying in a smaller village above Carhuaz but abandoned the plan to get to this city on the western side of the Cordillera Blanca.
In the evening we made it into town and found a nice hostal to get some resting time from the adventures and ordeals of these two days.
Related posts
letzte Kommentare