Great Adventure

Ausangate

A long hike around the biggest mountain in southern Perú, the broad and majestic Ausangate (6384m), offers glimpses at high altitude wildlife and pastoral peoples living, with their animals, quietly apart from the turmoil’s of the modern world. We pass ice walls, a glacier, the cascades of a frozen river, and numerous springs of hot and medicinal underground water. The mountaineer will also find lovely views over the surrounding countryside, looking down into fertile valleys and across at the Vilcanota mountains. This a snow covered range arcs away to the east, southeast, then the south, protecting the valley of Canchis From these high mountains, cold waters whisper through totora swamps south to Lake Titicaca. Eager rapids plunge north into the tropical Inambari. And from the glacier-fed lakes of the Canchis valley, rich green waters feed the river Vilcanota and Cusco´s sacred valley. We may observe rare Andean wildlife in the high wilderness, such as vicuña, vizcacha, condors, flamingos, Andean geese, and ibises.

Tinqui

Day 1

We bus 100 km East by Southeast from Cusco in the morning. The road passes north of Ausangate, and we leave the road a bit west of the mountain. We camp in Tinqui at 3,800. As we fall asleep the setting sun lights up the glacier on the NW face of Ausangate.

Day 2

We break camp and hike up to the Ausangate glacier. We set up camp alongside the Upis thermal springs, about 4 kilometers in the air. We bathe in the hot springs and the cold Upismayo which runs beside our camp

Day 3

Ausangate

Day 4

We continue walking among high-altitude lakes in the valley immediately south of Ausangate, which are unnaturally green-blue. We rise to cross Palomani pass at 4,800 masl. This is the highest point on the journey. We don’t pass between the massif and some spur, but rather rise to take advantage of a gentler slope high on the mountain´s side. Here we can see east over the large hand-shaped Lake Sivinacocha to the jagged, snowcapped Vilcanota Mountains which crade this valley. We descend from the cold to camp at Chilcapinaya.

Day 5

Ausangate

Day 6

We drop into the valley and village of Pacchanta and bathe in their hot springs all the long afternoon.

Day 7

We pass through increasingly inhabited valleys among the headwaters of the Paucartambo river on the north side of the mountain until the sun sets. We return to the road and our bus. We get back to Cusco for happy hour and a night at the discos, or a long rest, as your mood takes you.
B=breakfast, L=lunch, D=dinner

* Departures and arrival times are approximate.