Saturday 22/06/2019 Quilcayhuanca Valley
Huascarán National Park, PERU
Participants: Stephen Davies (Photos), Sue Davies (Report)
This walk was recommended as an initial acclimatisation walk after arriving in Huaraz at 3,092m as it reaches an altitude of just under 4,000m and is relatively flat. As there is no public transport available into the area we organised a private car to transport us each way from Huaraz.
Max elevation: 4459 m
Total climbing: 1954 m
Total descent: -1955 m
Average speed: 6.07 km/h
Total time: 05:24:26
N.B. About 17km into this walk the gps tracking has misplaced us, we did not head for the hills as shown!
When dropped off by our Spanish speaking driver at around 9:00am, despite having no common language, we somehow managed to organise our pick for 3:00pm.
The Quilcayhuanca Valley is used for grazing animals including horses, cows, sheep and a few donkeys. With local people present when we arrived, they kindly opened their locked gate for us to enter. When locked it is easy enough to climb over the stone fence to the right side of the gate and then down a ladder which has been placed on the other side.
Our first task was to get past the men trying to lasso a cow who who was strenuously objecting, eventually breaking free. It’s freedom was sadly short lived with the men and dogs in hot pursuit.
It was a stunning morning along this lush, picturesque valley with green grassland and steep sided stone walls to either side. We headed towards the glacier at the end of the valley.
Nevado Tullparaju and Nevado Chopiraju over Quebrada Quillcayhuanca
We made quite good progress as the terrain was flat and grassy. There were several waterfalls tumbling down the steep walls and into the stream which we followed throughout the day. The water was very clear and the rocks were an ochre colour which made for a lovely contrast against the deep blue ski and rich green of the valley.
Unfortunately, we left ourselves a little short of time to reach the glacier and we didn’t want to overdo it on our first day of walking so we headed back after about three hours.
It was a wonderful day in the Peruvian mountains and a great introductory walk to assist in our acclimatisation.
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