When the Mountain Decides: A Journey in the Peruvian Andes

The freeze-dried potato sat in my palm like a small, gray stone. Chuño, Felipe called it. Chuño is an Andean staple that had sustained generations in these mountains. I placed it in my mouth, its texture somewhere between chalk and cork, and chewed. Felipe and his brother Gumercindo watched with the kind of patient interest that comes from hosting outsiders who don’t yet understand the wisdom of high-altitude food.

This was my first solo journey to the Peruvian Andes, though I had been here before. Previous trips had been structured around research—scientific expeditions with clear objectives and rigid schedules. This time, I wanted something different. I wanted to move through these landscapes on my own terms, to experience them not as a researcher but as a visitor learning to listen.

My plan was ambitious. I intended to hike from my friends’ home, the Crispins’, located below Apu Ausangate, cross Condor Pass, continue on to Sibinacocha, navigate the glacial moraine along the lake’s northern edge to its eastern side near Apu Yayamari, and then travel south to the small town of Phinaya.

Early on the first morning, Felipe and his brother, Gumercindo, met me in Cusco. From there, we took a taxi to their community of Pukarumi. The Crispins’ home is simple: adobe structures set against a dramatic backdrop of Ausangate towering above their land. Horses grazed nearby, along with guinea pigs, chickens, and alpacas. A small greenhouse stood beside the house, allowing them to grow crops that would not otherwise survive at this elevation. These crops help fortify their diet.

Felipe’s wife, Juliana, dressed in traditional Quechua attire, moved steadily through her morning chores. Gumercindo set out a bowl of chuño, freeze-dried potatoes that are a staple of Andean diets. It is, in many ways, an Andean power bar. They offered me some, and I accepted. When I travel, I often eat things I would not normally eat at home. Part of that is a desire to experience the culture as it exists, and part of it is respect. The chuño itself was not my favorite. It was calories without flavor, and my Americanized taste buds are conditioned to spices and seasoning.

Felipe and Gumercindo gathered the necessary supplies, loaded them onto horses, and we began walking. The elevation near the base of Ausangate is approximately 15,000 feet (4,600 meters). While the terrain itself is not technical, the altitude makes even simple movement physically demanding.

They moved briskly across the landscape, leading the horses with the ease of people born to this elevation. I, on the other hand, labored. Back home at less than 700 feet (200 meters) above sea level, my body exists in an entirely different atmospheric context. Even after several days acclimating in Cusco at 11,000 feet (3,600 meters), the jump to 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) demands respect. Each step becomes deliberate. Each breath insufficient. My head pounds with a familiar altitude ache.

I knew from previous expeditions that this was normal, temporary, part of the price of admission. But knowing something intellectually and experiencing it physically are different things. I found myself thinking about the difference between being a visitor and belonging to a place. Felipe and Gumercindo didn’t have to think about breathing. They simply moved.

We stopped for lunch beside an aqueduct channeling glacial meltwater from Ausangate into the Vilcanota River. This watershed forms one of the primary headwaters of the Amazon River system. The water flowing through this high-altitude landscape sustains countless people, plants, and animals as it travels eastward, eventually reaching the Amazon Basin and, finally, the Atlantic Ocean.

After lunch, we continued toward the base of Ausangate, where we set up camp near the Seven Lakes of Ausangate. Shortly after arriving, the sun dropped behind the mountains and the temperature fell rapidly. I pitched my tent, bundled myself in warm clothes, and watched as the sky faded into darkness.

As is often the case at campsites in Peru, local dogs soon appeared, lingering in hopes of finding scraps. Gumercindo and Felipe prepared dinner, and we shared a hearty meal before turning in for the night. Sleep, however, did not come easily. A headache settled behind my eyes like a weight. Nausea rolled through me in waves. I drank water, tried to rest, told myself it would pass. It didn’t. Instead, it became the drumbeat that would pace the rest of this journey.

The next morning brought no relief. As we packed camp and began our slow walk around Ausangate, I moved through a fog of discomfort. My carefully laid plans—the route to Sibinacocha, the crossing to Yayamari, the satisfaction of completing what I’d set out to do—began to feel less certain. We visited the seven lakes, their surfaces reflecting peaks and sky, and I tried to focus on the beauty rather than the pounding in my head. Eventually, the trail turned upward toward Campa Pass at 16,500 feet (5,100 meters), and each step became an negotiation with my body.

We stopped often during the ascent. During those breaks, Felipe pointed out the surrounding peaks, naming them one by one: Callangate, Pachanta, Puku Punta, Mariposa. Each name carried weight, history, meaning I could only partially grasp. Then he told me the story of Ausangate’s daughters.

In the legend, one of Ausangate’s daughters marries a man from the altiplano. The new son-in-law wants to bring livestock and corn back to his homeland, but a bird steals the spirit of the corn and carries it to Cusco. There, the corn thrives. In the altiplano, it fails. As punishment for his greed, the son-in-law is transformed into a black rock beside a road on the plateau. To this day, people curse the rock as they pass.

Felipe told this story casually, as if it were as much a fact as the names of the peaks around us. It was a story about adaptation, about respecting what thrives in one place and what belongs in another. I thought about my own body’s refusal to adapt, about my ambitions to cross Condor Pass when everything in me was saying otherwise. Maybe the mountains were telling me something too.

At the top of Campa Pass, we rested and ate lunch before descending the far side. From there, we wandered through bofedales, peat bogs saturated with glacial meltwater, until we found a flat, dry place to camp. After dinner, I turned in early, hoping a night of rest would restore some strength.

Day three. Then day four. The pattern remained the same: wake feeling weak, walk through landscapes of staggering beauty while negotiating with a body that wouldn’t cooperate, set up camp, collapse, hope the next day would be different. We followed valleys carved by retreating glaciers, moving steadily closer to Condor Pass—17,000 feet (5,200 meters) of vertical challenge that now seemed insurmountable.

I spent that fourth afternoon lying in my tent, staring at the fabric ceiling, wrestling with the decision I knew I had to make. In my research expeditions, turning back had never been an option. We had objectives and data to collect. But this journey was supposed to be different. This was about immersion, about listening, about experiencing the landscape on its own terms.

What I was learning, lying there with Ausangate behind me and Condor Pass ahead, was that the mountain doesn’t care about your plans. The landscape wasn’t rejecting me—it was simply indifferent. And maybe that was the lesson.

The next morning, I spoke with Felipe and Gumercindo. The words didn’t come easily. “I don’t feel strong enough for Condor Pass,” I said. They nodded without judgment, without disappointment. We discussed options and decided to walk to Chilca, the nearest town, where we might find a ride to Pitumarca.

Chilca is a small village in the Cordillera Vilcanota. It is the kind of town defined by a single road with a handful of buildings on either side. There is a small store, but most of the people who live there are pastoralists. They raise alpaca, llamas, and sheep, and grow potatoes and other crops adapted to the harsh, arid alpine climate.

We packed up camp with Ausangate looming behind us and Condor Pass rising ahead—a reminder of roads not taken. The walk to Chilca took a couple of hours, mostly downhill, which my battered body received as a mercy. When we reached the lonely dirt road that led into town, I felt something shift. Not relief exactly, but a kind of acceptance.

Chilca was eerily quiet when we arrived. We set our belongings in a field beside the road and waited. Felipe and Gumercindo crossed the street to see what they could find, and I lay in the field, watching clouds move across an impossibly blue sky. When they returned with a snack and a Coke, Gumercindo told us he wasn’t feeling well either. He loaded the horses and headed home, leaving Felipe and me to wait for whatever came next.

As we waited for a vehicle to pass, rain began to fall, and we huddled under the eave of a nearby building. Thankfully, it didn’t last long, and we returned to the field by the road. What felt like hours later, a lone farm truck passed through town, heading toward Pitumarca. Felipe flagged it down and spoke briefly with the driver, who agreed to take us down the mountain.

Standing in the back of the truck with our equipment, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I knew that the lower elevation of Cusco would help ease my illness, as would the promise of a comfortable bed. The descent was slow. The old farm truck was geared for torque rather than speed, and the narrow, winding dirt road wasn’t suited for fast travel anyway. I didn’t mind.

That ride down the mountain is a memory I won’t soon forget. The golden-hour sun made the mountains glow. As we passed near the Vilcanota River, birds traced the air above us and the sound of water echoed as it meandered downstream. Moving through small villages, we watched people tending their crops. Occasionally, motorcyclists passed us, observing us with the same curiosity we felt toward them, always accompanied by a smile, nod, or wave.

By dusk, we reached Pitumarca and unloaded our equipment at the edge of town. Felipe asked me to stay with our belongings while he disappeared across the road once again. After a short wait, he returned and told me that a taxi would arrive shortly. Soon, we were on our way to Cusco.

The quiet, rural mountain communities gradually gave way to the hustle and bustle of the city. I arrived at my hotel, Casa Elena, well into the evening. Our improvised journey from the mountains to Cusco had taken roughly ten hours. At last, I was able to shower, rest, and begin my recovery.

In the days that followed, as my body returned to normal, I found myself thinking about that legend Felipe had shared on Campa Pass. The son-in-law who tried to take what didn’t belong to his landscape. The corn that thrived in one place but failed in another. The importance of understanding where you are and what that place demands of you.

I hadn’t completed the journey I’d planned. I hadn’t crossed Condor Pass or reached Sibinacocha, stood beside Apu Yayamari, or stepped foot in Phinaya. On my research expeditions, this would have felt like objectives unmet, data uncollected, time wasted. But this trip was supposed to be different. I had wanted to experience these mountains on my own terms, and instead, they had taught me to experience them on theirs.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. In trying to move through the landscape without the structure of scientific research, I discovered that I had simply brought a different kind of structure. An ambitious route, a timeline, and expectations of what solo travel should look like. The altitude sickness had stripped all that away, leaving something more fundamental: the humbling realization that some places demand surrender rather than conquest.

That ride down the mountain in the back of the farm truck, watching the golden light paint the peaks as we descended through communities I would never have seen otherwise—that became the journey. Not the one I’d planned, but perhaps the one I needed. Felipe sitting beside me, patient and unconcerned, understanding something about these mountains that I was only beginning to learn.

Sometimes the mountain decides. And sometimes, if you’re paying attention, you learn more from turning back than you ever would have from pushing through.