Icarus on a bicycle

My route from Trujillo led me back into the moutains. Following the rio Santo on dirt roads up through the magnificent Cañon del Pato, through its many tunnels and out into the valley between the cordelerias blanco and negro, with the towering snowy peaks to my left, I arrived in the mountain climbers' delight that is the town of Huarez. Here for the final time I met up with Philip and Valeska, my Austrian friends, who had spent a week hiking in the surrounding moutains, while I had been getting myself back into the saddle in Trujillo. After a few beers that night we took an early (for me, late for them) start together and continued up the valley untill our paths seperated at the entrance to the national park guarding the Cordeleria Blanco. They were headed down to Lima and I was headed across the mountains towards Bolivia. My dirt path led me up to the guard station and at 4100 m it was incredibly cold and the park rangers were kind enough to let me sleep in their station and feed me with hot food for both supper and breakfast the next day.

I had just spent over two weeks at sea level and my ascent from 2000 m to my present 4100 m had taken me 2 days. A note here about altitude sickness: it is not the absolute height you reach that is important but the relative change of height and the speed at which you ascend. I had climbed high, fast and I was paying for it with a thumping head-ache. However after a rest at the guard station and some tea, I felt much better and ready for my climb the next day over the two passes ahead of me, the taller of the two at 4880 m. In the morning I felt good and despite a shortness of breath after relatively little exertion I was confident. This lasted untill about halfway to the first pass I was at about 4600 m and my crushing head ache was back with avengance. The smart thing to do here would be to go back down and spend the day acclimatizing. However I figured that if this pass was too much I could use the low point between the two passes to camp at and acclimatize there. By the time I reached the top of this first path my head ache was crippling but none of the other symptoms (lack of co-ordination, lack of focus, extreme cold) of Acute Mountain Sickness (yes I did my homework) were present. So I decided to keep going and hoped that the 200 m descent down to the low point would ease my head ache. It did not in fact, it got worse and a listlessness started to creep into my attitude and I realised I was too high to stay at over night, if I remained here I could be subject to two fatal conditions (HAPE and HACE, which are scarrily common causes of death in mountaineers).

Like Icarus I had tried to go too high but my only way out of this mess was to go yet higher. Unlike Icarus my machine was working fine, it was my body that was melting away. As I tried to cycle on the rough road bumping me around made my headache exrutiating and combined with the exertion and the gain in height I felt like I was about to vomit. I knew that if I did this I would loose all my strength, I would need all of this. So I got off my bike and started walking up the slope. As I climbed my co-ordination started to go and I kept stumbling on rocks, every 50 m I had to pause for a break to get my breath back and fight down the waves of nausea. Despite my worsening condition, I was not oblivious to my surroundings and I walked past glaciers on one side and snowy mountains away to the other. After 2 hours of struggle I crested the pass only to see the road, after an initial short dip snake up again round the next mountain. The next hour was one of the hardest of my life, the knowledge that dark was coming on and that if I didn't start to descend soon I was going to be in big trouble kept me moving despite the useless state my body and mind was in.

With half an hour of light left I crested the final pass and as I did so the rain started, first as a drizzle and then as a downpour. I was already cold, being at that height the day time temperatures combined with wind chill were below freezing and I was wearing 4 layers. The rain soaked me through despite my waterproof and the additional wind chill from descending rapidly penetrated all my layers. Icarus descended from the skies to the rocks below, I descended from altitude sickness to hyperthermia. My recovery from the altitude was as quick as my descent and felt almost like it had been a nightmare that had never actually happened. As my mind unfogged I realised that if I didn't find shelter from the rain and wind soon I was again in serious trouble, my whole body was already shaking uncontrolably, my feet and hands were blocks of ice. The trouble was the nearest settlement was about 30 km's away. Then as night fell I came upon a mining camp. I begged them to let me sleep in one of their porta cabins (by now I was down to 4200 m and only a head ache persisted), I think they could see I was in a bad way because they they let me in with little argument. I got into the porta cabin as fast as I could and started striping off my clothes, not an easy task given how hard I was shacking and the numbness of my hands (zips had to be done with my teeth). As I pulled on all my remaining dry clothes there was a knock on the door and one of the miners appeared with a mattress I grinned and mumbled my thanks and then climbed into my sleeping bag, curling into the fetus position and willing the shacking to stop. It did, and as it did another minner appeared with hot soup, chicken and rice. After inhaling this food I was almost hot and feeling like a different person. I feel I'm pretty lucky to have escaped this episode with no lasting damage and I don't think this would have been the case without the help of the minners, it seems there's a guardian angel looking out for me. Maybe its Icarus taking care of those with equally foolish ambition, those who try to travel too close to the sun.