If you ain't first, you're last.
This was my attitude about climbing Huayna Picchu (AKA Wayna Picchu, AKA Whine-the-whole-way-up Picchu). We had been in Peru a couple weeks at this point and I'm gonna admit that we spent a lot of our time nervously anticipating things that we had signed up for weeks previous. This is mostly due to the fact that you can only do so much research on Peru. There's a lot of information to read online but as we were learning basically every day of our trip, most of it was a lie.
Huayna Picchu was one thing that we had heard some sketchy shit about... mostly after we had booked it (you have to book months ahead of time) and I'm the type of person that refuses to back out of something if I was dumb enough to pay for it without researching.
However, about a month before we left for our trip I came across a post on Instagram about Huayna Picchu and how dangerous of a climb it was. For some reason the idea that climbing up a mountain on 500+ year old stairs hadn't come off as concerning to me, until I really started looking into it. Turns out when you start typing "Huayna Picchu" into google, one of the first search suggestions is "Huayna Picchu deaths". Not so comforting. The Peruvian government is really good at not advertising (obviously) or even warning about this sort of thing, but it turns out theres been a reasonable amount of people die (no actual stats due to the government not seeming to give a crap) while hiking Huayna Picchu and it is considered one of the most dangerous hikes in the world during rainy season. One guess as to what time of year we had chosen to go. Yup. Awesome.
The day we arrived in Aquas Calientes was beautiful (last stop before mountain climbing), sunny and dry so we're figuring we're golden, we'll get up at 4am for entrance at 6am and just kill it, easy peasy lemon squeezy. T'was not to be.
The 'monsoon' hit around 11pm (I've never been in a monsoon but thats what I'm going with because rain/thunderstorm/windstorm would not do this justice). This was right around the time we were nodding off with Emperors New Groove playing on the iPad in the background (because obviously thats the only acceptable movie to watch the day before you go to Machu Picchu). Our hostel was less than great to begin with, made even worse by the fact that the roof was tin, so you can imagine how delightful that was to listen to all night, coupled with the bar across the street, in full festive swing until 3am.
So zero sleep and the thought of climbing 'one of the most dangerous mountains' in the rain was not the most ideal situation but we're all about positivity on our trips so matching raincoats on and bagged lunches in hand (our hostel hostess made us lunch - adorable) off we went.
When we got to the gate we were feeling a little better, the rain had eased off and there were some far less prepared hikers in front of us in the entrance line, one woman was wearing fur lined leather boots (no apple bottom jeans though) because apparently she hadn't read any of the same articles we had. So we're getting pretty confident, if she could do it we for sure could right? On the other hand, if we couldn't make it, it didn't look like we were gonna be the only ones turning back.
We made some friends in line and started off hiking with them, the first part of the trail is super easy, as far as hiking at high altitudes go. You kinda meander up and down a few smaller hills before you start to head majorly downhill, and we started thinking ummm isn't this a little backwards? And you can see the mountain looming above you on the trail and I can tell you it did not seem like a feasible climb. A thought that crossed my mind again once we started heading up what seemed to be a 90 degree vertical staircase.
At the starting gate there was a very non helpful map showing the trail and about halfway up, the return loop comes out, so we knew when we got to that trail that the torture was gonna be half over. To our shock, this happened pretty quickly, like I said before, if you're not first, you're last and I was not into being stuck behind people on the trail, anyone we came up to, we passed, including the lady in the leather boots, shocking I know. There's parts of the trail that are like regular hiking, no stairs or anything, just a trail, but most of it is made of of straight up and down, 500 year old Inca stairs. Most of the stairs are too small/thin to fit your whole foot on (assuming because Inca people were mini) so you just end up tip toeing up the entire mountain, and you have no choice but to go semi slow because one small misstep and its over for you. A few of the more insane verticals had cables drilled into the mountain to help you up, but I found it easier to use my hands and feet on the stairs, basically climbing on all fours. Since the 'monsoon' had stopped by the time we started climbing, I'm not totally sure how much it affected the difficulty level of the trail, we had found most of the time we spent in the Andes was pretty wet and humid regardless so I can't speak to the validity of the internet claims of Huayna Picchu being ultra dangerous. But it did seem to be pretty wet and we didn't overly feel like we were in immediate danger of slipping and dying. I can see if you were nervous or overthinking the trail it could have been less than safe, but my (very mature) way of dealing with my fears is just to not think about it and I usually get by pretty good with that method.
We were one of the first groups to the top ('we' meaning just me and Jas, our friends from the line gave up and turned back), it took us about a quarter of the time the internet told us it would - CRUSHED IT. We hung out for a half hour, had some lunch and watched the people behind us struggle up the stairs of death (their unofficial name, but highly accurate).
The Huayna Picchu summit has basically two levels, the lower level is where we had lunch, its a wide rock platform carved out of the mountain. The higher level is the scariest place ever (if you're afraid of heights, which I am). Theres a small trail to the true summit, at the top of which theres a large (ish) rock that some people were sitting on, and a delightful pack of humans nearly pushed me off of, so that was a great little rush of adrenaline at the end of our climb. At the top its essentially straight down, they say if you fall off Huayna Picchu, they have to pick up your body 2500 feet below in the Urubamba River, obviously not
ideal.
The way down was a lot more fun than the way up, somehow just as sweaty though, now that it was midday the spring temperates started to show up. Regardless if there was a monsoon or not, pretty sure the sweat from me alone was enough to erode the fricken stairs, so sorry if you're wanting to do this hike, the way up was washed away with my blood sweat and tears.
There are two "caves" you go through on your way back down, and I feel similar about caves as a feel about heights - less than thrilled. But they are small and only one made me have slight feelings of crushing claustrophobia which is a bonus. Surprisingly we made it mostly unscathed, with minimal amounts of whining on the way down, even though our calves were starting to seize up from tiptoeing up the mountain.
Overall this day confirmed the internet had told us at least 3 lies about Huayna Picchu:
It will not take you all day to climb (unless you wear fur boots).
An all night 'monsoon' probably won't ruin your chances of summiting, unless you suck.
You most likely won't die, as long as you're not being an idiot on the trail.
This hike combined a few of my least favourite things but we did it and I'm pretty proud. Not saying I would be keen to do it again but not saying never either, but I'm definitely not saying soon.
More Peru photos and adventures on @pcolemaan and @jasminemassier
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