10/11/2008

Peru fed by Gravity What better way to spend your birthday? Grady Semmens

“Hey you guys, watch out for the pig here when you come around this corner,” Julio says, looking back up at us from around the tight switchback we are about to dive into. “He’s right here in the middle of the trail. And make sure you don’t ride over his leash. You should never ride over a pig’s leash.”

It was our first day of riding in the Peruvian Andes, and as if we needed any reminders, things were a bit different from biking back home. The first thing you learn about riding in Peru is that you never know what to expect around the next bend. Whether it’s a fully-loaded bus peeling around a hairpin corner on a one-lane mountain pass, a pack of angry dogs snarling at your heels, a group of brightly-dressed campesina women leading a train of donkeys into the hills, or a ragged marching band with a religious procession winding its way through the dirt streets of town, your fingers are always at the ready while screaming down the never-ending selection of trails that braid the Andean slopes.

Grady Semmens leading the climb to Pitec. approx 4000m (passes out in 3 minutes) photo by Jeff Boeda.

Today (Nov. 17) is our first, and likely only, rest day after six straight days of biking that kicked off James’ ultimate 40th birthday celebration. Based in the city of Huaraz, the launch pad for climbers, bikers and trekkers in the renowned Cordillera Blanca mountain range, our friend and local mountain bike guru Julio Olaza is taking a holiday of his own to spend two weeks showing us some of the gnarliest, wildest and most spectacular rides he has spent the last decade lining up in the hills surrounding his home town.

Shuttle Peruvian style ,Cordillero Negra approx 4000m . photo ~ Jeff Boeda...

An eight hour bus ride from Lima brought our team (James Wilson, Jeff Boeda, Darrin Gregory, Cam Mollard and myself) up to Huaraz, a city of 100,000 nestled in the Rio Santa valley with the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra ranges towering on either side. We quickly settled into the Olaza family’s sparkling new gringo-friendly B&B. Our routine quickly turned into having breakfast on the rooftop patio while admiring views of the glacier-capped peaks, including the mighty Huascaran, Peru’s highest peak at 6,768 metres.

Then, it’s time to lather the sunscreen on to our milk-coloured skin (Did I mention that it’s actually the rainy season here?) and then piling our bikes and bodies into the 4x4 Mitsubishi minivan so our fearless driver Robin can whisk us up the lumpy gravel roads above town.

On our first day, Julio took us on what he calls a good warm-up ride for those who aren’t acclimatized to the sparse air above 3,000 metres. We drove 1,000 metres above Huaraz into the Cordillera Negra and then pedalled a mining access road eight kilometres along a treeless hillside, lungs burning and brains tingling from the effort.

" 4.5 hours of descending makes you kind of hungry." Photo ~ Jeff Boeda

We then dropped into the trail Julio has named Viva Peru!, which follows the right-of-way or a trail dating pre-Inca times, that winds its way through farms and villages where Quechua families herd sheep, tend their gardens and watch puzzled as a band of strangely-clad gringos on bikes goes flying past; hooting, hollering and shouting “buenos dias,” on their way by.

The 10 km descent took us two hours and was a big mix of smooth dirt singletrack, wide grassy runways hemmed in by ancient stone walls, rocky technical sections with water ditches and stone staircases.

Thankfully, there was plenty of opportunity to stop and enjoy the scenery since the Vancouver boys had a hard time believing they could ride their bikes with more than 30 psi in their tires. The short ride saw a total of four flats thanks to the sharp rocks that have a way of grabbing your wheel and tossing you out of control like some kind of South American gremlin.

Left to right: Darren 'LD' Gregory, Grady Semmens, Julio Olaza (seated),Cam Mollard, Jeff Boeda and James Wilson.
Photo ~ Robin. Pass: Portocuello de Llanganuco (4769m) The 'true free ride' to follow.

Expressing our delight like giggling schoolboys, Julio chuckled, put his fingers to his mouth and said: “This is just a little taste of the riding here. Just wait until you see what else we’re going to ride, man.”

He sure wasn’t kidding.

The next day, we were back up for a similar ride called Grandma’s Tits on account of the bulbous formations of wrinkly white rock you ride past after a steep free-line through grassy pasture land.

Then, as we start getting used to the elevation, we move on to back-to-back rides on the slopes of the Cordillera Blanca above town, requiring a bit more climbing as we get into the narrow canyons that serve as entryways to the snowbound peaks, or nevados, beyond.

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, we woke to a dazzling morning without a cloud in the sky. Julio nodded towards the looming mass of Huscaran and said: “Are you ready to go ride around that little hill?”

And so began our first two-day epic riding adventure. “It’s going to be awesome, man. We’re going to ride from the glaciers down to the jungle where they grow bananas,” Julio explained on the drive out.

From Huaraz we drove to the town of Yungay and then into Huscaran National Park where we stopped beside the turquoise alpine lakes of Lagunas Llanganuco. From there Robin piloted the lurching minibus up the insanely narrow and twisting road to the Llanganuco pass, which is just below the glaciers that spill off the north shoulder of Huscaran. At the top of the pass we unloaded, filled our cheeks with coca leaves and began the 50 km descent onto eastern side of the Andes, towards the Amazon basin.

Canadian Acid Art @ Pitec Photo ~ Jeff Boeda.

As newly-minted “yuppie fucks,” we quickly got used to picking out lines of ancient singletrack next to the road that have more than likely never felt the squish of a mountain bike tire, and met up with our sag wagon for lunch and extra water.  Not that it wasn’t hard work.

After leaving the alpine we were faced with hours of ripping down dirt roads that traverse the lush, terraced hillsides, passing Tolkien-esque villages in emerald valleys sitting below snowcaps that look as if they’re illuminated from within.

We then dropped into the blazing afternoon heat of the tropical river valley, where we loaded up the van and headed up to the town of Chacas for the night.

You feel kind of small out here." rider: Julio Olaza  Photo ~ Jeff Boeda.

A night of beer drinking in our ramshackle, 100-year-old hotel was followed by a snooze that was interrupted by a small earthquake. The next morning we spent an hour checking out the town church and its famous wood working shop that was founded by Italian missionaries in the 1800s and continues to be a thriving operation.

Then it was back in the van for the 90-minute drive up to the 4,850-metre Punta Olimpica (Olympic Pass) where we watched three Andean condors surf the thermals above as we struggled to breathe while suiting up for the ride down. This was the best riding we’ve encountered so far.

It began with cruising down the road’s serpentine series of switchbacks admiring the glaciers around us, followed by some free-line riding through the grassy meadows of the Ulta valley on the southern flanks of Huascaran.

James Wilson, Grady Semmens, Cam Mollard near base camp of Huascaran(tallest mtn. in Peru)

At the head of the canyon, we passed out of the national park and into a sweet-smelling pine forest where we hopped off the road and on to the cobblestones of a pre-Inca road the skirted the hillsides and dropped into the corn farms at the western foot of the mountain. It was then on to a seemingly endless descent on rough, loose trails of red dirt that wound tightly back down to the Rio Santa and the highway back to Huaraz. Our forearms were bulging as we shredded the descent, sending gangs of neatly-dressed kids scrambling up the sides of the trails, laughing at us as they hike home from school.

To acknowledge the epic nature of the 43 km ride, Julio named it “One More Cup of Coffee,” referring to the Bob Dylan tune with the lyric “One more cup of coffee before I go…. To the valley below.”

That brings us to today, as we take a break and prepare for the next round of Andean adventure by fixing the bikes, tending to our aching bodies and, of course, sampling the local culture in the form of the Peruvian national drink: the legendary Pisco Sour.

The rest will be short-lived, however. Julio and James have penciled out the plan for the next week, which includes a two day tour through the Cordillera Huayhuash, the remote mountain range where the famous mountaineering story Touching the Void took place, two more day rides out of Huaraz, a massive descent from the Cordillera Negra down to the Pan American Highway at sea level, followed by an epic day ride down the barren desert hills south of Lima.

James Wilson ripping up some Peruvian "Chakinani" (Single track in quechua). Photo ~ Jeff Boeda

The tally so far…170 km and more than 9,000 metres of (mostly) downhill riding in six days. Not bad.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of James Wilson’s Peruvian birthday odyssey.

- Grady Semmens

Think riding in Peru could be your cuppa Pisco?  Check out chakinaniperu.com