botWerks

my latest obsession has been elimination of base weight from my pack for travel and backpacking.  this resulted in the purchase of a postal scale and a bit of time wasted weighing every item i might possibly be tempted to stick into pack and the creation of an overly complex spreadsheet to estimate base pack weight for my wife, stepson and myself.

i was unable able resist the replacement of our existing stainless steel sierra mugs with a shiny titanium sierra cup from snow peak.  unfortunately, i can’t seem to purchase this locally and a purchase direct from snow peak was the result.  (such are obsessions) this was an entirely painless purchase experience, but i was surprised at how heavy the package that arrived was.  my titanium sierra cups had been co-packed with a 2 lb. glossy printed catalog.  WTF?

i honestly don’t quite know what to make of this.  i realize that there’s a strong stigma to showing up in a publication such as this.  but wouldn’t purchasing this also imply that you know the folks that are going to be in there? the tag … “Now Even MORE Registered SEX OFFENDERS in Your Area” seems to indicate that this is a good thing, or at least a selling point.  odd.

for those interested in the answers to  ”Match the Perp to the Crime”, it’s B, C, A.  though, i’m really not quite certain as to what masterbating in the public library consists of.

i’m behind on organizing pictures and notes from our recent trip to peru.  but when i was running through some video, i ran across this little nugget of annoyance.

imagine, if you will, that you’ve spent the better part of the last 3 days hiking 30 miles in the andes and you haven’t had a shower.  you’ve traipsed around machu picchu and you’re dog tired.  more than anything, you’re really looking forward to getting some sleep and chilling on a train on your way back home.

as a slight aside, i should point out that some folks who’ve hiked the inca trail and arrive at machu picchu to be confronted by, “we took a bus here” tourists get their teeth set on edge. when confronted by these tourists complaining about having to walk up and down stairs at a wonder of the world the last thing you want to do is have to put up with them on a train.

however, the company that runs the trains from aguas calientes is (justifiably) loathe to miss a marketing opportunity and after they’ve given you some light snacks and tea proceed to bust out the sales cart and the pulsating techno.  when you want to sleep and politely ignore the couple sitting 18 inches across the aisle from  you this is not helping things.

a note of advice – if you’ve going to do the inca trail and you’re making a decision as to which train you’re going to take back to cusco, or wherever it is you’re going back to, stick with your peeps.  you want to be with worn out fellow hikers and folks who aren’t going to be drunkenly whipping out their visa/amex/mc to purchase alpaca wool sweaters and shawls.  more importantly, you don’t want to be dealing with some rancid marketing techno while you smell like ass.

30-november, 2009 – 4th day of inca trail

3:30a comes way too fast and i’m deeply asleep.  the porters wak us and as a group we do surprisingly well getting ourselves going.  we really only were running about 10-15 minutes behind the blistering pace that alex (our guide) had laid out for us the night before.

a comment about breakfast – cake.  seriously, it was cake, with frosting.  the porters and the cook are quite pleased with themselves, but i think everyone had the same reaction when they were introduced to the cake at 3:45a.  muted surprise and not as well muted disappointment.  still it’s a nice touch and kudos to the crew for doing it.

breakfast is short.  we collected our stuff and prepped for the trail.  in all of the hustle and bustle; elise falls from the tent terrace to the cooking / dining tent terrace.  this was about an 8-12 foot drop.  fortunately, she’s unhurt and what could have been a very bad situation is mercifully a minor bump.  she and her husband (josh) were understandably peeved by the relative ambivalence expressed by the guide and the porters to what was potentially a nasty situation.  still, kathy and i were impressed at the level of calm josh and elise seemed to have about the whole situation.

as a group we have to hustle to make it to the sun gate (intipunku) check point.  the check point opens at 5:30a and we’re almost the first ones in line.  all the groups queue up here.  the early morning rise was worth it.

it’s at this point that i develop a particularly strong appreciation for our group.  as i overhear the banality of our neighbors.  the whining brand-oriented 20-somethings w/very little daypacks.  daddy hired them porters for their makeup.

we get through the checkpoint and we haul ass.  i mean we seriously haul ass to the sun gate.  our group was passing the group ahead of us and it was a very brisk pace uphill to the sun gate.  from here, you have an amazing view of machu picchu.  more importantly, from this point, it’s a relatively short (and surprisingly modestly sloped) descent to machu picchu.  when we got down to machu picchu and looked back it was apparent that we seriously motored through that distance.  the distance between the sun gate and the funeral rock is a respectable amount and it took us no time to cover that distance.

finally, we’d made it to machu picchu.

29-november, 2009 – 3rd day of inca trail

this was our short day on the trail.  for other groups, this would be their longest.  we basically had one small pass (trivial after the day before) and we descended for a number of hours.  kathy wasn’t feeling particularly well, so we opted to bypass a small ruin and take the porters trail directly to the camp.  this enabled us to change clothes and take a nap for a couple of hours.

refreshed from our nap we had a quick snack and took an afternoon tour on winaywayna.  this was a pretty neat and relatively recent discovery.  with still working water falls and expansive terraces for agriculture it made for a very nice diversion.

happy hour was where we discussed the porter tipping situation.  tipping does tend to bring out some interesting cultural perspectives.  europeans aren’t accustomed to the bribery that we engage in as americans with tipping.  the U.S. contingent in the group was a bunch of democrats who just assumed that you tipped generously and carried with us a little bit of 1st world guilt.  france – was simply and diplomatically silent on the topic.  the english contingent seemed to feel that we were being held up by llama path.  in the end we settled on everyone contributing what they were comfortable with and took up a collection of ~720 soles.  which amounted to about 36 soles / porter and 72 soles for the cook.  this was well short of the recommended tip by llama path but better than i was expecting based on the tenor of the conversation that had taken place.

after dinner everyone was crashing early.  we had a 3:30a wakeup for the entry and trail into machu picchu.

at this point in the trail, the bathrooms are disgusting.  folks aren’t feeling at their gastro-intestinal finest and the squat toilets do next to nothing to make you feel any better.  brushing ones teeth is an exercise in gag reflex control.

crash hard, sleep hard and make sure you have your crap packed up for the early wakeup.

28-november, 2009 – 2nd day of inca trail

hell day.  breakfast was a healthy dose of pancakes.  then we hit the trail, we had the longest day of the trail ahead of us and it was a requirement to get going right off the bat in the morning.  it was basically climbing, climbing, climbing and some more climbing.  we climbed on stairs, through rain forest on stairs and on trail.  the scenery was really quite lush and after a couple of hours we got a break.

we broke in a nice valley where there were touts offering us water and snacks.  after hitting the bathroom we slogged up to dead woman’s pass. (DWP)  the valley at the base of the pass approach is really some of the most memorable in the hike, were we pestered llamas and sheep in between some steep rocky mountain sides.

DWP is so named because the pass has the profile of a woman lying on her back complete with lumpy breasts and perky nipples for imagery.  the trail itself consists of a handful of switch backs which gain altitude fairly quickly then a long, long set of stone stairs which take you to the top.  these stairs seem to go on forever.  you stop, take a look back, see how far you’ve gone and then look up and see how far you have to go.  the porters basically run up  the mountain side and it’s more than a little sobering to see these guys hauling ass with ~60 lbs of gear each up the side of the mountain.  the llama path guys all wear read and they move as a group so you see them coming and going and they pass you like you’re standing still.  often you are.

when you make it to the top of dead woman’s pass, you’re pretty well out of breath and you’re welcoming the opportunity to rest and snap some pictures.  then it’s down the back side of the mountain.  this is the cold side and the contrast is amazing.  you put on a hat and a shell and you haul yourself down the backside of the mountain this time it’s down the stone stairs.  if you think going down stairs is easier, you’re quite mistaken, this is a painful undertaking when it’s nice weather. on the back side of the mountain where it’s wet and cold, it’s a particularly nerve racking experience and downright dangerous in many instances.  doing this without trekking poles strikes me as insanity, but the porters basically run down the stairs here.  after a couple of hours of going down stairs, you’re body is screaming for a flat expanse to walk on.

we ended up having our lunch where several groups were actually staying for the night.  their day was done. we still had another pass to hit and the corresponding descent to our camp site.  kathy massively powered through this second pass which was wet and rainy.  when we got to the second pass there were all sorts of small stone piles left by previous trekkers.  it would have been a fun place to take some pictures had it not been pouring and a requirement that we haul ass down the back side of this mountain as well.

by this time, a number of folks in our group had become sick.  whether from altitude or something in the food it was tough to say.  two folks were trekking and puking their guts out en route.  not fun.  by dinner we were at about 50% of the start group.  folks just went to their tents and crashed.  we had dinner and then crashed. i don’t know that i’ve ever slept so well camping.