The Inka Trail, Day 3. Climbing The Endless Stairs Of Death.

The next day we got up to a delicious and hearty breakfast and formally met the crew. These guys took such good care of us.

As we hit the trail, it started to drizzle, but we were prepared. We knew that the stretch ahead, a five-hour ascent from 10,000 feet to the aptly-named Deadwoman's Pass at nearly 14,000 was supposed to be the hardest of the trek. We had psyched ourselves up for it, but still felt a fair amount of trepidation for the climb to come.

Look at us. We were so young and naive then.

The rain was off and on as we climbed through the cloud forest to about 12,000 feet.

The going was hard, but the scenery was beautiful, wild orchids and rushing streams everywhere.

Then we emerged from the cloud forest and started climbing the steps to the summit. We discovered that the Inka engineers didn't believe in switchbacks. At this point, the trail is pretty much a straight line up the hillside to the summit.

A word about those stairs: a few were of a reasonable height, but most were a step-and-a-half or even two steps high, requiring you to put your whole body into each step. Also, they were very uneven and a bit slippery from the rain, so you had to watch carefully where you put your feet.

All this while the oxygen content of the air is rapidly diminishing.

We were reduced to one slow step, ten breaths, then another step.

And meanwhile, the porters, close to fifty pounds strapped to their backs, sprinted gaily past us, laughing and talking amongst themselves.

We climbed slowly into the clouds. Each step harder than the last.

Finally, I made the summit. Looking back, I could see the valley where we had started the day far below. O and Jose were somewhere down in the mist. At that moment, an eagle zoomed past my head and hovered in the cold wind that streamed through the mouth of the pass.

Eventually, O appeared, doggedly taking one difficult step after another.

Feel her pain and elation (but mainly just exhaustion) as she confronts the last eight steps.

 We did it!

One more photo documenting our triumph. Jose later told us that there are over 3,000 stair steps on that particular stretch. And believe me, we felt every one of them.

It was good to be over the worst, but there was much more to come that day: a four-hour descent into the valley beyond.

It seemed easy at first, but it was nearly as difficult as the ascent. The slippery, uneven stairs took great concentration and effort.

But at last we made it to the camp, where we could look back at the pass we'd reached hours earlier. The porters had long since set up the tents, and the cook was busy preparing dinner.

We were so wrecked that we passed on the food and instead crawled into our tent and slept from about 5 pm until the next morning.

P.