Young Peak

While we were visiting Machu Picchu we did the "optional" climb of Wayna Picchu. Now, I knew that it would be a challenge because there were signs that said "only for healthy fit people". And I knew that it would be bad if you fell because our guide joked that you could get back to the train station in 10 seconds if you were not careful. I didn't really grasp what those actually meant until we were climbing.

The stairs reminded me of the stairs from Lord of the Rings where Frodo, Sam and Gollum were climbing those long stairs outside of Mordor and there was a cave at the top that they had to pass through. Not nearly as nightmarish as that of course, but they were steep. And there was a cave at the top. That was small enough I had to take my backpack off and push it ahead of me to get though it. Going down the stairs was a bit nerve wracking too. I feel I am fairly comfortable with heights, but with how the stairs were shaped and the size of my feet, I was going down them on all fours backwards because that's how I felt was how I wasn't going to die. Because, at the end of a long-ish set of these steep stairs, it was a straight drop off of probably 400 m. Long enough for you to think about what went wrong.

To give you an idea who "close" the train station was, I took a picture of it. Now, wikipedia lists the peak as 2,720 metres and Aguas Calientes (the town below) elevation as 2,040 m. That's a difference of 680 m, but the train station is a bit below the town. Either way, with a misstep you could go for a close to 700 m fall.


I'm glad that we did the climb. The views were great. It's just not something that I'd recommend for most people. Below is a nice rock that sort of had a seat carved out of it. Not sure if there was much underneath it. I didn't actually want to look down.