South America 2025 – #12 – Peru – Huayhuash Trek #3

05.05.2025

Third day of our 8 day trek of Huayhuash. Start at 4150m elevation. The goal for this day was to hike around 16km to the third campsite Huayhuash via the the third of 8 passes named Suila at 4850m of elevation.

Below is the Map from my GPS-Tracking for the whole Trek.

Opposed to the first two days we had a rainy morning. We started hiking at around 7AM. This day marks one of the most famous passes and lookouts, named simply three lakes lookout and Siula Pass at 4850m. The hike started very rainy with very low hanging clouds. Fortunately it got better the later it got. After about 2-3h we reached the first lake with amazing turquoise waters.

We continued to the famous Three Lakes Lookout, Mirador Las Tres Lagunas, located at an elevation of 4550m. Rain started to get a bit less, and after half an hour it cleared up so we could see the beauty of the lookout. At some point we even had sunshine. It just lasted for about 10 minutes before it started raining again. Time to eat something sheltered below a huge rock.

We prepared to continue and saw another short nice weather window. As we continued weather changed again. The higher we got it started to snow.

When we reached the Siula Pass at 4850m we once again had a shift in weather. This time for a bit longer. Amazing views back to where we came from towards the whole mountain range.

We spend about an hour at the pass befor heading down the other side to the next campsite Huayhuash. At this time my wifes health still went downhill. First thoughts about aborting the trip and needing help emerged.

This pass marked the most difficult so far, because of altitude and bad health of my wife. In contrast to the beauty of the area. Because we went on a private trip, we decided to start about half an hour later than the groups also at the campsites. It paid out as we had the trek for ourselves most of the time!

This was definitely one of the best days along the trek.

We arrived at around 6PM at the campsite. The distance we walked was about 17km with an elevation gain of 834m.