South America 2025 – #13 – Peru – Huayhuash Trek #4

06.05.2025

Fourth day of our 8 day trek of Huayhuash. Start at 4300m elevation. The goal for this day was to hike around 16km to the third campsite at Cuyoc via the the fourth of 8 passes named Trapecio at 5040m of elevation.

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

The night before we fell asleep while it rained (like the days before). We woke up at 1AM without the sound of rain. To our suprise it was snowing. It snowed the whole night. In the morning we were in winter wonderland. This day was a tough one starting from 4300m all the way up the Trapecio Pass at 5040m.After 2h in the trail (going uphill only in the snow) my wife got so weak we had to come up with a solution, otherwise we would have gotten into trouble. This area is remote. No helicopters, no cars, no roads. Our guide recommended that she could go on the horse until we reach the pass. We finally opted for that as it was still 400-500m of elevation to go. The horse and the donkeys went past after another half hour and my wife went uphill on a horse.

She was in bad shape, more or less the same symptoms like the day before. Exhausted and heavy coughing.

I had to continue for myself as the donkeys and horses are a lot quicker and left me behind.

After another 1-2h i finally reached the pass and met my wife again 🙂

The views from Trapecio pass are wonderful. The only downside: crazy windy and cold.

As soon as we descended from the pass the wind got less. At some point we even had a bit of sunshine.

Another fantastic pass. Huayhuash did not disappoint. We slowly made our way past the amazing views and reached Cuyoc, also known as Campamento Elefante.

Before the camp theres a magnificent view about 150m elevation above. We relaxed in the sun, when another hiker we met with a group before told us they are missing one guy of their group since the pass (about 2-3h away) and another one had acute mountain sickness.

As i wrote before, its really difficult to get help there. He rushed to continue to the camp to ask for help. At this point it was already 5PM and sunset was about 7PM. To go back up you need at least 3h. Later we saw one guy with a horse going up the path to search for the guy. It turned out the group found him and was able to arrive at the campsite at some point. He managed to get lost in the area of the pass. To me almost impossible, but if you add in the altitude anything can happen…

Such things remind you of the danger in those environments.

We arrived at around 5PM at the river near the campsite. The distance we walked was about 15km with an elevation gain of 768m.

It was the best decision for Kerstin to go up the pass with the horse. If you have to quit the trek from this area, you have to get to the next small village Huayllapa the next day, where there may be a collectivo to drive out (the only village along the trek).