Hiking the (accurately named) ‘Stairs of Death’

Jay and I have a hike we like near our cottage at home. It’s called Coopers Lookout and it takes 45 minutes, round trip. The views are spectacular and there’s 10 minutes of ‘uphill scrambling’ that make us feel pretty fit. This is ironic, because when we travel the world we choose hikes that make us feel infinitely the opposite.

In Australia, we hiked the Grampians. J claims he nearly died and I’m not sure I’d ever sweated quite so much.

We followed it up with a hike over Table Mountain in Tasmania. This time we were wiser and packed snacks. We still struggled.

Both pushed our physical limits, but neither prepared us for yesterday’s adventure.

This was the day prior when we simply walked through Macchu Picchu and took in the views. Pretty amazing!

We had arranged for 2 entries to MP on separate days. Mostly, because we were unsure about the weather as we’re traveling in wet season. And we thought it would be a fun challenge to do a hike we’d heard about: Huayna Picchu (which means young mountain… and is also sometimes known as the Stairs of Death).

😱 the stairs go to there ⬇️. What were we thinking?!

It was a foggy, early morning start to our hike. This was how it began. ⬇️

Things escalated quickly:

We stopped a lot on the way up (sometimes to take pictures, but mostly to catch our breath). J was losing faith. He feared that we were going to have climbed stairs for 3 hours to look out on a white void. I was holding on to hope (by a thread!)

Still hopeful we might see more.
(But increasingly, poco)

But, the Incan gods seem to have heard our prayers (and those of everyone else braving this insane, ridiculous hike). After a foggy start and middle, the skies shifted just as we neared the summit. And wow, did we feel lucky.

Worried this was going to be our best shot.

It was a tough go, but we made it. We were pretty pleased with ourselves.

Strong arms 💪
(bc we couldn’t feel our legs 🦵 at this point)

There are places in the world we might make it back to, but the summit of Huayna Picchu, likely a once in a lifetime stop. So we took the time to hang out and take in the views.

We also took a whole lot of pictures.
This was one of my faves.

Then it was time to head back down, which wasn’t much easier than up, tbh. My little legs were tired (J’s less little ones were too) and dropping down and back up over uneven rocks, narrow and huge steps was a grind. Even on the way down there was an outrageous amount of up as we had to wind our way back from the main mountain and over and under smaller hills (and through a tiny cave that was not in the brochure!) back to the entrance. There were a lot of breaks involved, and the euphoria from the views propelled us to the finish line.