Partly burned out from the day before so I decided to sleep in, which meant I missed most of the early morning departures for day treks. After breakfast I felt a whole heck of a lot better though so I decided to rent a mountain bike. I asked the dude what a good ride was and he suggested "Callan Punta" - a mountain pass in the Cordillera Negra overlooking Huaraz. Oh, and it's at 4200m.
The view from the pass and the piece of shit that brought me there
Now, as some of you know, I occasionally suffer from what I like to call "Stupid Young Man Syndrome." The real bitch about this disease is that your worst outbreaks are asymptomatic.
See, the stupid young man in me was saying, "well, it's only 1200m of climbing, you've done that before!"
But Stupid Young Man was overlooking a few things, among them:
-The last time I did a climb of that magnitude, I had been cycling seriously for the previous three years, whereas now, the longest ride I'd done recently was a 10-minute ride to the movie theatre.
-Those climbs were done below 2500m
-The other climbs were done on a road bike perfectly fitted to me, whereas at the moment I was staring at a monstrous mountain bike with an infertility-inducing saddle, fat studded tires and front suspension set so loose that I was going to lose half my power on every stroke.
So of course I said 'Fuck Yeah!', bought some bananas and a bottle of water and hit the road!
I'd say it was about 15 minutes in when I realized there might be some problems. Let me just say that whoever designed that saddle ought to be shot. The pain was nasty - all of it concentrated 'down there' - and I could barely go up on the pedals for relief because then the suspension would start bouncing up and down like crazy and it felt like I was going nowhere.
Looking down at Huaraz
It would be two and a half hours before I reached the pass.
I bonked about two thirds of the way up. "Bonk" is cycling jargon for when the glycogen in your blood is depleted and you need to start burning fat for fuel. It sucks. Really bad. It basically means you hit the wall and are facing mind-numbing exhaustion. Put a fork in you, etc.
Now, I've bonked before, but I've never had to dismount my bike. This day though, I did, several times. I'd come around a corner, the road would pitch up something fierce while I got hit with a brutal gust of mountain wind and I'd just stop. I'd get off my bike, gutted, stare up at the road ahead and say to myself "come on motherfucker, just one pedal stroke at a time!" And then try to get going again.
This is about the time that the village dogs started showing up. See, the city dogs are all chilled out, and just seem to sleep in the shade all goddamn day, whereas these mountain dogs were snarling, nasty, demon-possesed Cujo sons-a-bitches.
After a couple of swerving freakouts, I armed myself with a stick and would literally beat their faces as they chased me along trying to bite my calves. It worked, barely.
Occasionally I'd pass some locals and ask them "how many kilometres to Callan Punta?" I don't know if they had some kind of motivational conspiracy going, but for the whole last 5k, they always answered me with "uno!" Heh, that worked too.
Long story short, I made it.
I posed for a picture and the top and started the descent the way I came. Predictably, it was night and day. The road was mostly clear, gravity kept me going fast enough that the dogs didn't bother chasing me, but not so fast that I needed to take any big risks. It was just a gorgeous, smooth coast back down to the valley.
This dawned on me about 5 minutes into the descent and a huge gleeful smile came across my face as I thought, "holy fuck! you're cruising the Andes dude!" And a little after that the smile stayed, but I wasn't thinking much of anything at all.
Worst day ever. Best day ever.
