On Top of the World

We hiked Peru’s Inca Trail for five days. We climbed to almost 14,000 feet, meandering along mountain ridges and down through lush cloud forests, up ancient stairways carved into sheer cliffs, passing Inca villages in the clouds perched on terraced slopes, miracles of engineering, and ending at Machu Picchu, a vision of such impossible beauty you can’t quite believe it. Doctors Hospital in Augusta isn’t quite as impressive. But for me it was the gateway to Machu Picchu.

One cold January night in Canada 46 years ago, a young University of Toronto student jumped across a snow pile into a crosswalk on Bay Street. He never knew what hit him. When he woke up in the hospital, he learned that a taxi had knocked him 45 feet and broken both his legs.

That student was me. I spent four months in the hospital flat on my back, one leg suspended in traction, the other wrapped in a cast. The leg in traction healed fine; but when the cast came off the right leg, I could see a bow from the knee to the ankle. When I eventually returned to school, my classmates took to calling me “Big D” because of the shape of my legs from behind.
For a couple of decades the bow didn’t bother me much. I could still ski and jog and hike and play softball. But over the years, as cartilage wore away, bone ground on bone. I developed a limp. Although I continued taking nightly walks with my wife, Jamie, I dreaded them. I had to watch each step. Every few paces a stab of pain made me wince.

I saw an orthopedist regularly. He said I’d know when it was time for a new knee. In the meantime he gave me anti-inflammatories for the pain. They became less and less effective. When I retired from Augusta State University in 2009, it was time.

Of an age now when many friends boast replacement parts, I received lots of recommendations. I visited a number of these recommended surgeons. Several warned me that fixing my leg would require two operations: one to straighten the leg and months later, after that healed, a second to put in the new knee. One surgeon, after studying the X-rays, withdrew himself from consideration.  But another surgeon—for the sake of argument we’ll call him Arlon Jahnke—thought that with the help of computer imaging he could do a little “fancy carpentry work” that would straighten the leg and put in a new knee in one operation.

And in May 2010 he did.

The rehab went well. I would climb up and down the stairs at the ASU library to strengthen the leg and improve the knee’s flexibility. I took long walks with Jamie. I rode my bike down Milledge Road to the canal and back up the hill again. I got back to rowing at the Augusta Rowing Club. I started working out at the Family Y downtown. I’d never been a super athlete or physical fitness fanatic, but the new knee rejuvenated me and I rejoiced in my new mobility. All things considered, I feel fitter at 66 than I did 20 years ago. So when my brother-in-law called with an invitation, I was ripe for the picking.

Kevin Dooley is a fit and happy family doctor in Upstate New York. Months in advance of his 50th birthday, he invited about a dozen male friends to accompany him on a bucket list trip to Machu Picchu, the Inca ruin in the Andes, one of the Seven New Wonders of the World. We would hike the Inca Trail for five days, climbing and descending thousands of feet on the stone stairways and paths that had been the highways of the vast Inca empire in the 15th century. Before I accepted the invitation, I asked Dr. Jahnke if it would be okay for me to do. “Yes,” he said, “but only if you send me pictures.”

Kevin made all the tour arrangements for himself and the 10 friends who had accepted his invitation. It’s not like the Appalachian Trail where you can just show up and start hiking. The Peruvian government controls access, limiting the number of hikers to 500 per day, so you need to book months in advance with one of a number of licensed tour companies. We went with Andean Treks, whose main office is outside of Boston.  The trek itself, with guides, cooks, 17 porters (who carried all the heavy gear), cost about $735 per person. Airfare, accommodations before and after the tour, some miscellaneous trail fees, etc., are extra. We chose to go in mid-October, after the peak season of July-August has ended and just before the rainy season begins. This was the 100th anniversary of Machu Picchu’s discovery by Hiram Bingham in 1911, so it was a record year for visitors. We wanted to rub shoulders with as few of them as possible.

To prepare for the trek, I continued doing what I had been doing—a little more intensely, perhaps. Our nightly walks became turbo-walks. I sought hills and stairways. I turned the resistance way up on the stationery bike. Though no shots are required, Kevin suggested we get a hepatitis-A immunization and take a course of pills for typhoid.

Nothing can really prepare you for the altitude except time at altitude. We arrived in Cuzco, the jumping-off place to Machu Picchu, two days before the start of our hike to acclimatize ourselves to the altitude. We spent Friday and Saturday exploring this charming Spanish colonial town—once the Inca capital. Cuzco is more than 11,000 feet above sea level in the Andes. That’s twice as high as Denver. We drank lots of coca tea, the local remedy for altitude sickness, and took it easy as we gradually accustomed ourselves to the thin air and steep hills. I found myself a little queasy and headachy at first, but by the time we hit the trail Sunday afternoon, I was fine.

It’s only 22 miles from the trailhead to Machu Picchu, but with the steep climbs and descents, you’re glad to have four days to hike those miles. You learn to pace yourself, step after slow step. Day one covers just over seven miles, climbing 984 feet. A couple of the climbs are long and steep. By the time we gathered in the mess tent at our campsite that night, two of our group of 11 (almost all of them physician friends of Kevin’s) had decided to quit. Both of them were doctors themselves. One was severely stressed physically and showed symptoms of arterial blockage.  The other was simply out of shape and decided to accompany his friend back down the trail.  In the morning they left us.

Day two is a killer. You hike just five miles, but you climb 4,200 feet up rough Inca stone steps through jungle—it’s like climbing a dried up waterfall—and climb up above the tree line to Dead Woman’s Pass at 13,887 feet. That climb was brutal, but it taught me a lot about how to pace myself and I mastered all the subsequent climbs on the trip with a bit more steady assurance. At the top of the pass we rested, exulted, followed with our eyes the way we’d come, the stone path scratched into the mountainside below us. Arturo, our wise and knowledgeable guide, told us to don our winter gear—wool caps, mittens, windbreakers. We did, crossed the pass and, with the hot summer climb just behind us, found ourselves leaning into winter winds.
The trail descends rapidly, giving up much of the hard-won altitude we’d just gained on the other side, but soon the wind died, the temperature rose and we were in the trees again, with a magnificent waterfall cascading from the ridge hundreds of feet down into the forest. There we camped the second night.

 On day three we climbed 1,200 feet to a second pass, this one at 13,038 feet. It rained much of the morning as we hiked through lush cloud forest, wild orchids hanging over the trail. Today as every day we also visited remote Inca ruins, astonishing and beautiful. We even passed through a tunnel on this Inca highway, carved through the rock not by dynamite and heavy machinery, but by stone tools wielded by Inca work crews in the 1400s. That afternoon we reached our campsite, high in the Andes overlooking a steep forested valley, across which, hidden behind one of the sugarloaf mountains in front of us, was Machu Picchu.

On day four we climbed down almost 4,000 feet through the cloud forest and visited Winaywayna, a magnificent Inca village set among terraces stepping up a mountainside, llamas munching grass. If there were no Machu Picchu, this would do.

Then we hiked a few easy miles through the forest. At about mid-afternoon we climbed a short, steep rise. Standing at the top, Arturo said, “You’ve reached the Sun Gate. Welcome to Machu Picchu.”  

Below us, surrounded by almost vertical mountains and half hidden behind a veil of clouds, was Machu Picchu. My eyes filled with tears. It was like a biblical vision, the Heavenly Jerusalem adorned like a bride. Then the veil lifted and the beams of sun illuminated this impossible city in the sky. Here among the lush green terraces linking the valley and the sky, stood 140 structures—houses, temples, storehouses—fashioned from stones meticulously shaped, lifted into place, set tight without mortar, surviving centuries of earthquakes and deluges. All I could do was stare.

We wandered down into Machu Picchu for a quick look, a picture and a beer, knowing we’d spend the whole next day here. We boarded a bus (this is how most of the millions of visitors to Machu Picchu each year get here) and headed down to Aguas Calientes, the town at the foot of the mountains, where we spent the night.

Early the next morning we boarded a bus and took the zigzag road up to Machu Picchu. Arturo led us through the city, explaining its history, its architecture, Incan theology and social structure, and the engineering and technology—in a culture without metal tools, the wheel, beasts of burden, or writing—that created this city on a rocky ridge 8,000 feet high in the mid-1400s.

Towering over the city is Huayna Picchu, a sacred peak, its sheer walls cut with Incan stairways. What’s another 1,180 feet? we thought. These stairways were nothing to the Incas, who grew up scrambling over these mountains and cliffs. But imagine climbing a skyscraper on the outside of the building, taking rough, uneven stairways without handrails in the open air as you fight back thoughts of a little slip and a long plunge. One of the guys forced himself up on his knees and back down on his rear end. But we all made it to the top and took lots of pictures, our faces covered with sweat, but exultant high above the sacred city.

So that was Kevin’s 50th birthday.

Nine of our original 11 completed the trek. Everyone in our party was at least 50; I was the oldest at 66. By the time we finished we all felt like Superman. But with a little preparation, a lot of determination, and legs and lungs filled endurance, almost anyone can complete the Inca Trail. We saw women and men, college kids and retirees on the trail.  The trek requires no special equipment or training. And whatever pain you endure, by a wonderful alchemy, turns into triumph and awe when you reach an Inca ruin.

It was the best birthday party I ever attended. Thanks for the invite Kevin. And thanks for the knee that got me there Dr. Jahnke.