On our third acclimatization day we would do a significantly harder hike to Laguna 69, the most famous day hike in the region. After a delicious breakfast of eggs, bread, raspberry jam, and fresh berries from the lodge, we hit the road around 7 am with Erick. Erick had a lot of good info about the crops we saw in the valley on the drive to Yungay. He pointed out the various crops and we learned the top three crops of the region are blueberries, raspberries, and snow peas. We made a brief stop in Yungay and it looked like a nice, quiet mountain town. Yungay has a sad history as it was completely devastated in the 1970 earthquake. The undersea earthquake off the coast caused a massive piece of the glacier on Huascarán to fall and it triggered an avalanche/landslide that completely buried the town and killed almost all of the 25,000 residents (most of the survivors were the 300 children who had been taken to a circus at a stadium on higher ground just outside of town). The statistics of the landslide are staggering:

The quake destabilized the glacier on the north face of Mount Huascarán, causing 10 million cubic meters of rock, ice and snow to break away and tear down its slope at more than 193 kilometers, or 120 miles, per hour.

As it thundered down toward Yungay, and the town of Ranrahirca on the other side of the ridge, the wave of debris picked up more glacial deposits and began to spit out mud, dust, and boulders. By the time it reached the valley – barely three minutes later – the 914 meters-, or 3,000 feet-wide wave was estimated to have consisted of about 80 million cubic meters of ice, mud, and rocks.

In Yungay we left the valley and started to climb into the mountains. The drive today was shorter than the drive to Laguna Parón - less elevation (1607m/5272 ft) and distance to the trailhead and a lot less severe switchbacks. We parked at Cabollapampa (3900 m/12,795 ft) and hit the trail. The hike was roughly 16 km/10 miles round trip and 700m/2297 ft elevation gain. Most of the sources online say it takes 3-4 hours to hike to the lake and it took us around 3.5 hours. I mentally broke the hike into four sections: 1) the initial hike through a valley and a gradual climb along the river with lots of grazing cows 2) the first set of switchbacks, in two parts, up to unremarkable Laguna 68 3) a little breather with a flat walk through an alpine meadow with adorable viscachas 4) the final set of switchbacks to the lake - the crux of the hike where everybody was huffing and puffing and taking many short breaks. I was feeling pretty good and this last section definitely slowed me down. This is also where Norah implored us to leave her and pick her up on the way back down and proclaimed this the most stupid hike in history. She did eventually make it to the lake, although she was not impressed. Steve and I did have to agree with her cranky assessment - after all the hype, the huge amounts of people, and the work of getting to the lake, it was pretty anti-climatic. I’m sure we were also influenced by the completely gray day that did nothing to add to the scenery. Normally Laguna 69, situated at the base of the Chacraraju glacier, is a sparkling blue color with beautiful mountains in view. Not this day. Laguna 69 sits southeast from Laguna Parón on the other side of the mountains and we thought it would be neat to see the same mountains, but from a different point of view. Nope. Mountains were socked in. We took a few pictures, had a quick snack, then started back down. It felt good to accomplish a bigger hike ahead of our trek and it was still nice to be on the trail (even if not dramatic scenery, it was still pretty); but we much preferred our hike at Laguna Parón.

It took a lot less time to hike down and we still had a good chunk of the afternoon left to enjoy. We stopped to eat at Alpamayo in Yungay - good food and a nice courtyard - and Erick gave us a tour of Apu EcoLodge when we got back. There’s a lot going on at the farm and it was cool to see what he was growing and what he has learned (i.e. put nets around berries to keep the birds at bay). Norah’s favorite thing about Apu EcoLodge was the dogs. They had two dogs - one puppy and one young dog - and they became fast friends with Norah once they discovered she had dog biscuits (we brought a huge box of dog biscuits with us from home since we knew we would be seeing dogs throughout our trip). We really enjoyed our stay at Apu EcoLodge and had a good time hiking in the area. Now on to our Alpamayo trek!