Hiking Guide: Ausangate Trek Day 4 + 5

Day 5:

We started our morning by scrambling back down from our spot next to the frozen waterfall, and back on the main track. We stopped at the next campsite, now empty of campers, at 10am to use the bathroom facilities and to clean our dirty dishes in their washing up sink. The worst part of cooking on the trail is sacrificing your warm gloved hands to wash dishes in freezing cold water!

It wasn’t the most exciting morning of walking, but we knew we had another pass coming up reaching over 5,100m - our highest pass yet, so we enjoyed the more relaxing stretch.

It turns out, that “relaxing” stretch we were picking up elevation, so before we knew it we were at the top of the pass at 5,100 metres. This stretch of the pass was quite long and windy, and some of the path was quite slippery with loose stones and a lot of dust, so I really had to pay attention and make the most of my hiking poles. It made it hard to take photos, and the wind was chilling so I was very un-aesthetically wrapped up to the max, not ideal for those Instagram-worthy shots!

Day 4:

Thankfully, it hadn’t been as cold that night so we actually got a decent sleep before hitting the trail on day four. It was meant to be one of the hardest days with a high pass to cross, but nothing felt like it could be as hard as waking up at 4:15am to climb a mountain in -8℃!

The first half of the trail was relatively easy, mostly flat and along the side of a valley through paddocks. We met back up to the main trail after 5.5km, which is where we would have passed through on day 3 if we skipped Rainbow Mountain.

We stopped for lunch at Lake Ausangatecocha, which sits at the base of the mighty Ausangate Mountain. From our lunch spot, we could look up at the trail ahead of us on the side of the mountain, which we were set to climb. It looked rather ominous, from our spot down low, and we knew it was going to be tough.

I didn’t want to spend too much time up the top due to the cold and it was getting late in the afternoon, so we quickly made the decent back down to the final campsite. We passed a girl selling snacks on the side of the road - she must have lived in one of the small huts on the paddock, because she seemed to appear from nowhere and we were the only hikers for miles! We gladly stocked up on chocolate bars and chips, and set down to find the perfect camp spot for the night.

The camp spot we found was my favourite of the whole hike - lakeside, close to a river with fresh water, and surrounded by mountains. Watching the sun set on this final night of the Ausangate was a magical experience, and a perfect (almost) finish to the hike.

It wasn’t actually as bad as I thought - I did stop approximately 100 times in the 90 minutes it took us to get from the lake to the top of the pass, but with such amazing views, I didn’t mind the excuse to catch my breath! The top of the pass looked over the whole valley that we had just spent the last few days hiking through, and it was a stunning sight.

On the other side, Tim and I had a bit of a disagreement of which way to go. I wanted the easy yet kind of boring way, he wanted the extremely challenging yet surely beautiful way. We met in the middle, and made our own trail down into the valley and across the fields to what we thought (according to AllTrails) was a campsite.

When we reached said campsite, it was more of a tiny small village of 4 or 5 huts surrounded by fields that had livestock grazing in them. There were a few villagers milling about working, so we decided to carry on and reach a spot more secluded where we weren’t at risk of setting up camp on someone's private property. As we carried along the valley, we were joined by about 50 or so alpacas following right behind us - it was one of the cutest moments of my life! (The sock on my hand was due to me stupidly packing my gloves at the bottom of by bag).

It ended up taking us another 4km to find somewhere suitable for the night, and we scrambled up some steep rocks to a small flat space at the base of a waterfall that had frozen over. It ended up being a beautiful spot to camp, albeit a struggle to get up there and I slept on a slight lean! By the time we set up camp the sun had almost completely disappeared, so I was very glad we didn’t have to walk in the freezing temperatures any longer.

DAY FOUR FAST FACTS:

Time it took us: 8 hours, including breaks

Distance: 11km

DAY FIVE FAST FACTS:

Time it took us: 7 hours, including breaks

Distance: 17km