Dispatch: Food from the Earth
Huaraz - Wednesday, July 5, 2000

DISPATCHES

McKoy

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Today we had a celebration, with our porter and his family, called a Pancha Manca, and it means 'food from the earth.' And it's a celebration that they do to denote good times, and it was really great to be up there with Tarivio and his family; he has three daughters, a son, Manuel, who was also one of our porters, and Manuel's wife and their kids, and Tarivio's wife.

For Pancha Manca, they build a little hut about three feet tall, hut of rocks, and they fire it up with a bunch of eucalyptus that they burn, burn, burn and burn it, get the rocks really hot, and then they open up the top and fill it full of potatoes and meat and other root-like, potato-like things and green beans, and then they cover it with grass and rocks, and then they finally cover it with dirt after the food is all covered up with grass and rocks, and they cook it.

Then after about an hour or a half-hour, they uncover it, and we feasted on that, and it was really good, and it was a special time for us up there at his house, which is way up out of the city of Huaraz, way up on the side of the mountain, about an hour's drive.

And let's see, just a few other notes on the climb on Toqllaraju. The snow line was at about 17,000 feet. When we were at Camp I we were on snow, but going up to Camp I, we were hiking on dry ground and the wildflowers were — even though it's winter here — everything is blooming, and the higher you go, the different kind of flowers you start to see, and even those high ones are just starting to bloom, just now.

And another thing I meant to mention was at the Base Camp, just above Base Camp, there's a terminal moraine that's about 2,000 feet tall, and it's way bigger than any moraine I've ever seen. And the ones in the Tetons are, I don't know, they may be 500 feet tall, but this thing was a good 2,000 feet tall. And it has a huge gorge, about a 1000-foot-deep gorge cut through it where the lake builds up, and then maybe a serac fall or an avalanche comes crashing down into the lake and causes this huge surge of water, and it breaks the moraine and causes this catastrophic flood and kills a bunch of people down stream. And that sort of thing has happened a number of times in the 1900s, and they're worried about several locations about that happening again, so it's pretty fascinating geological, catastrophic events that you're seeing the results of.

Let's see, what else...our summit day, we really lucked out on weather. The day before was really storming pretty bad. Our day was perfectly clear, and then every day since has been pretty stormy, so we were really fortunate there. And it was all because we cleaned up camp, we did pickup trash, and it's a good idea because there's sure a lot of it, and so maybe we got some good karma from that.

Anything else, boys? We're sitting on the deck here where Bissell gave his notorious dispatch last night [Laughter in the background]. We're back up here on the deck, at the top—tippy top—of the hotel where we're staying, Isabella's Hotel. Isabella's been a really good help to us here as a translator, and she's in the Sierra Verde Language School, and she's got a really nice hotel here—very inexpensive and clean place to stay, if anybody's thinking about coming to Huaraz, which is where a lot of people come to go climb, and it's a pretty amazing little staging area for big mountain climbs in the Cordillera Blanca.

Anything else? We think the house is burning down next to us but it could just be someone cooking dinner. Sounds about the same, looks about the same. Okay, there is a fire next door so we're going to have to leave now, so I guess we're signing off. Anything else? That it? [Voices in the background] Okay, alright, I guess we're out of here. We're on the bus tomorrow back to Lima, so we'll give you a call, bye-bye.

— Wade McKoy, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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