CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Huaraz and back again: 410 km, roughly 6 h 36 in the saddle. The stops in between: Chacas, Punta Olimpica, Portachuelo de Llanganuco and Llanganuco Lakes. The highest point is about 4,750 m. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The ride follows Peru Huascaran Circuit for 6 km.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
The ride follows Llanganuco Lakes → Huaraz for 58 km.
Huaraz sits at about three thousand metres in the Callejon de Huaylas, a long, high valley between the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra in the Peruvian Andes. The Cordillera Blanca rises along the east side, white with glaciers, and holds the highest tropical mountains in the world, including Huascaran, which at 6,768 metres is the highest peak in Peru. On a clear morning the whole range shows over the roofs of the town, an almost unreal wall of ice. Huaraz was largely destroyed in the great earthquake of 1970, which killed tens of thousands across the region and buried the nearby town of Yungay under an avalanche from Huascaran. The modern town is mostly new, a busy, practical place for trekkers and climbers.
Read the complete Huaraz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Huaraz is where the day begins. Next is Chacas.
Chacas is a mountain town that carves its own doors. Wooden balconies, panelled doorways, carved window frames and religious statues are everywhere, and the work is not tourist craft but a living tradition taught in a school of woodwork started here by an Italian priest, Ugo de Censi, who arrived in the Andes in the 1970s and decided that young people needed a trade as much as a prayer. The result is an unusually handsome little town on a high Andean slope, with a church well worth stepping into. Yauya is the nearest larger place, about twenty kilometres off, and Carhuaz about thirty-three.
Read the complete Chacas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chacas comes up about 139 km into the recorded legs. Next is Punta Olimpica.
Punta Olimpica is a hole in the sky. At 4,736 metres it is one of the highest road crossings in the world, and the pass is marked by a tunnel, about a kilometre long, that cuts through the rock directly under the crest of the Cordillera Blanca. When you roll out of the far end of it, the whole range spreads before you in an astonishing line of glaciers and peaks, with Huascarán, the highest mountain in Peru, somewhere along the horizon. Carhuaz lies about twenty-four kilometres from here by road, and Yauya a bit further on the other side.
Read the complete Punta Olimpica write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 181 km into the recorded legs you reach Punta Olimpica. Next is Portachuelo de Llanganuco.
The Portachuelo de Llanganuco is a notch in the ridge of the Cordillera Blanca at 4,767 metres, and the road that climbs to it, a gravel track of tight switchbacks, is one of the high points of any Peruvian ride, in every sense. It runs from the valley of the Santa river, past two lakes, and up a steep, bare slope to a pass between giant peaks. From the top, the view is of glaciers and snowfields, and the great mass of Huascarán, at 6,768 metres the highest mountain in Peru, looms to the south. The air is thin, the wind is cold and the sky is an extraordinary deep blue.
Read the complete Portachuelo de Llanganuco write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Portachuelo de Llanganuco, about halfway at 4767 m. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Llanganuco Lakes, mostly downhill.
The Llanganuco lakes are two glacial lakes at about 3,850 metres, in a deep, U-shaped valley below the great peaks of the Cordillera Blanca, and their colour is out of this world. The lower lake, Chinancocha, is a deep turquoise, and the upper one, Orconcocha, is a darker green, and both shine with a milky intensity that comes from finely ground rock suspended in the glacier-fed water. Steep slopes of rock and polylepis forest, a tough, twisted tree that grows higher than any other in the world, rise on either side, and the snowy summits of Huandoy and Pisco crown the valley. The names come from Quechua: Chinancocha is the female lake, and Orconcocha the male.
Read the complete Llanganuco Lakes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Llanganuco Lakes sits at 328 km, late in the day. Next is Huaraz.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Huaraz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 410 km.
Huaraz → Chacas is 139 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chacas → Punta Olimpica is 42 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Punta Olimpica → Portachuelo de Llanganuco is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Portachuelo de Llanganuco → Llanganuco Lakes is 17 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Llanganuco Lakes → Huaraz is 164 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.