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.
550 km from Chacas to Chacas, about 9 h 28 of riding. The stops in between: Segment Cajay - Huaritambo, Segment Otutococha - QÑ-HH-051 and back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
The Cordillera Blanca is the highest tropical mountain range on earth, and Huascarán National Park protects most of it: dozens of peaks over six thousand metres, hundreds of glaciers and glacial lakes, and high valleys of grass and rock. Huascarán itself, at 6,768 metres, is the highest mountain in Peru, a twin-summited giant of ice and snow that dominates the Callejón de Huaylas, the long valley of the Santa river below. The park was listed by UNESCO in 1985, and it is one of the great mountain landscapes of the world.
Read the complete Huascarán National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Huascarán National Park is where the day begins. Next is Segment Cajay - Huaritambo.
Few riders ever get this far into the Conchucos, the deep valleys on the eastern side of Peru's Cordillera Blanca, and that is half the reason to come. The label refers to a stretch of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road network that ran for thousands of kilometres along the Andes, here crossing between the hamlet of Cajay and Huaritambo, whose name preserves the word tambo, the waystation where runners and travellers on imperial business could rest, eat and change loads. Parts of the paving, retaining walls and drainage channels still survive on slopes where it is hard to imagine anyone building anything at all.
Read the complete Segment Cajay - Huaritambo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Cajay - Huaritambo comes up about 169 km into the recorded legs. Next is Segment Otutococha - QÑ-HH-051.
East of the Cordillera Blanca, in the region of Ancash known as the Conchucos, the Inca road system, the Qhapaq Ñan, crossed some of the most rugged terrain of its entire network. This segment, near the small town of Yauya, is part of the main road that ran north from Cusco to Quito through the high Andes, linking administrative centres such as Huánuco Pampa to the south. The Inca engineers laid stone paving, built steps on steep slopes, retaining walls and drainage channels, and stretches of the road can still be walked today, threading across high grasslands and past lakes at altitudes well over three and a half thousand metres. The whole network, which crosses six countries, became a World Heritage site in 2014.
Read the complete Segment Otutococha - QÑ-HH-051 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 275 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment Otutococha - QÑ-HH-051. Next is back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Cajay - Huaritambo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo, late in the day. Next is Huascarán National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Huascarán National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Huascarán National Park. That is the ride.
Huascarán National Park → Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 169 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → Segment Otutococha - QÑ-HH-051 is 106 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Otutococha - QÑ-HH-051 → back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 106 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → Huascarán National Park is 169 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.