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.
A 744 km round trip from Chacas - roughly 12 h 50 in the saddle. On the way it passes Segment Cajay - Huaritambo, Segment Tambillo - Pincosh, Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata and back through Segment Tambillo - Pincosh. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
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 140 km into the recorded legs. Next is Segment Tambillo - Pincosh.
This is high, remote country. The Tambillo to Pincosh segment of the Qhapaq Ñan crosses the puna of the Ancash and Huánuco highlands, east of the Cordillera Blanca, at altitudes of around four thousand metres, part of the stretch of the Inca road that ran north from Cusco through the Andes towards Quito. The road here was the main artery of the empire, with tambos, way stations, every day's walk or so, where travellers, messengers and armies could rest and find supplies. Tambillo, the little tambo, suggests one of those stations. Today, the road survives as a stone-paved path with retaining walls and drainage channels, crossing open grassland, wetlands and passes, and it is one of the best-preserved sections of the network, listed by UNESCO along with the rest of the Qhapaq Ñan.
Read the complete Segment Tambillo - Pincosh write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 239 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment Tambillo - Pincosh. Next is Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata.
The Qhapaq Ñan, the great road network of the Inca Empire, ran for thousands of kilometres along the Andes, linking the capital Cusco with the far corners of an empire that stretched from Colombia to Chile. In the department of Huánuco, in central Peru, one of its best preserved sections crosses the high puna between the administrative centre of Huánuco Pampa and the valleys to the north, and the segment between Taparaku and the Tambo de Llata is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 2014.
Read the complete Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata, about halfway. Next is back through Segment Tambillo - Pincosh.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Tambillo - Pincosh write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Tambillo - Pincosh sits at 497 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 604 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Huascarán National Park closes the day.
Huascarán National Park → Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 140 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → Segment Tambillo - Pincosh is 99 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Tambillo - Pincosh → Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata is 133 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata → back through Segment Tambillo - Pincosh is 133 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Tambillo - Pincosh → back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 99 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → Huascarán National Park is 140 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.