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 1129 km round trip from La Unión - roughly 19 h 29 in the saddle. It goes by way of Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash, Segment Cajay - Huaritambo, Huascarán National Park and Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 47 km this is Peru Huascaran Circuit, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
La Union is a small market town in a high valley of the Huanuco Region, in the central Peruvian Andes, and the Huaricashash to Isco segment lies about eleven kilometres from it, in a landscape of steep terraced hillsides, eucalyptus groves and distant snow peaks. It is the same Inca road network as the neighbouring segments, but this stretch sits close to the greatest Inca site in the region.
Read the complete Segment Huaricashash - Isco write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Huaricashash - Isco is where the day begins. Next is Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash.
The high Andes of central Peru are less visited than the Cusco region, but the Incas were here too, and the old royal road, the Qhapaq Nan, runs through the mountains of Huanuco Region, with segments surviving in the hills above the towns of Llata and La Union.
Read the complete Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash comes up about 126 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 281 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment Cajay - Huaritambo. Next is Huascarán National Park.
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, about halfway. Next is Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana.
Five hundred years ago a runner could have passed this spot carrying a knotted quipu or a message for the governor in Huánuco Pampa, handing it on at the next post in a relay that crossed the Andes faster than a horse. This short stretch, catalogued as segment QÑ-HH-051 near Inca Misana, is a fragment of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road system that linked an empire from southern Colombia to central Chile. The whole network was listed by UNESCO in 2014 across six countries, and what you find on the ground here in Ancash is often modest: a line of stone paving, a retaining wall, a set of steps cut into a slope, running across high grassland with the mountains standing all around.
Read the complete Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana sits at 566 km, about halfway. Next is back through 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 through Huascarán National Park comes up about 718 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 844 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo. Next is back through Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash, late in the day. Next is Segment Huaricashash - Isco.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Huaricashash - Isco write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 1129 km.
Segment Huaricashash - Isco → Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash is 126 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash → Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 156 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → Huascarán National Park is 126 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Huascarán National Park → Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana is 156 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana → back through Huascarán National Park is 156 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Huascarán National Park → back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 126 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → back through Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash is 156 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Inka Hamash - Ayash → Segment Huaricashash - Isco is 126 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.