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Moving onto Sunday we had no tours so KB, Sam and I took a van to the top of Calca Pass, one of the highest drivable passes in the Andes. It sits at just over 15,000ft surrounded by 21,000 ft mountains and took about 2 hours to drive up. The views are staggeringly breathtaking, but all the views are so it’s hard to put into words. I have tried to take a lot of pictures but honestly my camera does no justice. We spent 20 mins hiking to the top of a notch where I would participate in my first skeet drop. This is straight out of the videos. It is about a 750ft vertical decent at about 45 degrees - I could barely walk my bike across it to the drop zone. The slope is made up of a mixture of tiny pebbles and tiny broken slate type shale. Surprisingly firm and grippy. Dropping into this was a mind blowing experience of fun, exhilaration and fear. I started trying to carve a turn or two and ended up picking up a lot of speed. Once you get to a certain speed you can hold it or go faster, but slowing down is not an option. I ended up straight lining ¾ of it to the bottom. My guess is I was going about 35 mph fully braking and approaching what I thought was a simple ditch/water bar at the bottom. Turns out things look different when you are hauling ass down a 45 degree slope and by the time I was going off of it I realized it was a 15+ foot drop to a flat dirt road below. I don’t really know what else to say besides it was one of the first times my eyes and mind perceived something to that extent to be totally different than it was; and it was very scary. I landed as well as I could have, both wheels simultaneously and pretty much immediately crumpled on impact and slid out. My cranks bottomed out into the road breaking my chain and some teeth on my crank, I also blew out almost half the air pressure in my fork (from 160 psi to 90) and bent my bars. I got my top right thigh/quad pretty good so should have some real nice coloration coming on. Also added some nice new tears to the green Drummer Racing throwback jersey. To my surprise I hopped up pretty unscathed with KB and Sam staring at me mouths open and began to clap. This is by far the biggest drop I have ever hit. I took 20 mins to do repairs, all of which I had spare parts in the van (except the bars which I am still riding) and it was back to riding. KB had blown a brake line in the decent and left me and Sam to ride alone for the rest of the day. A couple things I should note about riding here – everything I do is with a pack on – camel pack with full tools, some parts, first aid, food and water. This was kinda weird at first but now I think nothing of it. Also I am running about 40 psi in my tires, those of you that ride with me know that this is almost double what I usually hack with haha. Sam and I freerode open “fields” along the top of the pass down through tons of lamas until we linked up to an ancient Inca road. This road which is over 600 years old is a double track, blown out, rocky loose decent for about 4,000 feet – man do you feel this in your lower back. One of the most incredible things about riding here is you are constantly around animals. If you go through village streets or are up in the mountains there are donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, lamas, alpacas, dogs and the most beautiful of all; wild horses. Cruising through the fields down to the Inca roads we were straight up riding next to wild unkept horses – and all of these animals are not scared of you at all, some even run along side you for a bit. At the bottom we waited around until we could find a ride back up to the top of the pass. The first ride we caught was with a big truck. Not a truck as in pick up truck, and not an 18 wheeler, kinda in the middle. The back was packed with local Peruvians with babies, food, supplies, chickens in boxes, a bed frame and mattress – pretty much the weirdest shit you can imagine. We threw the driver 10 soles ($3.50) for the two of us to get us back up to the pass – about a 1.5 hour drive. Once up there we linked up the Inca road to a trail we had spotted on the ride up. This was the best riding yet; a super flowy buffed out trail at @15 degrees that followed a canyon on the mountain side. When I say a mountain side, to your right is up a mountain, to your left is down a mountain meaning cliffs etc. Eyes ahead, don’t look off the trail. This was so good once we got to the bottom we decided to try and get to the top again even though it was pushing late afternoon. We sat and ate snacks and fruit for about 30 mins waving a 10 soles note at trucks that went by until a pickup finally stopped. We jumped in and sat on top of sacks of vegetables and green beans and started our 1.5 hour trip up to the pass again. About 1,000 verticle feet from the pass we encountered out first Peruvian standoff. The road we travel on is dirt, it is wide enough for one car and that is about it, one side is cliffs as it is carved into the mountain and the other side is also cliffs - down long way. When trucks meet head to head they drive at each other a bit, rev their engines, flash their lights, act ignorant and sit for about 2 or 3 mins until someone gives up and makes a move. Our driver reversed and decided to take the inside line getting as close to the cliff as possible. Our opponent slowly inched their way by us tapping mirrors with kids hanging out all which way spotting that they would not roll off the edge. They managed what I thought was never possible; passing two trucks on a mountain road only a feet wider than my Dodge Ram. Long story short we free road the fields at the top again, linked to the Inca road and then linked to our flowy cliff side trail (yes there is hiking involved to do all this). It pretty much fell dusk as we finished our flowy Cliffside trail cutting short the whole bottom half (2,500ft) of the decent we had not yet stepped foot on. We spent the next hour cruising down over 3 miles of dirt road dropping about 2,500 ft in the dark to get to the main town where we could try and get a cab. Sam has no Spanish and I have barely any which means I was up for finding a cab to bring us 1.5 hours back to Ollantay. I managed to communicate with a guy who would put our bikes on the top of his roof and get us to Urubamba (half way to Ollantay). Good news it would cost 2 soles a person (.75 cense for a 40 minute cab!) bad news it was a “collectivo.” This van drives and pulls up next to groups of people, beeps and yells “Urubamba” (the destination.) Next thing you know you are mobbed by a shitload of dirty Peruvians. By the second stop there were no more seats and people are standing/crouched in all the open space possible, Sam turned to me and said “this is only half full dude.” Over the next half hour I swear to god I was in the back of a passenger van with no less than 20 Peruvians, old ladies sitting on laps, babies held in the air, bags full of toilet paper and rice. Everyone is nice except a witch lady that sat opposite us who could only slur and whisper, I don’t know much but pretty sure it was derogatory and she was cursing us. My guess for taking up room as we legitimately had 2 feet of height on all these people, were fully padded with packs and full face hemlmets. I couldn’t care less, I had ridden about 15 miles, descended around 12,000 feet and still smelled better than pretty much everyone in that van. Once we made it to Urubamba it was late and dark and there were no cabs – I convinced a regular guy with a van to drive us 40 mins to Ollantay for 30 soles for both ($12). Good deal for both of us as far as I am concerned. We arrived and I didn’t even shower, I went straight to bed as it was pushing 9:30.
