Pastoruri Glacier: a Lesson in Climate Change

This day hike was never part of my plan in Huaraz. I had heard that it was very easy and that there were much cooler hikes. But unlike my last trip to Huaraz, I was traveling solo and without much of a plan anyways. The night before, I had gone out to dinner with the only other person from the U.S. I met all week, Chris the photographer, and a big group of Israelis. Most of the group was leaving for an 8 day backpacking trip the next morning, but three girls from the group had just arrived in Huaraz and asked if I wanted to join them on the glacier hike the next morning. I was hesitant at first, hoping to get a high altitude mountain climb in. But the climb quickly fell through after a short phone call to a befriended climbing guide, so I reluctantly decided to join in on the Pastoruri glacier hike.

Getting on the bus the next morning, my reluctance was reinforced after finding out that I had a 3 hour drive ahead, with no sign of our guide stopping his spiel on the area’s history for the entire time. I was hoping to get some sleep on the bus, but instead Maximo the guide was pausing every ten minutes to give me a minute to sum up everything he had just said in English to the Israeli girls.

Maximo looked like what I would imagine an actor portraying an Andean mountain guide would look like, and talked like one too. His golden radio voice did not stop for the entire 3 hour drive, and it did not help my initial impressions about him that he was practically forcing us to chew dried coca leaves the whole time to be prepared for the 5,000 meter altitude. It was probably smart of him to have us do that, but the numbness it gives your tongue combined with the terrible bitterness and the grit that it fills your mouth with is cause for an award to anyone that doesn’t gag their first few times mouthfuls.

After we had all gotten through almost all of our bags of coca leaves and a few stops for scenic pictures of lakes and alien-like plants, we began a short hike to the glacier. The hike was paved and the air was cold. It looked like so many easy-access trails in the U.S., which I have never been very into. But at least the altitude was a challenge. If you plan to do this hike, do not forget to buy yourself an alpaca fur hat and gloves in the market, as it gets COLD! A rain jacket is also a good idea, it started snowing on us when we got to the glacier.

After a short one-hour hike, the glacier was in sight, and it was so much bigger than I expected. Full of different depths of blue, it was incredible. Unfortunately as of the past 5 or so years, you cannot walk on the glacier, and you really probably should not even touch it, although many people did. That’s because this glacier is as obvious an example of climate change as any. It has greatly shrunk, and just 15 minutes after we had reached its base, a massive avalanche slid off a nearby mountain and took off a big chunk of the glacier. In the time that it would take for that chunk to be replenished, Maximo told me on our walk back, that glacier would lose many more.

Although seeing the avalanche was amazing, it was also a terrible sign for the future of the beautiful Pastoruri glacier. In the same light, seeing the ice lake floating around at our feet was amazing, but all of that used to be part of the glacier. With the thinning atmosphere, the sun’s rays are hitting the glacier harder than ever, and you can watch water droplets fall off the glacier all day long.

After embracing the beauty and taking some photos, it was time to walk back to the van. I decided to give Maximo another chance and walked back with him. He asked me all about my job and passions, and I explained to him that I wanted to teach and why. He gave me a wonderful compliment, saying the world would be much different if there were more people like me. Well I can definitely say the same for him. He made it his mission to make this trip as much about seeing a beautiful glacier as about climate change. It was a powerful lesson that I won’t soon forget, I told him. If more people had experiences like this, there wouldn’t be so much ignorance in the world and there would be more action taken to combat it, I continued. He seemed to really appreciate that and I could tell that our conversation was a lot more valuable to him than the few nuevos soles he made from the trip. Maximo is a hell of a guy and I’m very grateful for the day that I had with him as a teacher. Climate change is an immensely important issue that is caused by so many things in life that we take for granted, but if we can’t learn to moderate our consumption, we’ve got much bigger problems ahead.