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Pachacuti’s Country Estate at Pisaq

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

The prevailing theory seems to be that Pachacuti had Pisac (and Ollantaytambo) built after he defeated the Cuyos (and Tambos) in the Vilcanota (or Sacred) Valley. They were his private estates, designed to both protect the valley from attack and to provide food and other resources necessary to support his family and descendants. (MacQuarrie, p. 439)

Pisac Terraces

Pisac is huge. The ruins here are unique in that there are four distinct building areas: P’isaqa, Qanchiracay, Intihuatana, and Q’allaqasa for the elite, agricultural, religious, and military inhabitants of the complex.

Pisac map

I like the following view because it gives the viewer an idea of what the terraces looked like before and after restoration following about 400 years of non-use. Pisac Terraces

Look carefully at the slopes in the background. It looks as if the terraces extended almost to the peak. Given all the easily accessible good farmland in the valley, the amount of land cultivated on the mountainsides during the time of the Incas would appear to be unnecessary unless there were a whole lot of people living here.

Looking up the hillside from Intihuatana

Not all of the terraces were for farming. More than 3,000 burial places stud the hillside.

Ransacked burial sites at Pisaq

And here’s a view from across the valley.

Pisac terraces as seen from across the valley

Each of the “villages” has its own character with the religious sector having the finest architecture and the Intihuatana or Sun Temple having the best of the best.

Pisaq religious sector

: The Intihuatana and other temples

Like the Intihuatana in other locales, it is the building with the curved walls encasing a natural stone outcrop.

Intihuatana or Sun Temple

Also note the crude stone building to the right of the Intihuatana in the middle image. It seems very out of place, but if there is a theory about its purpose and location, I haven’t found it yet.

Rough stone building in religious sector

Compare the workmanship to these buildings.

Temple at Pisaq

The Q’allaqasa or military citadel sits strategically above the confluence,

: Q’allaqasa or military sector at Pisac

while the elite lived lower down on the hillside at Pisaqa.

Q'allaqasa or military district of Pisac

Pisaqa

The peons had the crudest building works, at least as reconstructed.

A rebuilt structure at Qanchiracay

Qanchiracay

Given the reconstruction and restoration of all but the best walls that have withstood the tests of time, it is hard to know where the reality of the 16th century has been usurped by the imagination of the 20th. For example, look closely at the steps in the following image. Rarely did any of the thousands of steps on the Inca Trail look this even or of such uniform height. Obviously, some changes have made made for visitor safety, but once one begins to question, one doesn’t know where to stop.

Was this really what it looked like around 1500?

This dilemma on the part of both the caretaker and the visitor is not unique to Incan ruins. I’ve encountered it time and time again in the American Southwest where the National Park Service (and other custodians of American Indian ruins) struggle to make places like the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park both safe and true to the past when starting with not much more than a pile of rocks and no written records.

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

Posted in Architecture, Colorado, Journal Summer 2009, Mesa Verde, Peru | No Comments »

Colca Canyon, Part 6–Dawn on the rim

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

What can I say that’s new about hiking almost 4,000 feet up and out of a canyon?

We started up just before 4 a.m. with Omar setting a nice slow pace that I could easily match. (I’m much better at going up than down. I take after the turtle racing the hare, slow and steady. That way one doesn’t have to stop and catch one’s breath all the time.) With my headlamp focused on Omar’s feet just a few paces ahead, I didn’t have to worry about falling down the side of the cliff, and I wasn’t psyched out about just how far we had to go up. Unlike my hike out of the Grand Canyon though where I had all day, the bus was going to pick us up at 9 a.m., and we needed to eat breakfast in Cabanaconde before it arrived. Remember, it took me 3 1/2 hours to get down.

First light, about half-way up (5:53 a.m.)

It started to get light about 5:30 and by 6, we were half-way up, and Omar let me take a break to eat a mandarin and trail mix. I was enjoying the hike. In the dark, one pays more attention to the sounds and smells, and, temperature-wise, it was very pleasant.

The sun is up! (6:20 a.m.)

Within a half hour, the first rays hit the tops of the mountains. The picture just doesn’t capture the moment; it was spectacular. Of course, I knew the temperature was about to climb, and I still had more than a 1000 feet to go.

It's 7:10 with another hour to go

There were now other people on the trail. Children heading up to school; men with donkeys laden with supplies heading down.

I made it to the top! (7:52 a.m.)

Unlike the Grand Canyon where as one nears the rim one has a good sense of where the top is, it’s not the same when climbing out of Colca Canyon. There are peaks all around you. The sky doesn’t seem to expand and suck you up to the top.

Just 15 minutes from the top of the Grand Canyon and the end is clearly in sight

At Colca Canyon, you seem to just arrive at another ledge and wonder if you really have made it and your guide is just giving you another pep talk so you can forge onward and upward.

It took me four hours to climb out of the canyon, and it was almost another half hour back into Cabanaconde. We finished breakfast well before the bus arrived to pick us up.

My summary of the trek: a great experience, down was more difficult than I expected, up was easier. I’m glad I did it. Would I do it again? Sure, but I would take one of the longer treks that goes through villages inside the canyon and make sure most of my hiking was in the cooler parts of the day. On the other hand, I yearn to return to the Grand Canyon even though it is a much, much harder hike; I don’t have that kind of feeling about Colca Canyon.

Posted in General, Grand Canyon, Hikes, Journal Summer 2009, Peru | No Comments »

Colca Canyon, Part 3–The trail

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

When planning my trip, I had a difficult time finding details about this trek. So this post is my attempt to help the next potential trekker decide if this walk is for them.

In my last post, I discussed the elevation loss/gain in numerical terms. But how do I put that into perspective?

First, there’s the physical trail itself. It’s not a trail like you would find in a US national park. It is not a path designed for recreation, for people who want to experience the natural wonders of a place and have no particular need to get from point A to point B. Instead, it is a path developed over centuries by people wanting to get from their homes and farms inside the canyon to places outside the canyon.

Children from these villages on the north side of the canyon had to walk down to the river and then up the trail I descended to get to school

It is a well-used trail. I met children on their way to school on the rim. I met a husband and wife leading and prodding their animals loaded down with doors and lumber for a building project.

Highway transport into Colca Canyon

Sometimes the trail was so steep it seemed to disappear over the edge

Constant use, especially by load-bearing animals, is hard on a trail. This trail was especially rocky. Stretches of dirt tread were few and far between.

A path of rocks

Trails need maintenance. Grand Canyon National park has 415 miles of inner-canyon trails of which 42 miles are corridor trails. Over a year, about 200,000 people use one of these trails to descend into the canyon. In 2008, 9,600 went all the way down to the river and Phantom Ranch on a mule. To maintain these trails, the National Park Service employs 30 people full time year round and another 60 part time or seasonally. Its 2008 bare-bones trail maintenance budget was two million dollars. I couldn’t find any details about the allocation of funds, but from some comments I found I gather that maintaining the toilets, supplying toilet paper, and cleaning up trash consume quite a bit of these funds. Its backlog of true trail maintenance projects is such that some of the $10 million it received in ARRA funds are being used to rehabilitate the South Kaibab Trail. In other words, trail maintenance to the level which we as Americans expect is expensive.

In September, 2006, the South Kaibab Trail didn't look much different

In September, 2006, parts of the South Kaibab Trail didn't look much different

Maintenance of the trails in Colca Canyon is rudimentary at best. Of course, there are no toilets to worry about maintaining or keeping supplied with toilet paper, and there was surprisingly little trash along the route.

Now, what about the route? Obviously, with a gradient of something close to 20%, it’s steep. Very steep. While the above photo of the South Kaibab Trail might make you think it is steep, it has long stretches of gradual elevation loss and lots and lots of long switchbacks. The Inca and other early Andean peoples seem to have subscribed to the belief shorter is better; steps are the best. On the Colca Canyon trail, there are no respites from the knee-pounding descent.

Zig-zags on the Colca Canyon Trail

The trail zig-zags rather than switchbacks down into the canyon, much like the earliest version of the Bright Angel Trail into the Grand Canyon which had a short section with a 40% gradient.

The original zig-zags on the Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon

In my next post, I’ll talk about the trek itself.

Posted in Arizona, General, Grand Canyon, Hikes, Journal Summer 2009, National Parks and Monuments, Peru | No Comments »

Colca Canyon, Part 2–Is it deeper than the Grand Canyon?

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

I went to the canyon because I wanted to hike to the bottom of a canyon reputed to be twice the depth of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Having just finished a book on the Grand Canyon after several years of research that included hiking down to Phantom Ranch, I couldn’t believe a trek to the bottom of a canyon twice as deep as the Grand Canyon could be accomplished in a couple of hours as all the guidebooks claimed. It had taken our Grand Canyon Field Institute group over six hours to descend the 4800′ from the South Rim to Phantom Ranch via the South Kaibab Trail. (For my trail journal of that hike, see Trails and Treasures’ South Kaibab Trail.)

Colca Canyon at the start of the trek: Where's the bottom?

Colca Canyon is said to reach a maximum depth of 13,648′ on the north rim and 11,811′ on the south rim with the floor being 3,960′ below the rim on average. (See the Colca Canyon official site.) I started my trek into the canyon at Cabanaconde at an elevation of 10,780′ and went down to the oasis as Sangalle at 6900′, a descent of 3,880′. I couldn’t find a trail distance in any of the guidebooks, and my guide just shrugged his shoulders. Since I met young people with good knees who made it down in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hrs, I’d guess three to four miles.

The following table compares the trail descents:

	Colca Canyon	Grand Canyon
Rim elevation (in feet)	10,780	7,200
Destination elevation	6,900	2,420
Elevation difference	3,880	4,780
Hiking distance	4(?) miles	7.1 miles

Thus, there are several important statistical differences in these two treks:

the Colca Canyon trail is significantly steeper with an 18 to 21% gradient vs. a 14% gradient, and
the Colca Canyon trek is accomplished at significantly higher altitudes, but
the vertical descent into the Grand Canyon on the South Kaibab trail is significantly greater.

By comparing the views, one can see that the “rim” of Colca Canyon is far less obvious than that of the Grand Canyon. There are mountains that rise up from the rim of Colca Canyon. The Grand Canyon is in the middle of the Colorado Plateau. The Grand Canyon is also much older than Colca Canyon. Researchers estimate it began 17 million years ago.

: The Grand Canyon: Where’s the river?

There are other differences too which I’ll talk about in my next post. But, from my perspective as a hiker, the Grand Canyon is deeper.

For a good discussion of canyons, see http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Canyon. And, by the way, Colca Canyon is not the deepest canyon in the world; Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet is.

Posted in Grand Canyon, Hikes, Journal Summer 2009, Peru | No Comments »

The El Tovar 2009

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

She’s had a face-lift. Last year when I visited in May, the yard was a construction zone and the tower was in scaffolding. El Tovar May 2008 El Tovar 2009

For the first time, I actually had the opportunity to stay here. While it was nice and had the ambiance of a luxury hotel, the Rim Cabin at Bright Angel Lodge I had the first night had far more character.

El Tovar Room Bright Angel Rim Cabin

The view was also spectacular, especially when compared to the parking lot behind El Tovar. Just a few feet from my front door was a bench where I could watch the sunrise.

Canyon Sunrise

This year I also spent some time talking about Fred Harvey postcards with Tom Ratz, a fellow collector who has worked at the El Tovar for almost thirty years. He’s about to have a book of canyon views, both photographs and postcards, published by Arcadia. Meanwhile, unwilling to settle for black and white, I’m still trying to find a publisher of my canyon history illustrated with 300 color postcards. Oh well.

Anyway, if you ever have a chance to dine at El Tovar and want an expert to point out changes from the following view and today, be sure to ask for Tom.

El Tovar Dining Room H12993

Posted in Arizona, Fred Harvey, General, Grand Canyon, National Parks and Monuments | No Comments »

Searching for Fred Harvey 2009-NAU

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

After the abrupt termination of my 2006 “Searching“, I finally had the opportunity to peruse the Fred Harvey Collection at Northern Arizona University Cline Library. I barely finished going through the dozen boxes of material I had selected to review in the 18 hours I had allotted. Like all archival searches, there were boxes of irrelevant materials, lots of stuff I had seen before, some interesting although irrelevant tidbits of information, and a few gems of new, relevant data. I even found the source of some oft-cited, but undocumented facts.

Most of the material dated from after the purchase of Fred Harvey by Amfac in 1968, a period I have not paid much attention to since most of the Fred Harvey postcard views in my manuscript The Grand Canyon: A Fred Harvey Postcard History pre-date World War II. Some of the most relevant materials were letters from a blacksmith hired to recreate the bear trap for Hermit’s Rest, along with numerous other items.

That means the bear trap in Hermit's Rest Porch 2006 the picture below is not the one on the postcard. No real surprise given the span of 80 years, but it’s nice to have proof of one’s suspicions. The Porch, Hermit's Rest

Posted in Arizona, Fred Harvey, Grand Canyon, National Parks and Monuments | 2 Comments »

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