How the Andes Humbled Me: A Trek That Got in My Head

There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from a good run of trails. Not arrogance, exactly. More a quiet assumption — that you know how your body responds under load, how your mind holds up across the long middle days, and roughly what the mountains are going to ask of you.

I had that confidence going into Peru. I had earned it, or thought I had. The Western Arthur Range in 2023. The Haute Route across the Swiss Alps in 2024. Months of preparation for each, and both had delivered. I felt strong on those trips, motivated, connected to every step. When Julie and I booked the Huayhuash Circuit for June 2025, I expected the same.

What I didn’t account for was the state I was actually in.

The tank was already empty

The months before Peru had been heavy. Work, pressure, the accumulated weight of things I hadn’t fully acknowledged. I told myself the usual things: that I was busy, that I’d find time to prepare properly, that my experience would carry me through. I had done difficult things before. I knew how to suffer through a hard day on trail.

What I didn’t know how to do was hike from a place of genuine depletion. Not physical depletion. Mental depletion. The kind that doesn’t show up in your legs.

I hadn’t trained properly. Not because I lacked the knowledge, but because I couldn’t find the drive. Every planned session felt like one more obligation pressing in from a life that already had too many of them. I let it slide. And then I got on the plane.

What the altitude revealed

The Cordillera Huayhuash is not a forgiving place to discover any of this. The circuit crosses a high pass almost every day, most of them above 4,700 metres, and the altitude doesn’t negotiate. It simply reduces. Your pace drops. Your thinking slows. Your capacity for everything narrows.

I blamed the thin air for the first day or two. It was a reasonable excuse and contained enough truth to be useful. But by day three I knew it wasn’t the altitude. Julie was moving well, steadily, carrying the same load at the same elevation. She had prepared properly and it showed.

I hadn’t, and that showed too.

The gap between us grew in increments. On a flat section it was barely noticeable. On a climb it opened up until she was out of sight, and I was left alone with whatever was in my head. What was in my head was not helpful. Doubt, mostly. A quiet, persistent voice cataloguing the distance between where I was and where I expected to be.

I had walked into this trip relying on who I had been on previous treks rather than who I actually was in June 2025. Those are not the same person. The mountains don’t adjust for the gap.

San Antonio Pass

There was one day when it changed. Day seven, at San Antonio Pass, 5,100 metres. The highest point on the circuit.

I don’t fully understand why that day was different. The altitude was the same. My fitness hadn’t recovered. But Julie and I walked together that entire day, every step, and the isolation of the previous days simply wasn’t there.

Somewhere on the climb I shed a quiet tear. Not from the altitude or the effort. From the relief of it. From what it felt like to be actually present rather than just physically located somewhere.

When we summited Nevado Mateo later that day, I had nearly turned back several times on the approach. Not because the climbing was beyond me. Because I had so little left in the tank mentally that every reason to stop felt reasonable, and the reasons to continue felt abstract. I kept going partly through habit, partly because Julie was ahead and turning back alone felt worse than continuing.

The summit was, as the Huayhuash tends to be, extraordinary. I stood there in the thin air and felt what I had been missing for the previous six days. Not triumph. Just presence.

What the trek was actually about

I have spent time since Peru thinking about what actually went wrong, because it wasn’t the altitude and it wasn’t the preparation, not primarily. Both were factors, but they were downstream of something else.

The real thing was that I had stopped paying attention to what I was carrying before I even reached the trailhead. I had been managing a version of myself on the trail rather than actually being there. The Huayhuash, like every demanding place, has no patience for managed versions.

The mistake I made wasn’t skipping training sessions. It was not being honest, with myself or anyone else, about the state I was in when I arrived. A high pass at altitude has a way of making that honesty unavoidable. The only question is whether you find it on day two or day seven.

I found it on day seven.

Next time, I intend to find it before I leave home.