Finding Summer Chills on the Salkantay Trek

Leslie Blythe SM ‘84 woke early on the morning of August 7. It was 29 degrees Fahrenheit and a light snow was falling.

Blythe was camping at 14,200 ft. near the Salkantay Pass, a merciless mile passing between two 21,000-ft. glacier-capped mountains. “It was a sleepless night,” Blythe said. “But it was beautiful.” 

While most Americans were spending their vacation days in August finding the perfect span of beachfront on which to unwind, Blythe and 15 MIT alumni and guests were trekking 35 miles on the Salkantay trail. Waking after that first morning in the pass, the group still had 30 miles to go.

The MIT Alumni Travel Program offers forty excursions with fellow alumni each year. The Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu, which includes glacier hikes, ancient Incan sites, and three-mile high elevations, is not for the faint of heart.

“Every one of us hurts in some way,” joked Gail Leichtman, wife of Steve Leichtman SM ’86, after four days on the trail. “That hike was certainly the most challenging part of the trip. No one could have done it more slowly than I did.” Leichtman added, proudly: “But I did it. Every step was my own.”

At trail’s end, the reward was rich: the lush Sacred Valley and incomparable ruins of Machu Picchu. Although the group arrived at the site to throngs of high-season tourists, their capable guides led them to less-traveled spots for views of the valley and ruins.

“The last hour of the day, when everyone had left the ruins, was so serene,” said Barbara Lee ’87. “It was completely free of people and we were able to sit and absorb it.”

In Cusco, during the first few days of the trip, the group spent time acclimatizing to the altitude, drinking lot of coca tea and doing day hikes at important Incan sites like Tipon, Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Sacsayhuamán.

Though the trekking was purely physical at times, the group, which came from Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Stockholm, and Northern California, enjoyed rigorous intellectual discussions.

“As an engineer, you think about this little city of Machu Picchu, with no written or oral records,” said Ted Goetz ’77, “and you start back-engineering it to figure out why everything is placed where it is. There's lots of room for error, but it’s amazing how they figured it all out.”

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Sean Padgett MBA ’98 reflected on Peruvian economics. “It’s pretty staggering how big a country this is and yet how immature its economy is,” he said. “We were in Cusco, the second largest city, and you could see how many buildings lay unfinished.”

Padgett’s 12 year-old son Colin, who accompanied his family on the trip, said he learned as much about Incan culture as he did about Peru today. “After the first time I saw those big rocks at [Coricancha], I realized what a powerful empire this was,” he said.

As natives to the region, both guides took part in the critical discussions about their homeland. “In the past, Peruvians weren’t proud about having Inca roots, but that’s changed,” said lead guide Santiago Castelo. “Tourism is a good thing that has helped us see for ourselves what Incas did. In the past, we said ‘Incas did that.’ Now we say, ‘Our people did that. In our veins runs Inca blood, and we are proud.’”

Read more about the MIT Alumni Travel Program.