We headed up for our first week of work at the source shortly after it snowed at higher elevations. The climb up from Chivay is approximately 1200 vertical meters (3,930') over about 6 km (3.7 miles). It's made particularly tough because you start at about 3,650m above sea level (12,000') and go up from there. Luckily we were able to get burros with a driver for about $3 per animal. This helped us to keep our packs pretty light!

We came down every 5 to 10 days for weekend time to recover, shop for food, and bath in the Chivay hot springs.