Total distance: roughly 26.4 miles over four days
Total elevation gain: roughly 8,250 ft
High point: Warmiwañusca (Dead Woman’s Pass), 13,828 ft
Hardest day: Day 2, Dead Woman’s Pass
Best view: Huayna Picchu summit, hands down

What I carried home

The Inca Trail doesn’t let you fake your way through it. Every day asks something different of your legs, your lungs, and your patience, and by the time you reach the Sun Gate you’ve earned the view.

What stayed with me most wasn’t the ruins, as extraordinary as they are. It was the rhythm I found climbing toward Dead Woman’s Pass: breath matched to footstep, mind narrowed down to the next stone step and nothing else. That same rhythm carried me up Huayna Picchu two days later without a second thought. Somewhere in those four days, slowing down stopped being a strategy and just became how I walked.

That’s not something I expected to bring home from a hiking trip. But it’s what stuck.