One Breath, One Step. Magic and tragedy on the search for a lost temple in the Andes. Part One.

The sunrise slowly peels back the frigid Andean night but 6 AM at 16,000 feet is still achingly cold. We are camped at the majestic edge of Lake Sibinacocha at the base of the great Peruvian mountain Ausangate. This Apu, or living Inca deity pours it’s snow melt into one of the highest lakes on earth at the very headwaters of the Amazon River.

We are a wild and distant world away from just about everything. Me and eighteen other adventurers are here deep in the Andes looking for a lost temple.

No kidding. We really are, and then some.

In April 2014, my friend Chris called with an unusual proposition.
“Dave, we are going on an expedition to Peru in search of something very special.” Chris explained that for centuries a ceremonial site potentially as significant as Machu Pichu remained hidden somewhere in the Andes, hinted at by rumors and incomplete information and searched for by scholars, archeologists and treasure seekers for years. Others had looked. He said they had found it. He wanted me to come and draw.

“So let me get this straight,” said I, “You are asking me to be the expedition artist on a search for a lost temple in the Andes?”
“Yes,” Chris replied, “That about sums it up. If you’re ever planning to go to Peru to see the sights, this would be a good trip to go on.”
“Okay, yeah, I’m in.”

We would be bringing a world class film crew and would, as they say in Hollywood, have coverage. Thus my role as expedition artist, an archaic position but at one time valued on any expedition, was to listen carefully. To draw out the seen and the unseen. Be in tune with the currents of the intelligence of the place. I had heard stories of those mountains. Stories of the arretes of the Andes like the spine of a dragon.

Enduring the bumpy, terrifying and wholly spectacular road on the way to this lake it occurred to me that when someone asks you to go search for a lost temple, you just say yes. But why do we say yes? With all the madness being flung about daily and splattering the front pages with increasingly tense screeching, why go this far out of the way for a hope and a prayer? What are we really looking for?

After a jarringly long day of travel from Cuzco, we arrived at the place where the road ends. Our team hiked the last six miles over an almost 17,000 ft. pass and we arrived next to a high stream to set up camp in the dark.

Unfortunately, we had set camp about a mile from where we had intended and when this strange fellowship, an odd mix of deep spirit and deep science, crawls sore and cold from their first nights sleep on hard ground, we will move this whole show east a few hundred breathless heavy steps.

Geoff and I were the first of our team up and were milling purposelessly on the crackly low pampas frozen underfoot. The local Aryerros were already up and making breakfast. The Aryerros are a cadre of weathered indigenous descendants of the Inca who are a miracle of fitness and acclimatization and it is their heroic assistance that is the only thing that makes our lives possible in this beautiful and austere land. We had about an hour to kill before things started moving among the gringos so we walked toward a rocky crack in the hillside where a small stream burbled down from some source near the sky.

I had just met Geoff the day before in Cuzco and this was a first quiet opportunity to get acquainted with another member of this eclectic team. We were officially here on an expedition in search of a high altitude frog. Unofficially we were looking for a lost temple. Neither is exactly the truth.

Geoff was one of the divers. He and I walked slowly in the preternaturally bright morning light, followed by one of the friendlier Andean dogs who form their own curious tribe and loosely accompany the Aryerros.

“Are you nervous?”
“Nah. Not really,” Geoff replied, “we just did a training dive in Lake Tahoe last week.”
“How’d that go?”
“I think it went great. It’s not as high and not as cold, but it’s as close as we can get.”

We had found a couple of rocky perches behind a great boulder out of the wind where the sun could begin to uncouple us from the morning cold. The creek giggled around us, no doubt giddy about starting its five thousand mile journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

“Still it’s intense,” I said. “I mean, no one has ever done what you’re about to do. A deep dive at this altitude in this remote place. I’m not a diver so I can’t even begin to fathom the calculations.”
“That’s funny.”
“No, really, don’t you think it’s intense?”
“Yeah, I suppose. It’s really about that first breath once you come up. Underwater we’ll be breathing our mixtures and those will be about the same.”
“What about your gear? I heard customs wouldn’t let you bring your re-breathers and you’ll be using borrowed gear. That doesn’t make you nervous?”
“Not really,” Geoff replied, “I trust my training and I trust George. He’s the best.”

Five days later Geoff would be dead, lost at the icy bottom of that remote Andean lake and George would be dragged to shore with a severe case of the bends. Two other divers would suffer hypothermia and shock. It would take the whole team to ultimately carry George in a makeshift litter through a dark and deepening Andes cold the six miles to a waiting truck that would transport him the precarious 90 miles back to Cuzco for radical decompression protocols. George would survive. The rest of us would be altered inexorably by both beauty and sadness.

This is a story about place. Inside and out. It’s about the choices we make to save what could be one of the last great wild and diverse places on this lonely spinning orb of ours. It’s about finding our breath among the rattle and strum of a world moving too fast and another utterly left behind. What are we willing to sacrifice to relink a chain of wisdom from a lost civilization? What suffering are we willing to endure to add to the sum of human knowledge? This is a story about going to great heights, and tragically sinking to great depths.

Maybe in the telling of it we can find that wild and diverse place in ourselves, our own inner temple that, no matter the risk, is worth saving. (To be continued)

Dave Zaboski is a professional artist, storyteller and creativity consultant helping individuals and companies across disciplines more perfectly turn their thoughts into things. Contact: [email protected]