Blog written by Dr. José M. Padial, the William and Ingrid Rea Assistant Curator of Amphibians and Reptiles, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
January 17th 2016,
Pittsburgh, PA
Today I will be flying to Lima on my way to one of the less
known and nearly inaccessible mountains of the Amazon: tents, sleeping bags,
dry bags, headlamps, thermohygrometers, GPS, solar panels, batteries, tubes,
labels, clothing, and more, will comprise my load.
Packing stuff fuels my adrenaline as I sense the expedition
unfolding; obstacles and challenges come to my mind. Simple things such as the
airport security checking my heavy load which may look suspicious, going
through the Peruvian customs, or traveling by foot from the Andes to the
Apurimac river— not far from the source of the Amazon—all of which might present unnerving obstacles. But nothing is comparable to the challenges posed by
the sharp slopes of Cordillera Vilcabamba.
The mountain range springs from the Apurimac valley at 2,000 feet
and reaches 13,000 feet in about 10 miles, as the crow flies. Cliffs featuring unbelievable
waterfalls cut through forested slopes of thorny bamboo and primitive-looking tree
ferns of reptiloid barks. I experienced a failed attempt to reach the higher
part of Vilcabamba in 2008 during an expedition by Spain’s National Museum of
Natural Sciences. I¹m now well aware of the difficulties we’ll have to deal
with: impenetrable forests, heavy rains, muddy slopes, slippery rocks and river
rapids.
All of this runs through my mind as I pack tents and bulky
sleeping bags into a container, and I recall my conversation with Peter Lake,
one of the explorers that parachuted into the top of “The Peruvian Lost
World”—as Vilcabamba was dubbed in a 1964 National Geographic article that
narrated their feat.
Part of me wonders if we should we have parachuted into the upper part of Vilcabamba—the hilly prairie of golden grasses and tannin-black lagoons fenced by the elfin forests that marks the upper limit of tree life. Instead we will follow the steps of pioneer ecologists John Terborgh
and John S. Weske, who studied the birds of Vilcabamba; we will open a
narrow track across the forest to investigate changes in the composition and abundance
of species along the rapid climatic gradient produced by the sheer fall of the
forested slopes. Hopefully, we¹ll reach the area where the forest gives place
to a lost world of grasslands. Paraphrasing Gerald Durrell, one of my
naturalists heroes, “in this mountain world with its strange vegetation
and cooler climate, fauna completely different from that of the steamy forest
region was to be found.”
copyright 2016 José M. Padial