Larry Memmott's Blog

This is one of the places I used to travel to at least monthly to hike, fish, camp, and just relax.  It’s quite changed, now.  All the “lagunas” have been dammed, and in several cases, they are fundamentally different from what they used to be, with their surrounding bofedales now almost entirely underwater.  That said, especially for someone who doesn’t have to compare the place with what it was like 25 years ago, this is a beautiful valley which can be reached quickly and easily from La Paz.  Definitely worth exploring.

This trip starts where the drive Up The Khallapa River Valley ends.  Use the directions in that post to get to the starting point for this extension.

About 2.3 miles beyond your first sighting of Challa Pata, and after a couple of switchbacks over the valley of the Rio Uma Pelada, there is a turnoff to the right which will take you, in only a half mile of rather poor track, to the fairly impressive Kormiri Falls.  The falls are worth the detour, and if the road is not one you want to brave, the walk is short and the climb (about 300 feet, more or less smoothly distributed over the half mile) is not too challenging.  From the parking spot below the Kormiri falls, it is a very nice 2.7 mile hike up to Laguna Serkhe.  The roads and trails to Laguna Serkhe are described in another post, To Serkhe Kkota.

Only about a half-mile beyond the turn-off, you will come to Laguna Aiuan Kkota. This long lake is not on the old maps and I don’t believe it existed before. It is the result of damming the Uma Pelada River and, if memory serves, flooded a large area of bofedales.  Just beyond the dam that holds back the Aiuan Kkota is another turnoff to the right.  This road takes you all the way to Laguna Serkhe.

Continuing on the “main” road,  you follow the shore of Aiuan Kkota for a little more than a mile.  When you leave the laguna behind you are only about another mile from the end of the road, at Laguna Kunk Huikhara.  The road ends at a small building which is under construction. The grafitti on the side of the building insults the municipality, which presumably is building it. Unfortunately, either the builders or other people who have been in the area (or, more likely, both) have strewn trash around. It’s a bit sad.

If memory serves, this is where I used to come to fish 25 years ago.  At that time it could only be reached by hiking and I never saw anyone else there. Now you can’t escape people here.  Even if you are alone, the building has been built to overlook the lake, so you never really feel yourself completely away from civilization. Another couple of things I noticed and didn’t like here.  First, it seems that they have not finished with the road, and are working to extend it further.  Second, someone has dug a channel along the side of the lake. It seems designed to keep water from seeping into the bofedales to the right of the lake. Then I noticed an area where someone is digging the bofedales up and piling up the earth, apparently to ship it out.  Someone is apparently mining the bofedales for top soil.  Another reason to oppose the construction of roads into the high mountains.  These bofedales developed over centuries, and drying them out and then digging them up will destroy them for many years to come, maybe forever.

From the small building you can hike on up to the last of the lagunas, Laguna Mikhaya. It’s only a two mile hike, with an increase in altitude of only about 600 feet.  Looking on Google Earth and in the old maps from the Perry-Castañeda Library, it appears that one could continue the hike up over the pass and down again to Laguna Chara Charaui, Laguna Laram Kkota, and down Rio Acero Marca to connect to the road to Chulumani.  The trek appears to be about six miles.  That would be a great adventure.

Mapping

Attached is a .gdb file with all the routes and waypoints. You can find topographic maps (though somewhat outdated) covering the area at a 1:100,000 scale for free in the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection of the University of Texas archive at Austin. The relevant sheets are La Paz (South), La Paz (North) and Chulumani. If you load these maps into OziExplorer, you can also load the .gdb file (it has to be converted to .gpx first) which will plot the routes on the topo maps.  Pretty cool.