(Associated Press).- Remnant of an empire: Tourists explore the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, in Peru. Adventure companies are seeking new paths for travelers to the ruin.
By Gene Sloan | USA Today .- Even Brenda Blair, who lives in the shadow of Wyoming's spectacular Grand Teton Mountains, is dumbstruck by the view.
"It beats anything we have at home," says the 42-year-old ranch manager, gazing up at glacier- topped Mount Huayanay, at 18,000 feet one of the giants of the Peruvian Andes.
Standing in knee-high ichu grass, a brownish-yellow shrub that dominates the oxygen-starved landscape here in Peru's high sierra, Blair marvels at the sharply eroded mountain's steepness and the massive waterfalls cascading off its side into a pristine, emerald-blue lake below.
Still, it isn't just the stunning beauty of this rugged mountain region, once part of the great Inca Empire, that has her beaming.
It's the solitude.
"It's ours. It's all ours," says the native of Alta, Wyo., taking in the emptiness of the area, which is populated by just a handful of sheepherders and rarely visited.
Just 50 miles away, backpackers are jostling for space on the "classic" Inca Trail through these mountains, which ends at the famed ruins of Machu Picchu. But here, on another ancient trail built by the Incas more than 500 years ago, there's nobody but Blair and a handful of traveling companions.
The route, pioneered last year by California-based adventure travel company Mountain Travel Sobek, which dubs it "The Other Inca Trail" in its catalog, is one of a growing number of alternative multi-day treks through the scenic mountain homeland of the Incas.
Spurred by recent Peruvian government efforts to enforce visitation limits on the classic trail to Machu Picchu (no more than 500 people, including porters, can enter the trail per day; on high-volume days, nearly twice that many previously entered the trail), Mountain Travel, Adventure Life, Wilderness Travel and other adventure companies have been adding new treks across the region.
"The consequences of the limits (on the classic Inca Trail) is that companies have had to look at the other options," says Mountain Travel's Manuel Luna, the chief guide on Blair's 11-night trip.
Like nearly all trekking tours in the southern Andes of Peru, the Mountain Travel adventure starts in Cuzco, the high-altitude hub of the region.
The group spends three days exploring the 11,150-foot-high city and the nearby ruin-filled Sacred Valley and acclimatizing to the altitude while bunking in Western-style hotels with all the conveniences. They bid farewell to their bus and plunge into the surrounding mountains on an off-the-beaten-path trail, leaving civilization behind near the Inca stronghold of Ollantaytambo.
Unlike the classic Inca Trail, this route has no government-funded camp sites along the way or trailside stands with locals selling Snickers and icy Coca- Colas.
For the next six nights, the 14 adventurers who have signed on for the trek sleep in yellow tents pitched in isolated, unpopulated high-mountain meadows, drink boiled water pulled from mountain streams and eat meals prepared from provisions carried on the backs of horses.
Like the classic Inca Trail, this one isn't for the weak. The altitude alone can bring the hardiest travelers to their knees, with mountain passes along the route as high as 15,000 feet. Trekkers routinely put in six to eight hours per day, covering an average of about 10 miles per day.
Three days before the end of the trip, the alternative Inca trail that the group has been following joins up with the classic trail for a last leg to Machu Picchu.
The mountaintop citadel, discovered less than a century ago by American explorer Hiram Bingham, the inspiration for Indiana Jones, is a thrilling reward after days of exertion. The drama is palpable as trekkers reach the stone archway of the Sun Gate, a mile from the ruins, where the city's terraces, temples and fountains first come into view.
All agree that the time spent on the "alternative" Inca Trail defined the experience.
"To have the time away from the ... crowds is very meaningful in a soul-searching sense," says Tom McLaughlin, who at 62 is the oldest trekker on the trip. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
