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All four days on one distance axis — each line starts at mile zero and simply ends when the day did, so lengths are honest: Day 4 (the walk out to Aguas Calientes) was the longest; Day 2 packed its work into the fewest miles. Same colors as every chart below.
Your pace in each slope category, one line per day — lower is faster. Terrain is held constant across the x-axis, so the gaps between lines are altitude and fatigue, not route. Watch the climb side: Days 1–2 ground up steep slopes at ~23 min/km in the 12–15,000 ft air; Day 4 climbed the same grades a quarter faster at Llactapata’s friendlier altitude.
Average heart rate in each slope category — higher is harder. Days 1–2 hit the low 130s on steep climbs while moving at their slowest; Day 3, all downhill and finally below the high passes, barely left the 100s anywhere. Same hiker, different oxygen.
Heart rate at each walking speed, slope roughly held constant. Days 1–2 climb steeply with speed — pushing the pace at 13,000 ft cost real heartbeats (137–142 bpm at the top speeds). Day 3 is nearly a flat line at ~105 bpm regardless of speed: descending, acclimatized, and finally below the thin air. Day 4 sits in between — lower ground, but the longest day on tired legs.
Heart rate and pace combined into one number — how many heartbeats it took to cover 100 m of each slope (avg HR × pace). Lower is more efficient. On a given slope, a day sitting lower spent fewer beats for the same ground. The altitude tax in one number: steep climbs cost ~300 beats/100 m on Days 1–2 up high, but only ~225 on Day 4’s big climb at lower elevation.
Steps per minute in each slope category. Turnover is remarkably steady — 107–120 spm on almost everything — rising only on steeper descents where the feet get quick and careful (Day 1’s moraine descent from Humantay touched 169 spm).
The other half of speed (speed = cadence × stride). The altitude shuffle is visible: steep climbs up high shortened the stride to under 40 cm on Days 1–2, versus 56 cm on Day 4’s lower climb — and everything opened back up to ~75 cm on rolling ground.
Share of moving time in each slope category. Cool = descending, warm = climbing. Day 2 was the wall — the pass day is nearly half climb; Days 3–4 tilt heavily downhill as the trek falls out of the Andes into the cloud forest.
Moving time split by ground speed. Standing-around time is excluded entirely (and there was plenty — Day 2 alone had 3.3 hours of stops out of a 7-hour day). Day 3’s downhill let the group spend most of the day brisk or better; Day 2’s climb kept things in the amble-and-steady bands.
Every second of moving time, binned by how high you were and how steep the ground was. Each row is a slope category (warm = climbing, cool = descending); the brighter the cell, the more time you spent there. Climbs sit up top, descents below; low elevation on the left, high on the right. Hover any cell.