Eleven days after Peru pulled hikers off the Inca Trail, the storied footpath into Machu Picchu has now missed two reopening dates in a row, and a third target set for this weekend carries no guarantee either. Cusco's Decentralized Directorate of Culture, known locally as the DDC, says Routes 1, 2 and 3 of the trail network stay off-limits through Sunday, August 30, while engineers finish a safety review of the storm-battered path.
Two Missed Deadlines, and Now a Third
The shutdown started as a precaution on August 18, one day after a sudden, unusually heavy downpour hit the mountains above Cusco. Officials first promised hikers a reopening by August 22. Cleanup crews then found more damage than planners had expected, and that target slid to August 26 — a date that also came and went. A combined team from the DDC, the national parks agency Sernanp, Cusco's regional disaster-risk office and the civil defense institute Indeci is now inspecting the damaged stretches through the weekend, with a firm reopening date expected only once that review wraps up. As of this writing, no new date has been confirmed.
Eleven Trouble Spots Along the Trail
The damage traces back to the night of August 17, when what Peru's national weather service, Senamhi, classified as an isolated pocket of upper-level low pressure dumped heavy rain across the highlands. Engineers eventually logged trouble at eleven points along the route, including the popular overnight stops of Llulluchapampa, Wayllabamba and Wiñaywayna, where the storm knocked out footbridges, swelled streams and wrecked bathroom facilities. Francisco Huarcaya, the conservation official who leads oversight of the route, said staff "carry out constant monitoring of these sectors," watching for fresh trouble spots as weather shifts.
Two Deaths on the Mountain
That same storm proved deadly for two men whose livelihoods depend on the trail. Cusco's police chief, Gen. Virgilio Velásquez, said a 49-year-old porter, Gabriel Ríos Mamani, was found dead at a campsite near Warmiwañusca while guiding a group of roughly 20 tourists for Alpaca Expeditions. What actually happened to him has turned into a genuine dispute. His relatives first said he'd been left behind without help; the company answered with an Aug. 20 statement denying that, saying the trip carried official guides, a cook and a lead porter responsible for staff welfare, and that he'd received medical attention.
Since then, Alpaca Expeditions' legal representative has told local media that the company's own review of the case points to Ríos Mamani choosing to peel off from his work group the following day and drinking with staff from a different outfit, a version the company presents as ruling out neglect on its part. Ríos Mamani's eldest son has since said publicly that his family's earlier comments came from raw grief, that he never intended to fault Alpaca Expeditions, and that he wants the dueling accounts to stop circulating. Not everyone is standing down, though: porters' union organizer Cristóbal Quispe kept pressing the opposite theory in remarks to Infobae, calling this the third worker death he's tied to the same outfitter and saying he's been getting threatening messages since he started asking questions publicly.
Prosecutors have not released a cause of death or endorsed either account. A second worker, 64-year-old muleteer Alipio Ascenso Quiñones Pérez, died near a shelter on the nearby Salkantay route, with police pointing preliminarily to hypothermia brought on by an unexpected snowfall. Police also said the same weather system left an estimated 100 to 150 tourists briefly stuck in Huayllabamba after a river rose over its banks, though officers described the group as safe and never in danger.
This isn't the sanctuary's first setback this month. About two weeks before the storm forced the trail closed, a wildfire near the tracks had already knocked out rail links connecting Ollantaytambo with Aguas Calientes, the gateway town below the ruins. This time, only the overland trekking routes are affected — trains and buses to Machu Picchu have run without interruption. The wet spell also fits a bigger pattern: a Senamhi forecaster said back on August 19 that this year's El Niño has been building since March, and Peru's official multi-agency El Niño commission, in an August 28 bulletin, put the odds at 62% that the coastal version of the phenomenon reaches "extraordinary" strength between September and January — a stretch that overlaps with the rest of the Andean trekking season.
What Ticket Holders Should Know
Travelers shut out of Routes 1 through 3 still have one overland option: Route 5, which starts near Chachabamba at kilometers 104 and 106 of the Ollantaytambo–Machu Picchu rail line, has remained open through the closure. Anyone who bought a permit through the government's Tuboleto platform and missed a trek can ask for a new date or a refund under the emergency policy the Culture Ministry activated for this closure — though the request isn't automatic, so travelers need to file it themselves and keep their proof of purchase handy.
Why Peruvian Communities in the U.S. Are Watching
The delay lands right as Peruvian-American families across the country plan visits home, from holiday trips to milestone tours of Cusco and the citadel. New Jersey has the country's largest concentration of Peruvian immigrants, centered on Paterson's Market Street corridor, nicknamed Little Lima, home to roughly 10,000 Peruvian-born residents by U.S. Census Bureau estimates — a neighborhood many describe as the country's unofficial Peruvian homeland away from home. Travel agencies serving that Paterson enclave, along with Peruvian-American households in South Florida, Houston and Los Angeles, are watching this weekend's inspection before locking in itineraries built around the site's visitor limits, which run from 4,500 admissions a day in the regular season up to 5,600 at peak times.
For now, officials are giving hopeful hikers the same answer they've given twice already: hold off on booking around the Inca Trail until an official date is confirmed.
