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| Summit of Iliniza Norte |
August 28 - September 1: We spent a week taking classes and adventuring in the jungle. This might have been my favorite week. We took classes in a complex of cabins on a cliff overlooking the jungle. Highlights include climbing through a small canyon with hands and feet on opposite walls of the canyon, waking up to a cloud filled jungle slowly cleared by sunrise, celebrating two birthdays multiple times, floating down an Amazonian tributary on inner-tubes, playing guitar under the stars, and reading a great book. We've all agreed that our favorite parts of Ecuador were the times when we got out of the city and really got to know the country.
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| The view from our cabins one beautiful foggy morning |
September 9 - 11: We traveled to Puerto Lopez, a small port city best known for being the best place to access Isla de la Plata, otherwise known as the poor man's Galapagos. We took a boat out to it, and on the way got closer to a jumping humpback whale I have ever been and probably ever will be. It was like I was living a Pacific Life commercial. On the island, we saw the blue-footed-boobies do their famous mating dance and snorkeled briefly. Just seconds after entering the water, we saw a massive manta ray pass underneath us, which really took my breath away - more so than the fact that I was breathing through a tube. We also had some quality beach time, which included a ill-advised game of chicken resulting in a chipped molar for me! Fortunately, Ecuadorian dentists are ridiculously cheap - $25 dollars to repair my tooth . . . without insurance.
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| A great shot of our humpback whale, courtesy of Jenny |
On Wednesday the 14th, in anticipation of my coming summit attempts of Cotopaxi and Iliniza, Emily, Caitlin and I decided to climb Rucu Pichincha (15,413 ft). There is one point where I decided to take us up some rocks, and I swear I can remember someone saying, "What about this path over here." Being the confident leader that I was, I dismissed the clearly marked path and forged ahead into the rocks. As a result, we wasted and hour and half climbing around on those rocks and lost our chance to summit before nightfall. Just before reaching the TeleferiQo, we resorted to head lamps. The evening of the following day, I made my way down to Hostería PapaGayo to be there for my early morning departure to summit Iliniza the next day,
On Friday the 16th, I woke up early, ate a massive meal of pancakes, and embarked with my guide Juan to summit Iliniza (16,818ft). We left the hostel on time, about 7:30am, and climbed all day. At about 11:00am Juan received a phone call. After I got over being impressed with his cell phone reception on the top of a mountain, I snapped a few photos while I waited for him to finish the call. When he put the phone away, he exclaimed that he hated working for his travel company. While I was waiting for my breakfast at the hostel that morning, I had met a man named Luis from Brazil. He, his wife, and his son were also planning on summiting Iliniza that day and had booked through the same company. When Juan walked into the hostel, he asked us which one of us was ready. I had my bag with me and everything while Luis's family had not yet shown their faces, so Juan explained that there was another guide on his way who would take Luis and his family. Juan and I left happy and on time. It turns out that the other guide did not arrive until 10:00am, three hours after he was supposed to. Luis had gotten impatient and asked the hostel owner, who is in partnership with the guide company, to do something. The hostel owner drove them to the trailhead and returned to the hostel. When their family's guide eventually did show, he was instructed to go up to Iliniza and look for his clients. He drove to the trailhead, looked around, and drove home. Now, the owner of the hostel had called Juan and was asking him to abandon me to go in search of the Brazilian family. Fortunately, Juan decided to take me to the summit, which was awesome. On the way down, we found the family and descended with them aways until another employee of the hostel came and picked them up. Juan was so awesome that he even showed me how to take cheap buses back to Quito saving me a good bit of money. I felt good knowing that he would be my guide again on Cotopaxi.
On Sunday the 18th, Juan and I hiked up to the José Ribas mountain hut to spend the first part of the night before beginning at midnight to summit Cotopaxi (19,347ft). The hut was actually very nice with plenty of hot tea to go around. The weather was miserable when we arrived but cleared up just around sunset which allowed me to take the only photos I have from the trip - my camera would stop working at the higher altitudes. There were two other climbers in the hut that night besides Juan and I. They were a gentleman from Germany and his guide, also from the same company. When he walked in the cabin, Juan told me that the other guy was definitely not going to make it to the summit. Apparently, the stretch from the parking lot to the hut, which took Juan and me about 37 minutes, lasted almost 90 minutres for the other pair. After the sun went down, we gambled on rummy for about an hour then I went to bed. It turns out that sleeping at 15,748 feet in elevation is actually quite difficult. Apart from being freezing cold, it is also difficult to establish a breathing rhythm that makes you feel at ease to the point of falling asleep. In the end, I ended up tossing and turning uncomfortably all night. We woke at Midnight and by 1:00am we had all started our ascent. The first third of the ascent is through rock, gravel and sand. During this section, we made descent progress. Each time that we looked back, the glow of the headlamps belonging to the German and his guide got further and further behind us until eventually we couldn't see them at all. They had turned back before reaching the first glacier.
When we reached the first glacier, we stopped to put on our crampons. I had made the, in retrospect, stupid choice to wear my camelback as my only source of water. When we reached the glacier, the water in my hose had frozen solid. From just before three in the morning until late into our descent, I was without water. We climbed on the ice for a little over an hour by the light of our head lamps until we reached a missive crater. Juan asked me to wait while he walked around for a bit. This was a bit unnerving. It turns out that earlier that week, a crevasse had collapsed creating the crater we saw before us. The crater was now where the best route to the top used to be. One of Juan's guide friends had told him that there was a serviceable route to the summit to be found by exploring the freshly-made crater. After deciding that we were not going to go around the crater, Juan taught me how to belay him by sticking my ice axe in the snow and wrapping the rope around it. Once we had that set up, he descended into the crater in search of our new route. We ended up repeating this process at least six times. When he reached the end of his rope, literally not metaphorically, I would trace his route and set up the makeshift belay again in a new location. Waiting for him to find the route was far more difficult than climbing. No matter how many clothes one wears on a mountain like this, it is the fact that they are exerting the energy to climb that keeps them warm. I was wearing everything that I brought with me, but when I had to wait while Juan explored the nooks and crannies of the infant crater, it was almost unbearable. In all honestly, during this time, when I spent over an hour standing still on the mountain in the middle of the night, my enthusiasm for reaching the top began to wain.
After several misstarts, we eventually started making our way through the crater. As the sun rose, we were still climbing through a landscape that resembled a Dr. Seuss drawing. We were above the clouds and could watch them slowly roll by, briefly dropping in elevation as the passed by the mountain. As we made the final ascent up out of the crater, our visual field opened up to a view of the surrounding mountains easily visible above the clouds. We enjoyed the sunrise that we were supposed to observe from the summit, which was still at least two hours of hiking away. After trying multiple times to get my camera to work, we gave up and decided it was best to hike down. Juan had me lead the way down, which I thought was a little strange, but when I tripped over my crampons while descending into the crater and found myself hanging from my rope and harness, I realized that if he had gone first, I would have fallen thirty feet before he could have done anything about it. Not long after we had left the glacier behind and were bounding down rock and sand, my water finally unfroze with the help of the sun, and I took some well-deserved, gloriously refreshing gulps of water. The German and his guide had left by the time we got back, so after a short snack we packed up and headed down the mountain to make our way back to Quito. Less then a week later, I was on a plane to Chile, looking forward to my next big adventure.
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| Faithfully climbing on Rucu Pichincha, what good friends I have! |
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| My favorite picture from Iliniza, Juan is looking so stoic. |
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| Cotopaxi from the José Ribas shelter, this is the last time I got my camera to work. |
