My Cotopaxi expedition began really a few weeks ago when I was talking with my then Spanish teacher about mountains in Ecuador. I had known that I wanted to do some climbing around Ecuador while I was here, but I didn´t really know where to begin. After seeing a few pictures of the nearly perfect conical volcano, I was hooked; it was love at first sight. I had to be there.
Yet, I tamed my enthusiasm for a while. Cotopaxi was a good 10,000 feet taller than any mountain I had ever climbed. It seemed a little bit unreasonable to me at first. Yet, after my running got pretty normal and a pretty sucessful hike around Guagua Pinchincha, which is still a good 6000 feet shy of Cotopaxi, I felt pretty solid in terms of my confidence.
And so, I found myself first in the office of Safari Tours, a guide company recommended to me by my project coordinator. However, Safari Tours seemed a little too touristy for me. The prices were ridiculous and everything was in English (including the people working there), which I took as a bad sign. So, I wandered through the Mariscal, something I hate doing, looking at the several million tour companys, and finally found my way into Ecomontes, a tour company which said it ¨specialized in eco tourism.¨Sounds good.
I immediately felt much better in here. The man started to describe to me the programs they offered and the prices of each. Everyone I had talked to maintained that it was imperative to do an ¨acclimitization hike¨, a hike of a smaller mountain but still tall enough to give your body a day to get used to a much higher altitude and thus much lower air pressure.I settled on a hike up Pasachoa on Friday, returning to Quito to sleep on friday night and then climbing Cotopaxi saturday night-sunday morning. A note about this: since Cotopaxi is a glacier, it has to be climbed in the middle of the night when the snow is hard. During the day, with the equatorial sun high in the sky, the snow actually softens and can create large gaps in the ice where it is possible to fall through the ice and die. This is why we hike at night.
Anyways, a few weeks went by and a few days before I was supposed to depart, I headed back to Ecomontes to get my gear. I had to be fitted for cramp-ons, snow boots, lots of warm clothes, special wind proof glasses, etc. When I arrived, my friend there told me that apparently another couple was climbing this weekend and I could team up with them for an acclimitization hike nearer to Cotopaxi, which would thus allow me to sleep up at a much higher altitude than Quito. To be perfectly honest, the only thing that I was thinking about at this point was how I was going to keep my weekly mileage up... I figured I could run friday morning before leaving for the acc. hike and then maybe Sunday afternoon when I got back. So, it was all good.
Friday morning, I indeed went for a nice little run and then headed to ecomontes with all my stuff. I was a little anxious because the place was closed and there was nobody there when I got there, but I got an ice cream across the street and just chilled. Eventually, my friend showed up and a few minutes later, I met my guide, Henry. Henry (for some reason pronounced Ken-Jee), was a great guy right off the bat. He spoke great English but I tried to just talk to him in Spanish when I could.
We loaded up our 4x4 and headed out of Quito. Pretty quickly, he was able to point out the first mountain we would be climbing, Rumiñahui. Rumiñahui has three jagged peaks with the highest around 4800 meters.
We stopped in the small town of Machachi and picked up a bunch of food for the trip (juice, yogurt, cheese, bread, etc), and then headed into Cotopaxi National Park. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible when we first arrived. We literally drove into a cloud. After about 45 minutes on one of the worst roads I´ve ever encountered, we arrived at Paja Blanca, a small restaurant and set of Cabañas (little cabins), where we would be sleeping that night.
I figured it was a good sign that as soon as we walked into the restaurant, everyone there, owners and other guides, seemed to know and like Henry. I was feeling better every second until it started to rain.
After a few minutes, the rain turned to a torrent which turned to hail which at that point included some of the loudest thunder I had ever heard. I was doubtful that we were going to get our acc hike in. However, as I was told, the weather up high changes quite rapidly, so as the rain started to die down, we hopped back in the 4x4 and drove a few minutes up the road to a parking lot where would begin our hike.
The landscape was otherworldly as we drove up. We were in the middle of a huge flat rocky plain surrounded by these enormous jaggy and often snow topped peaks. The hail had left a nice white dusting on everything, as if it weren´t wierd enough.
We started our hike on the side of a lagoon. What began as a flat walk, became a relatively steep uphill climb. My guide didn´t seem to care to much about the idea of a trail, and at this point, most of the terrain was tall grass and bushes, so we just sort of pushed our way through.
After about an hour, we reached the top of a bluff where my guide informed me (in spanish) that I was his first client who had ever made him sweat. Looking back behind us, it was true; we had come quite a ways in that first hour (up and across).We made our way then across a ridge, which was possibly the most beautiful part of the entire hike. We carefully made our way across a razor thin ridge with wild cows and horses on one side and a drop of about 1000 meters straight down on the other side. The storm had receded and you could just about see all of Cotopaxi across a long open expanse. It was stunning.
After the ridge, the hike became really difficult. Not only was I starting to notice the lack of oxygen, but the trail became much steeper and much sandier. For about an hour we were basically climbing in a sand box. You would take a big step up and slide down about 80% of the headway you just made. This made the going tough and frustrating. After another half hour or so, we eventually made it out of the sandbox and to the final part which was a steep steep rocky climb.At this point, the altitude was really getting to me. We were well above 4500 meters at this point, and I had never been that high before. To add to the fun of things, it also began to snow. And it was pretty serious snow. The winds whipped and the snow blew and somehow even in my oxygen deprived, shaky legged state, I made it to the top.
It was quite a summit. The clouds had moved which left an amazing view of Cotopaxi to one side. To the other side, you could see the other peaks of Rumiñahui. The coolest part about this, was that on one side of the mountain, it was perfectly clear, and on the other side, there was simply a pool of mist.
Needless to say, going back down was a lot easier. In fact, the ever so frustrating sand box part was actually kind of fun on the way down, as you kind of skiied through the sand. Woo hoo!
When we got back to the ridge, the weather had worsened and we found ourselves ¨en un nube¨(or in a cloud). You couldn´t see more than about 10 feet in any direction, which, for anyone afraid of heights, is probably a good thing!
Once we finally reached the bottom, I was tired but feelin confident. If I could do that sandbox part, how hard could Cotopaxi really be? Then I realized that it was another 1200 meters taller and I thought, maybe I´m getting in over my head. But then again, if you don´t get over your head, you´d never get your hair wet. And that´d just be gross.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening eating and resting. I met a big group of travelers who were all in their lower 20s I´d say. They were an interesting group of people. I believe they were American, Irish, and Australian. We played poker together until about 8:00 when we all decided to head back to our cabins.
I did not sleep very well that night. I don´t know if it was the altitude or my nerves, but somehow I found myself feeling really sick and not being able to sleep much. I was really hoping I would be able to get some rest the next day.Well, I woke up feeling fine the next morning, so I was optimistic. We had breakfast and then drove to the front of the park to pick up the other mountain guide and the American couple who were supposed to accompany us on Rumiñahui. Luckily, the couple actually spoke very good Spanish (not common for Americans), since the woman had been working here in Ecuador and the man had been in the Peace Corps in El Salvador several years back. Though they did speak with terrible American accents.
They were in their late 20s and really quite nice. We sort of got to no each other a bit as we drove out to the base of Cotopaxi. Our guide explained to us that today we would be climbing up to the base camp and settling in and then learning to use all of the snow and ice gear. We would try to get to sleep sometime in the late afternoon, since we would have to get up around midnight to begin the summit.
We parked the car in a pretty large parking lot and looked up at a tiny yellow dot on the side of this enormous volcano. There´s the refuge!
The hike up to the refuge was the only hike that I really did not enjoy at all. Almost the entire trail was sandy (like the sand box section of Rumiñahui), and to make matters worse, we had to carry all of our gear and food that we would need for the next 24 hours, which added up to a lot of weight. It was not a whole lot of fun.
Eventually, though, we made it up to the refuge. The refuge is a small, two storey building, with the bottom being occupied by kitchens and tables and the top by the most efficiently used stacking of beds I have EVER seen.
We staked out a few beds and found a few closets which you simply occupy and then lock (you have to bring a lock). We sat around for a while, ate, and rested from the morning´s hike. Aroudn 3:00, we walked about 45 minutes out to the glacier to learn how to use the crampons and snow axes.
It was at this point that the man from the couple told us that he had broken his tibia a few months ago and didn´t think that he was going to be able to do this. To climb with crampons requires a lot of trust in the strength of your ankles and a lot of twisting in awkward directions. Needless to say, he wasn´t feeling up to putting his ankle and leg at that much of a risk.
We spent about half an hour just discussing this out in the cold, which kind of pissed me off because I was tired and we could have done the talking back in the warm lodge... but oh well.When we got back to the refuge, we ate a quick dinner and then headed upstairs to sleep. It was around 6:00 by the time we got there, which would allow me about 4 and a half hours of sleep.
Sleep would not really be the correct term here. Rest, would be more like it. Wheb you are in a room with 30 or 40 other people all quite close to you, it´s pretty hard to sleep. People are constantly rolling, snoring, talking, grunting, getting up to pee. It´s basically impossible to really sleep.
Around 11:30, people started getting up. Most people would leave between 12:00 and 12:30, but since my guide said I had done really well on the acclimitization hike, we would leave at 1:30. So, with one theoretical hour of rest-sleep left, all of the freaking Germans got up and started stomping around in their heavy boots, shining their headlamps in my eyes.
After about 15 minutes of this, I decided it wasn´t worth it and just got up. I went down to the lower section where I found Henry and we had a pretty big meal. We just sat around and talked for a while before getting dressed. One last trip to the bathroom and we were on our way.
As we left the refuge, we could see Quito, glowing, in the distance. It was quite something.
The first 45 minutes I was antsy and the seemingly funeral march pace seemed insufferable. However, Henry insisted that we start off slow. We quickly caught up to the American-Irish-Australian contingent, and so we had to slow our pace even more. Eventually, the red rocks began to turn into red rocks and snow and then red rocks and ice, until eventually we stopped. Time to put on those crampons!
We strapped up our crampons and then Henry tied a rope to me and to himself. On the ice, everyone has to be tied together, in case of a fall or slip. To my great delight, we were able to set off before the others. We plunged forward, into the darkness.
Up ahead of us, we could see tiny flickering lights in the distance, other groups who had started earlier. Despite what seemed like a pretty slow (but still very tiring) pace to me, we caught up with most of these lights within an hour or so.
The climbing was not like any hiking I had ever done. It was physically and mentally demanding. We were climbing up a steep sheet of ice several miles up. A poor step and not imbedding all of my crampons in the ice could lead to a broken ankle or worse.
About an hour and a half into the glacial climb, I started to feel really bad stomache cramps. Now, as a distance runner, I´m pretty used to feeling wierd, painful things after you´ve been asking a lot of your body for a long time. But this was different. After maybe 15 minutes I was in really terrible pain. I was having to stop every few minutes not out of muscle tiredness or oxygen problems, but because of my stomache. I was afraid to drink the water, thinking that maybe that´s what had caused my problem, and so I continued to deteriorate.
All of my memories from the hour between 3 and 4 are hazy. I remember being in terrible agony and thinking ¨Why the fuck am I here?¨There were a few times when I very seriously thought about turning back. I really didn´t think I was going to make it to the summit. But, as Kanye says, ¨to me, giving up´s way harder than tryin´¨ I forged on.Around 4:30, I was having to stop so often that Henry said, ¨Ok, we will take a break up on that ledge and decide if we want to continue.¨ I knew that I wanted to keep going, I just didn´t know if it was physically possible. I thought about having to tell all of the people who knew I was attempting this hike that I didn´t make it, that I had to go back. I hate that kind of thing.
When we got up to the ledge, I finally decided to just man up and try and deal with it. I asked Henry and he said it was ok, so I walked about 50 feet away from everyone, dug a little toilet, and went to the bathroom. Let me remind you, that we were now probably over 18,000 feet up, in the middle of the night, on the side of a glacier. It was COLD.
But it was absolutely the right descision. I immediately started to feel better. For anyone who knows anything about the Ideal Gas Laws (PV=nRT), when the pressure around you lowers, and the pressure inside you stays the same, any gas will feel like it´s at a much higher pressure. That was a poor explanation, but if you think about it, it makes sense.
To make things better, the sun was also beginning to brighten things up. I felt that things were really beginning to turn a corner. We continued up and up and up and it seemed like every horizon brought another vertical wall of ice. I was getting really tired of this.
At this point, my stomache was feeling fine but I was REALLY feeling the altitude. Luckily, we had caught up to another group in front of us, so we were going super slowly.
The last part of the climb is the steepest (wonderfuly, right?). I found myself trying to trick my feet into continuing. Telling them ¨Ok, a few more steps and then we´ll stop¨ over and over and over. I found myself in a rhythm of One, two, three, four, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, repeat.
About 100 meters below the summit, the sun had risen and the air was clear and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I could see the ocean, over 100 miles away. I could see Quito and the mountains around it. It was a truly breath taking moment (I was indeed taking a lot of breaths). Unfortunately, Henry told me not to stop long as we were almost there. I didn´t take any pictures.
Somehow, I made it. I didn´t even know I had gotten there until I saw a couple of other people
cheering and waving. Unfortunately, we were en un nube otra vez! We were in the middle of a snow cloud. The winds whipped at us and you couldn´t see too far. But it was still a feeling of accomplishment. Super dooper dooper high!
The climb back down was actually pretty stressful. Unlike the hikes I´d done before, here you really had to be careful or you could get quite hurt. We took our time, stopped a lot to take pictures and rest. The hardest part was over. I knew that for sure.
Eventually we made it to the rocks. We de-cramponed ourselves and began the last 30 minutes back to the refuge. It seemed almost impossible that it was only about 9:00am when we got there. To me, it seemed like it was still saturday. Like we had been awake for 40 hours (which we just about had...)In the lodge I was greeted by the one group who had come down before us and the many who had turned back. All in all, out of the 20 or 30 people who attempted the summit that Sunday morning, 8 made it to the top (not including guides).
The one really bad thing that I didn´t plan for was what to wear after the climb. Between the snow and my sweat, all of my clothes were really wet and there was no fire in the furnace now. Oh no! I basically sat shivering in the refuge for I don´t even know how long until the couple came back from their morning hike and spotted me some clothes. Thank G-d for really nice people!I realized eventually that we still had a multi hour hike back down to the parking lot and I was not happy about this. But with a warm pair of socks and some soup, I was ready for anything.
The way down really wasn´t as bad. It was a lot of skiing through the sand, and my pack was a lot lighter (no more food to carry!). I got to the car in one piece.
As we loaded up the car, I climbed in the front seat, took off my boots and socks, rubbed my feet, and promtly fell asleep. I don´t know how but somehow I managed to sleep most of the way back to Quito, despite the first hour or so on terrible, terrible roads.
Some documentary once said that people climb mountains because afterwards they feel like the have conquered them, that they have displayed their dominance over nature. I couldn´t feel more the opposite. After climbing Cotopaxi, I stand humbled in the face of nature. I have in no way conquered this mountain. If anything, this mountain has simply reinforced its massive dominance over me. I stand humbled in the face of nature.
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