COTOPAXI

  Dunno, cotopaxi national park I guess, Ecuador
Sunday, September 30, 2007

Well folks we did it, one giant volcano all done and dusted, all 4897m of the fella. It was tough, bloody tough. But lets start at the beginning. We (that is me, Tom Tom and Johannes) met up in Quito early on the Friday morning after Tom and I had taken the night bus from Pedernales and in a desperate attempt to acclimatize a bit walked up Rucu Pichincha that day. That was pretty straightforward as there's a cable car to take you to 4050m, then it's a stroll (comparatively) up to 4790m - the next night we would sleep at 10 metres higher than this - madness.

a. top of Rucu Pichincha

b. one me, one volcano

We had an early night after carbo loading (as we didn't get enough carbs at Lalo Loor...) as we were all knackered. Saturday am we went to the operators office to try on all the scary and serious looking equipment (crampons, axes, harnesses, big hard uncomfortable looking boots etc) and then headed South. It was us three, two guides (Christian and Marcello) plus an Ecuadorian guy named Milton. After stopping for a bit of lunch, we headed into the park to see the summit and the tiny yellow dot you can just about see is the refuge.

c. Park entrance

After driving quite a while longer, the tiny yellow dot became slightly bigger. And the volcano looked a lot lot bigger.

d. view of the summit and refuge from the car park

We left the car and walked the last few hundred metres up to the refuge, even that took best part of an hour.

e. refugio Jose Ribas

f. view back down from the refuge

After some well earned tea and biccies we went for a little stroll around to take some piccies, including this one of a fox who was just wandering past.

g. fox, rather randomly

h. thats where we're heading in a few hours

Then it was an early dinner of soup and pasta (that's it, just pasta) before we headed to bed about 7 as we had to get up at midnight to start at 1am. What the smeg is that all about? So after laying fully dressed in my sleeping bag trying not to move for fear of letting a bit of the cold in we got up at midnight and got ready - this took a while given that I was wearing three pairs of trousers, two pairs of socks (one pair having three layers), one thermal base layer, one long sleeved t-shirt, one rugby jersey, one fleece, one rain coat, two hats, two pairs of gloves and my buff as a balaclava. Somehow on top of all that I had to put on a harness and get my rucksack on. We left just after 1 and after about 45 mins got to the glacier where we had to put on our crampons and get tied together (me and Milton with Christian, and Tom and Jo with Marcello).

j. me, most of you should know that

Then very very very slowly we started up the hill. Sometime during this first hour I felt a bit sick, feeling like I needed to burp but if I did could well follow through. There was a similar situation at the other end. This lovely feeling would pretty much stay with me for the next 8 hours or so. After about 2 hours (maybe, kinda lost track of time a bit) Milton had to stop and turn back as he was feeling crap so that left the three of us roped to Marcello. So we continued. Up. And up. And up. An up. You get the point.

k. Tom working out the logistics of havinga pee

There were a good few occasions when I was really tempted to pack it in, thinking it was a ridiculous thing to do as we were only going to come back down anyway. One time when we stopped I took my gloves off for some reason and then spent the next half hour trying to get some feeling back in them and get rid of the pain. That's why theres not that many photos, it was just too cold to take gloves off to take any.

l. cold, tired, pissed off with frozen glasses

Then when I had just about had enough and was thinking, that I'll just go to the next ridge and tell Marcello that I've had enough and want to go home and see my mummy, we went over the ridge and were at the top. One of the best feelings ever, the view was awesome, I could see hundreds of miles in each direction including quite a few other volcanic peaks. It was just immense.

m. 6:57am. We've made it!

n. view of Chimborazo (possibly)

p. made it ma, top of the world!

o. the team wot dun it

q. simply beautiful

r. but very very very cold

We only stayed at the top for about 10/15 mins as stunning as the view was, it was also bloody cold up there. SO we motored back down in about 2 and a quarter hours. On the way back down Tom suddenly turned into the Incredible Sulk and started totally losing it because he kept falling and was blaming it on the rope but after much swearing and a cursing, we carried on. Then Tom fell again and it started again, including flinging his axe down - which promptly slid down the hillside Our efforts to retrieve it then resulted in all of us falling down and sliding down the hillside. Luckily we had a rope and Marcello knew what he was doing so we eventually got down off the ice-field. We gladly took off our crampons, at which point Tom took one step and went flying onto his arse, at which point he started laughing as did the rest of us, and everyone relaxed a bit>So we made it back down to the refuge, then back to the car mercifully being able to take off the boots then headed back to civilization. At which point I had to sit on a bus for 6 hours back to Pedernales. Not the smartest plan.


It was an absolutely immense experience, one of the toughest things ive ever done.

Would I do it again

Hell no.

Probably.

Although Chimborazo is over 6000m and the peak of that is the furthest point anywhere on the planet from the center of the Earth....