Cumbre o Muerte (Summit or Die)

(note: please excuse the terrible punctuation in this posting, I thought I had seen all weirdnesses with south american keyboards but the one Im currently on doesn’t allow most capital letters …)

cotopaxi volcano is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and at 5897m is a challenging climb.  it’s also one of the few equatorial glaciers in the world starting at 5000m.  cotopaxi is technically not a hard climb, all you need is an ice ax and some crampons, but its still a VERY long day.  the climb began yesterday when we drove to 4500m and then hiked 300m to the refuge at 4800m on the volcano.  The refuge is just below where the glacier starts and provides a place to begin attempts on the cotopaxi summit.  we woke up at midnight, and began climbing at 1am in the pitch black!  I’ve decided that I’m not a fan of hiking in the dark, you can’t see any views or where you’re going so it’s kind of depressing.  you just keep going up and up and up with no sense of it ever being finished.  it has to be done this way though because by midday the sun has melted the snow and ice too much and it is no longer safe to climb.  I hadn’t realized beforehand exactly how ridiculously steep the climb would be.  most of it involved going straight up 45 degree slopes, with some up to 60 degrees, which quickly became really exhausting.  then you also have the altitude to add to the challenge.  at 4800m there is MUCH less oxygen then my body is used to, even after acclimatizing in quito for a couple of days.  but i really started to feel it after 5500m where i started to get dizzy and feel nausious.  there were quite a few times when i considered just calling it quits because feeling sick while climbing was really terrible, and it was also snowing.  but my partner and i pushed on until we made it to 5700m, just below the summit, where you can see the spectacular glacier and are way up above the clouds in the valley below.  it was pretty amazing to have climbed up so high, especially on a volcano!  However I don’t think I have the “cumbre o muerte” (summit or die, as my mountain guide put it) mentality of many mountaineers, I was pretty happy to have made it to just below the summit and back down safe and sound.

Cooking with an Italian in Ecuador

I left Banos and returned to Quito because I have really been wanting to climb one of the volcanoes in Ecuador.  One of the companies I contacted put me in touch with another single traveller also wanting to climb a volcano and so we decided to go together because it would be more fun, and less expensive.  We plan to climb Cotopaxi volcano, one of the easiest to ascend, but its still a tough trek.  Its necessary to acclimitize properly beforehand due to the lack of oxygen because Cotopaxi is over 5800m tall.  So I had to return to Quito a few days beforehand.  Then yesterday we did an acclimitization hike to a dead volcano above Quito called Pichincha which is at 4700m.  Hiking at an altitude you’re not acclimitized to is a bizarre sensation.  You think you shouldn’t feel tired, yet its hard to breathe and your body feels exhausted after only a couple of hours of easy walking.  Even walking around Quito at 3000m is more tiring then normal.  Im hoping that I can make the full ascent of the volcano, although only about 50% of people make it due mostly to problems with the altitude.

After our hike my trekking partner and I decided to go to the grocery store to make some dinner.  The guy Im doing the climb with is from Italy, and LOVES to cook (lucky for me).  Basically I wasnt allowed to help with dinner, and I recieved lessons on what makes good pasta, good olive oil and good wine while shopping.  Then he proceeded to cook what was probably one of the most delicious meals Ive had in all of my travels!  Who would’ve thought I would eat delicious Italian pasta while in Quito …