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Published: February 13th 2008
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I have made two attempts on Chimborazo now, and I failed both.
The first one was 2 days after Cotopaxi. There had been loads of warnings and many people telling me that their planned ascents had been cancelled due to the very difficult conditions on the mountain. Tungurahua had had a strong eruption a couple of weeks before, the ash was blown onto Chimborazo, melted the snow and in subsequence made it all very icy and extremely difficult to climb. As I had already booked the trip (I wasn't too happy that the tour operator had not told me about the situation at the time of booking), I thought I should try it. So on Wednesday, 30 January, Jaime and I went to the Whymper refugio. As with Cotopaxi, you can drive up to very close to the refugio and only need to hike up for less than an hour. We arrived in a rain/snow storm and did not even feel like leaving the car. We went to bed at around 18:30, and already got up at 23:30, as it is an 8 hours hike. The snowstorm had disappeared and it was a crystal clear night with millions of stars
in the sky. A group of French people left the refugio at the same time as us. We all managed to climb up to about 5600m, and until there the conditions were wery good. It was not icy at all, as there were about 30 cm of snow on the ice. The hike to this point was easier than Cotopaxi, as it was less steep. However, as from this point it was getting steeper, the guides made an avalanche test, and it proofed that there was a high risk of avalanches: there were three layers of snow on top of each other and non of them connected with each other, and the lowest layer not connected to the ice. This makes it extremely prone to avalanches. Therefore, everybod agreed to descend.
The second attempt was started about a week later, again with Jaime. We left in perfect conditions: the sunshine during the past week had settled the snow, and it could not be better. When we arrived at the refugio it was blue skies and the sunset on Chimborazo was beautiful. At night we left earlier this time, around 23:45, together with a couple of Americans and there guides.
One of them was Henry, whom I had met at Tambopaxi. The hike went well for about the first hour. Then, however, I did something very stupid: on a snow field we had a brief break to have some water. I opened my backpack to take out the hot water bottle, then placed it on the snow. I drank a little, and then somehow touched the backpack. On the steep snow field, the backpack immediately skittered down. I still tried to grab it, but couldn't. It went down very fast and soon we could not see it any more in the dark of the night. Jaime immediately ran after it and quickly disappeared in the black depths. After a while he shouted 'Tengo tu mochila; pero tu tienes tu camera?' (I have your backpack, but do you have your camera?). I did't not have my camera. As the backpack was open at the time the backpack left us, most of the things had fallen out during the rapid fall. We finally found most of the tings, but I lost one lense and another ine was damaged. We lost about ioen horu with the search, and it was of course extremely
frustratign and demotivating. We then continued the climb. However, as I had been suffering from a heavy cough for the past week (but had thought that the two days before the hike it was already better) and the air was filled with ash from the Tungurahua eruption, breathing got increasingly diffĂcult for me as we ascended. I was also somewhat panicking when by 4am we were only slightly above 5800m. To cut it short: just underneath 6000m I could not get much air into my lungs any more and felt too exhausted to continue. Jaime did his best to encourage me to move on, but I finally just gave up and we returned. At the moment it seemed the only way to go. However, those who know me, know that - concerning mountains - I am very ambitious and will go out of my way to summit whatever mountain I am attempting. It is thus extremely frustrating for me to have failed this one, and in retrospect I am angry at myself not to have forced me up the last 300m. The reasons for the failure were a combination of the breathing problems and the psychological issue with the lost
backpack and the subsequent rush for time. I still aim to summit, though, before I leave Ecuador. The problem is that costs for climbihng Chimborazo are very high
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