Owning Imbabura

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Troy, Nicole, and I climbed Imbabura on Sunday (March 29) and it was definitely an adventure! We had to leave at 5 am, I think partially because they wanted to be back in time for the soccer game, but it was good that we left that early because we needed ALL day. We started from 3400 meters and summited at 4600. Our hike up was for the most part good. We started having warning signs about our guide's level of knowledge on the way up when we were bush-wacking through knee-high grass instead of going up the trail that we could see from where we were. We also climbed straight up a rock face, pretty much basically rock climbing without ropes where if we would've fallen we would've died, and then when we got to the top of that section we looked to our right and saw a trail going right up. ¨Oh don't worry, there are multiple ways¨said our guide. Oh good...

So we made it to the top, took some pictures in the clouds, and then started our descent. We were trying to get to this one ridge where the trail supposedly was, basically by climbing down a cliff. Troy, Nicole, and I asked multiple times why we weren't on the trail and finally just went over to where the trail was and started going down. Then our guide said we needed to be over on the other ridge where the 'other' trail led to so we ended up scrambling across some rocks to get there. We had some lunch and the continued our descent. Ok, so just a quick note here... We were completely in the clouds this entire time. Literally in the clouds. Couldn't really see anything. A little further down it cleared up for a couple minutes and we could see the next ridge over and the top of the mountain where we had just been. Gorgeous! At this point our guide said 'oh, wait, we need to be over on that other ridge. I couldn't tell with all the clouds.' So we should've just followed the trail... He started going down into this small valley area to get up to the other ridge on the other side. I decided I had had enough and went my own way, followed by Troy, Nicole, and the guide-in-training (who by the way will definitely have to do the climb again in order to learn the real route). Even he thought our way was better. We finally got across to the other ridge and found the trail! This whole time was actually really fun! I love just kind of going, being able to see where I need to end up and then just getting there rather than actually following a trail. So it was fun, just kind of disconcerting that our guide had no idea where we were going.

From there we descended on the actual trail for a while (I know, what a novel idea!). But before too long the trail split. We knew which one was the one that we had come up on, but our guide chose the other one. We checked multiple times to make sure that he realized that he wanted to take the one that we hadn't come up on but he said it was just another way down. We finally followed him because it did look like a legit trail. Basically a bad idea. For a while it was fine. We went up and down a little bit and then continued descending pretty steeply through long grass. But it was taking way too long to get down. And our guide kept stopping to look around to decide where to go. Turns out that the trail we were on definitely didn't go back to the place where we had first gotten off the truck (at 3400 meters). Instead we were going to have to descend the entire way to San Antonio at the very base of the mountain! So we continued descending. We couldn't see where we were headed because there were sooo many clouds! At one point they cleared up and we could see San Antonio and Ibarra really really far away, but then the clouds came in again. It wouldn't have been as bad if we could've seen where we were aiming for, but we had no idea if we were even heading towards San Antonio. We decided that as long as we kept heading down we would eventually encounter the bottom of the mountain and hopefully break out of the clouds.

By this point our guide was crawling down backwards on his hands and feet. Not a good sign. The customers aren't supposed to be in better shape than the guide. We were texting Tracey by this point, telling her all that was going on, with lots of sarcasm on both parts of course... ¨should we be worried???¨ At least our cell phones had reception. At one point Nicole said, the only way this could be even more amazing is if it were pouring rain. Literally not even 10 seconds after she said that (no exaggeration) it started hailing. Awesome. By 5 we were still not down from the mountain and had no way of knowing how much further we had. We were conserving water at this point and Troy started making a plan for spending the night on the mountain. We were still laughing and making it fun, the only way to keep from getting extremely frustrated, but we did realize that we might be spending the night on the mountains. Our guide asked for water at one point and Troy and Nicole gave him some of theirs because he was in worse shape than us. They only had a little left, because we were rationing it, and guess how much the guide drank??? All of it! And not even a thank you!

The assistant guide was on his phone off and on with his brother, the owner of the company, getting instructions as to where to go. We basically just followed the trail down. We lost it a couple times but were always able to eventually encounter it again. We finally reached a forested area. With a more real looking trail and some garbage. I have never been that happy to see litter before in my life! Signs of humans! We then followed the trail through the forest for over an hour, on a mud path that was quickly turning into a mud ice-skating rink. We were still descending, so a lot of the time we were sliding instead of walking, and falling on our backs. Needless to say, we were pretty muddy. After a while we started hearing sounds of the city, but it still took over half an hour to actually break out of the trees. Our guide was a long ways behind by this time, but we didn't want to leave him on the mountain alone so every once in a while we waited and called to him to make sure we could still hear him. We also wanted to make sure that we got off the mountain before dark if at all possible so it was a balance. When we got out of the trees it was 6:30. By 6:40 it was completely dark. Leaving that forest was the best part of the whole day! We could see the city from there, even though it was still a couple of miles away. But we had made it off the mountain before it was completely dark! Yay! The summit of Imbabura is at 4600 meters, Ibarra is at almost 2400. So we descended 2200 meters, about 7220 feet. That doesn't sounds like that much, but it's quite a distance. Especially when it's steep. And when we already spent 5 hours climbing up...

The company owner met us in his truck close to San Antonio and we got back to Otavalo around 8. We had asked Tracey to order us some pizzas so when we got back to the GVI house, exhausted, wet, painful knees, and freezing, we had tons of water, pizza, tea, and Magnum ice cream bars. Amazingly delicious! Then we all went to our showers and collapsed into bed.
The next 2 days were ridiculously painful for our legs! Right above the knees/thigh areas from the descent. It was literally hard even just to walk, our legs would give out randomly, and we still hiked all the way up and down from school! By Wednesday though they were starting to feel better.

We owned Imbabura! Not just the top half like most people, we conquered that entire mountain! And we got our money back (of course) so it was even free! We made it fun, even in the circumstances, and Nicole and Troy are probably the two best people to have been in that situation with. It was seriously good that we were a small group, all in good shape, or we probably would've spent the night up there. It could've been seriously dangerous. But we made it and had a blast and after our Imbabura hike, we can do anything!

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Photos

At the top!
Good view eh?

Happiest Part of the Day
When we made it down alive... before dark...