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Published: April 25th 2008
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So week two is almost out of the way and i feel that there is a reasonable amount of stuff that I can write about, without boring you all too much!
Where to start where to start... Since i've been informed that a itinery is not what is requested I'll explain about Qutio and then cut straight to the interesting part.
Quito (for those of you who do not know) is the capital city of Ecuador about three thousand metres up in the Andes. So that means that despite it being pretty close the Equator it is not as hot as you might expect. First couple of days it was a a rainy humid 12c but since then the sun has come out and it has been much nicer. The city is surrounded by tropical mountians (mountains covered in palm trees etc) and the mist just sits just above them. So it's a reasonably stunning if rickity third world city stuck deep in the mountains! Where i'm staying is called Gringo Central, since it is where all the foreigner's hang out. My teacher for the laungage school is a Ecudourian ex-semipro footballer, so the spanish chat mainly revolves around
football.
Since i'm in Qutio for two weeks I figured sorting stuff out for the weekends would be central for any my sanity and for seeing Ecuador. So I figured first weekend i would go and climb the nearby volcano called Cotopaxi. Shouldn't be too hard, ''I've climbed volcanos before don't you know''. Huge error! Basically despite Qutio being 3000m Cotopaxi is 5800m and there is a high chance if i went there after less than a week aclimatising i would get pretty bad altitude sickness which may indanger my health. So change of plans... We (Cornelious - at 6'7 possibly the tallest man in the country, Sven another German and I) decided to do Cotopaxi the weekend after and do a simpiler climb this Saturday a small 5000m volcano! We get in touch with a guide and he takes us to a shop to rent stuff for the mountains.
What do you need to climb the volcanos?
Maybe some shoes and a jacket i would assume... Nope... Huge boots, a coat, trousers, crampons, a hat, gloves, poles, a harness... A HARNESS ... and an ICE PICK! Shit what the hell have we gotten ourselves into... disquite begins
to set in! Apparently the Harness is so we can be tied together... ah ok... no wait ''tied together'' you're kidding... not at all! So this should be pretty interesting!
Anyway, we wake up at around 6ish on Saturday morning and I head for the meeting point. Now Quito is not the kind of place you want to walk around in the dark but i felt reasonably confident with a ice pick come walking stick with me. Need less to say i had no trouble!
Arrive at the mountian at around 4,500. Kit ourselves up: Icepick, Water Proofs, Jacket, Harness etc.... and we set out to walk. Basically we are climbing a glacia about a mile from the ecuator, which i must admit is a confusing concept. Oh and it's snowing, i mean it's a blizzard.
Now i'm not sure how many of you have experience of climbing a mountain/glacia. I'm sure some of you have, me i had absloutely none. So anyway picture the scene. A whitey/blue glacia rising up above us, in the middle of the clouds, in the middle of a snow storm. Not entirely the best conditions to start mountaineering but ah well
we all have to start somewhere. So we start with a series of practice climbs, getting used to crampons, jumping with crampons and finally vertical climbs with crampons.
Now vertical climbing with crampons implies slamming your toes into the ice one after the other as you climb. Now this is tricky enough normally (and pretty painful) but at 5,000 feet when every step feels like 100 and you are doing everything possible to stave off the begining of altitude sickness believe me it's pretty tricky. Anyway after an hour of dossing/training at the middle of the glacia we set off. After treversing a couple of cravasses, we come to the hardest bit of our climb, a 100 degree climb for about 5 mins. We make it to the top and just as i put my last foot in the ice begins to give way and i start sliding. Now as we all know sliding on ice means there isn't much friction, or correctly put there is pretty much no friction. Now since i'm sliding this is a bit of a problem!
I'd like to start the next sentence with "quick as a flash" but that would seem a
touch unrealisitc even from my memory. Mid slide i remebered the ice pick! Not as bad an idea as i first though. So i ok, i just have to dig it in and i'll stop. So first attempt fails, second attmept fails, third attempt (starting to build up a bit of speed) success. Managed to dig into some ice and get my balance and head back up. Finally we make it to the highest point we're going to today. With the weather closing there is almost no visibility, and seeing as this is a practice (and we are struggling at 5,100 - with something like 700 feet left to climb) we call it a day and head home. During the drive down we saw some pretty amazing countryside but since i am not i'm not Thomas Hardy (and since i pretty much hate him) I´ll let the pictures do the talking!
Now the next climbs itinery goes like this. Up at 6 in the morning - Saturday- from there drive to 3,800 feet. Leave the car, climb to 4,800 feet, do some more training, sleep till 2am, start assent to 5,800 feet for sunrise! So in case you're wondering
that implies 1,000 meters of glacial in the pitch black to reach the summit; sounds reasonably ideal!
So that is this weekend. As the weekend approaches one of my fellow climbers drops out, followed by on thursday the guide himself! Not entirely the best preperation but determined to go on me and my other friend manage to sort out a last minute guide for the mountain! Now that i have changed guides i feel it's safe to point out that our original guide didn't speak a word of English! Now that probably could have been a bit of a problem seeing as despite my slowly improving spanish it would be very easy for me to confuse "don't climb there" or "that is a worryingly dangerous drop" with "that's the best way to go" and " it may look like a drop but honnestly it's ok"!
So needless to say that is a bit of a relief... i now stand a increasingly realistic chance of surviving the mountian, which is nice!
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