| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2006-01-04 03:22:12 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Before hitting up the glaciated big boys we thought it'd be prudent to spend some time at medium altitude to allow our bodies to acclimatize to the thin air. Quito sits at 2800m., which became evident even before my plane's wheels touched the ground. There was no ear popping sensation as we descended from cruising altitude because the cabin was pressurized to roughly the same level as the ambient pressure. The shortness of breath became apparent once I picked up my bags from the luggage claim and tried to walk with them for a bit. At this point I met up with Ian and we went to a hostel to spend the night.
The next morning we headed north to Otavalo to climb something in the 14,000' range. Mts. Cotacachi and Imbabura (both standing tall above 15,000') are in the area; however, it would have been difficult to do them as day hikes based out of our hostel. We spent the remainder of the day hiking to a nearby waterfall and free climbing up on its side over wet rock and moss. Clearly this wasn't the brightest idea, but it began to set the tone for the trip. The next morning, after finding out what tree tomato juice tastes like, we got a ride to one of the Lagunas de Mojanda crater lakes a few miles away. There, with the lakes in the middle, are a couple almost-fourteeners that looked like they'd give us some good rope practice and a chance to breathe some even thinner air. Mt. Cerra Negra was the prettier looking lump of rock (We couldn't even see Fuya Fuya summit because of the clouds, but somehow it didn't strike us as being as impressive); however, to get to the Cerra Negra trail we would have had to hike for a couple miles around one of the lakes along a mud road. We figured we'd just go straight up the cow paths to Fuya Fuya and do the other mountain later in the day if we still had time. Slipping and sliding on the mud and avoiding the cow poop we hiked up to the saddle. Roping was absolutely unnecessary, but we needed the practice so we went for it. At the saddle we took a left turn and walked along a narrow ridge to the still-hidden summit. After a little bit of climbing we wound up on the summit, and couldnt see a damn thing because of the fog all around us. Once we returned to the lake we realized that wed run out of time before we could hike up Cerra Negra, so we went for a walk down the road instead. Low clouds swept quickly over the lake and ten minutes later we were in a downpour. We followed the road to the next of the three lakes and got a view of the mountains from a slightly different perspective. The taxi driver came to pick us up later that evening and we returned to La Luna hostel tired and soaking wet. The next day we would catch a bus to Quito and head down to Cotopaxi. |