| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2006-01-04 03:32:00 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Cotopaxi didn't kill us, but we didn't conquer it.
It's an amazingly beautiful mountain, a near perfect volcanic cone standing head and shoulders above everything else around it. The transition from the incredibly flat plateau, with shades of grey and brown being the predominant colors that we saw on our ride up through the Cotopaxi Park on the foggy Tuesday afternoon, to the steep slopes of the mountain, is very sudden. Even as I was leaving Ecuador, a week later, flying out of Quito and climbing and climbing through the clouds, finally bursting through to the sun, I looked back and saw Cotopaxi standing tall and proud some 70 miles behind me. It was surrounded by a blanket of white. We left Otavalo around 9 on Tuesday morning, stopped at Quito for food and bottled water, distributed kerosene and finally got on the bus to Latagunga. After some confusion regarding where we needed to get off the bus, we were able to hire a shabby pickup that would take us to the Cotopaxi park entrance. As it turned out the park closed at 3pm (it was 4 by this point) and there were no pickups in sight that had the permission to continue beyond the entrance. After speaking with the ranger at the gate he allowed our driver to continue to the car lot area. For this service we would be charged another $40. We drove for a while on the mud road through an increasingly desolate plateau that looked like it belonged on the moon. The summit was in the clouds, and we had no idea how far we had gone. The slight drizzle made for a muddy road and the truck eventually got stuck; the driver was ready to turn back right away, but we convinced him to try a couple more times. Alas, this was to no avail. He made it clear that he had no intention of going further and said that "el refugio es directo" pointing somewhere into the cloud and saying it would be 30 minutes. We put on our main packs with the book bags strapped to the top and our day-packs hanging off our chests. The pre-trip plan was to drop off all non-climbing gear at a hostel off the Pan-American Highway, but we were short on time and thought we'd just carry it all to the refuge. THAT WAS A MISTAKE. With the driver leaving us significantly lower than we needed to be, we had several miles and 1500ft to climb just to the car park. It was slow going, and we had to stop every ten minutes because our shoulders were being ripped apart by the pack straps; the altitude was also beginning to make itself known. On several occasions we considered setting up camp, but the thought of having to continue in the same manner the next morning would make us push on. After carrying 80+ lbs of gear I'll never complain about a 50lb pack again! An hour into our trek up the road, we spotted a car heading down. They stopped and wished us a good journey as we kept on slowly walking in a slight trance. Then we heard the sounds of a car coming up the road. It was the same guys, and they were our saviors! After being screwed over by the previous driver, the kindness of these people can't be forgotten! We hauled our packs into the back of the pickup and then jumped in. The ride was only 15 minutes, but it would have taken us 2 hours to hike that. We were above the snowline at this point, and the road to the upper lot was impassable. They dropped us off a couple hundred feet lower only requesting that we return the favor to someone else in the future. We stopped at the shack by the lower parking lot to resort the gear and put on more clothes. The wind had picked up and was driving snow into our faces. The trek from the top car park to the hut is supposed to be 45 minutes, so we were hoping to reach the hut within an hour. The walk up the snow-covered scree was more brutal and longer than the mud-walk along the road. We had to stop every 10 minutes because our rib cages were still being torn open by the ill-balanced and grossly overloaded packs swaying side to side, and the terrain was substantially steeper. Each break we'd take off our chest packs, collapse on our knees and put our elbows on the small packs. After a minute our breathing would recover, and a couple minutes later we'd continue. Whenever we took a longer break and took off our main packs wed need help from each other to get them back on. An interesting biological observation: When we'd start hiking again the most immediate pain would be in the legs, then within 30s the breathing would accelerate to 3x normal pace and the heart rate would go up too. These were the most difficult moments. Within a couple minutes the body would reach a steady-state where the breathing was fast but rhythmic, and the feet moved slowly, but they did move. After another 10 minutes we'd need to collapse again under our pack weight and start the cycle over. This continued for nearly 4 hours till we reached the hut (4,800 m). That's our payment for bringing excess food, fuel, water, and numerous travel accessories and clothes that weren't actually necessary for the climb. We got there at 10 pm and saw several climbing parties sleeping. At 12:30am Ian and I woke up to wish the departing parties good luck and to get some margarine enriched noodle soup to help our bodies do their thing overnight and during the next day. Wednesday Dec 28th we felt that we were ready to go; our breathing was normal and the heart rate was only slightly elevated. At nearly 16,000ft we didnt have any headaches, and the only sign of elevation was that wed get out of breath quicker. We took a short hike to the glacier terminus and spotted a fox trotting on the snow guarding its domain. The perfect visibility that we had in the morning had turned to total white-out. That night we set out from the hut at 1 am with another rope team nearby. The two other guys were a guide and his customer. However, during the 24 hours that we spent at the base hut we discovered that the guiding companies are very conservative and rarely take people to the summit. In fact, no one has been up to the top in the last three weeks, and as of our return, Ian and I got higher than anyone else in those same three weeks. With this said we had to turn back at 5600m, almost 300m short of the summit, because our brains were turning into jelly and our heads were getting ready to explode. We had pretty severe AMS The climb began pretty innocuously, however, as we hiked up to the glacier. The other team was leading, but we were on their tail the whole time. An hour into it we roped up and went over a small crevasse. By 3am we were on a 40 degree loaded snow field. Prime avalanche terrain. The guide dug a couple pits and we decided that it was safe enough to press on. We offered to lead the way, and were soon far ahead with only the headlamps of the other team visible as tiny specs in the distance. The stars are absolutely amazing at that altitude on a cloudless, moonless night, by the way. We waited for the other team to catch up and the guide told us that within an hour we'd reach a crevasse and would need to go to the left of it. This was the last time we saw those two guys face to face. We continued up the steep slope and marveled at how it is that the whole side of the mountain doesn't just slide down taking us with it. At 5:00am the east sky started getting slightly lighter and by 6:00am we turned off our headlamps and continued up the slope. Soon the crevasse presented itself. It was about 1 m wide and easily seen; we went to the left as advised, but within a couple minutes were faced with a 70 degree slope, and it seemed that our course had to continue up it. To our left and our right the terrain seemed to be of similar steep grade. I went ahead with Ian doing his best to belay me from the bottom, but in the back of my mind a paranoid voice was saying that if I were to fall and not self-arrest I could potentially sweep both of us into the crevasse we had just crossed. I managed to scramble to the top of this 20 foot section to discover, to my satisfaction, slightly flatter terrain, and to my absolute horror that this flatter terrain was the lip of a huge crevasse spanning several meters across and dropping to unbelievable depth. We were in a bind. I had just climbed up a slope that I couldn't safely down-climb (dumb, dumb, dumb!) without leaving an anchor up above, and we certainly couldn't continue straight up. We had to traverse to the right to reach the edge of the top crevasse, but I was on sketchy terrain and Ian wouldn't have been able to offer protection had I started sliding down. We decided that he had to come up and join me. I set up a dead man anchor with one of my pickets to back up a boot axe belay as he climbed up the scary slope to the crevasse lip to join me. The buried picket worked surprisingly well in the snow. I pulled on it with all my might after Ian was up and couldnt get it to budge. After a short break, Ian down-climbed along the crevasse lip as far as our 15m of free rope would allow. On one side he had the steeper than normal snow terminating in the crevasse we crossed, on the other was the vertical wall of the crevasse we were trying to get around. Once we ran the full length of the rope between us I took apart my anchor and retraced his steps to join him as he belayed me from the bottom. We repeated the exercise two more times moving along the edge of the crevasse like a worm. Eventually we got to a point where the gaping crack was no more. We noted that this crevasse was a la 'Touching the Void'; near its end, the bottom was clearly visible, and with some luck an uninjured person could walk out of it. After probing around with our axes to make sure that we hit the true end, we continued up. It became clear to us that we could have crossed the lower crevasse instead of going to the left of it, and in fact this is what we did on our descent. So much for advice from the guide. The exercise cost us over an hour of precious time. We looked back and saw the other rope party looking like two ants heading back to the hut. Finally we reached the end of the crazy avalanche-prone field and veered to the left. The sun had fully illuminated the mountain and cast an amazing conical shadow on the terrain below. We were nowhere near the summit, but it seemed like we were on top of the world. Our headaches had gotten worse. Another crevasse emerged in front of us. There was a narrow snow bridge that seemed too small and too weak to support our weight, yet it had a wand next to it. We scouted around to see if we could find the crevasse end, but it seemed to continue for some distance. Our ice axes simply punched through the snow revealing sheer blueness below. Ian cautiously went for the snow bridge as I tried to keep the slack in the ropes to a minimum. His foot punched through and his leg disappeared, but he managed to recover. He got on his knees and crossed the bridge; I followed on all fours. We continued up rounding crevasses up to ten meters across and watching the yellow base hut get smaller and smaller below us. The previously clear valley filled up with clouds, which started to rise up as the sun warmed the air. We decided that 9 am would be our turn around time, yet we were making slow but good progress and that hour had come and gone. We were still in the shadow of the mountain, so the snow was still crisp, but we saw the sun attack our trail below. We rationalized to ourselves that those that make it to the summit come back in the afternoon, so we still had time. Our heads were pounding by now, and taking off the packs to get some aspirin and more food seemed like a feat not worth our strength. Even reaching for the water at my side was difficult and seldom done. My throat was in immense pain, and even swallowing my own saliva was painful; it took will power to bring the Nalgene to my lips. We saw steam from above and hoped that we saw the edge of the crater, but the gps told us were only at 18,000 feet. The true summit is at 19,400, with the crater rim slightly below it. The next hour confirmed that the summit was another 1000 feet above us as we saw the famous rock outcropping venting steam and smelling like sulfur. By this point Ian couldn't stand up straight and wanted to fall asleep on the snow. I felt like my helmet was squeezing by brain out and felt my pulse resonate from the back of my skull to the front. My throat was in bad shape and I could no longer force myself to swallow any food or water. We were trying to remember the differences in symptoms between cerebral edema and acute mountain sickness, but nothing obvious came to mind. I was carrying emergency pills for pulmonary edema, but nothing for HACE. At least we weren't coughing up blood, so that ruled HAPE out. Fortunately we weren't nauseous yet, and could still think reasonably clearly; albeit acting on those decisions was becoming increasingly difficult. Our muscles were still doing ok, and the heart and lungs were responding properly, but our heads were losing motor control. We figured we could keep pushing and get to the summit, but even from the present location the trip back to the hut seemed almost impossible. We decided that we've had enough of Cotopaxi for one day. Our packs came off. We swallowed 3 aspirins each, forced some food and water down our throats and cautiously headed back down. We knew the snow bridges would have weakened from the sun, so we had to slide across the narrow one on our butts while staring at the deep blue vastness below. Once we reached the snow field our main worry was to not set off an avalanche on the now sun-weakened slope as we retraced our steps down. The heads were still pounding as we got down to about 16,000 feet, but the coordination was beginning to return. By 1pm we were back at the hut, which was full of tourists that came up for the day and climbers that were going up that night. We joked that we can get a few hours of sleep and head back up. It felt like we had come back as heroes. That afternoon we hiked down to the parking lot and rode down to hotel Cuello de Luna while listening to some awesomely sweet tunes. The next day we came to Riobamba , the lowest elevation of our trip, to let our bodies recover and to get ready for our assault on Chimbo. |