| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2006-01-04 03:33:22 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Mt. Chimborazo is a 5 summit giant reaching into the sky higher than any other mountain in Ecuador, and due to its proximity to the equator, farther out from the center of the globe than any other mountain in the world. The lowest summit is the most technical, combining substantial rock and ice climbing. The highest--the Whymper, named after its first conqueror, is connected to the slightly lower Veintimilla summit (6,260 m) by a technical, serac laden trail. The Veintimilla was the one that Ian and I were shooting for; we figured that going for the second highest place in the country would be good enough.
Our recent 'failure' on Cotopaxi was probably largely responsible for our relative success on Chimbo. The altitude stress that we put ourselves through, followed by almost two days of relaxation at 8,000 ft had clearly paid off as we eventually cruised past the Cotopaxi summit elevation and continued to go above 20,000 ft with only a minor headache setting in towards the end. But I should start this story from the beginning... We left Riobamba early in the morning on December 31st after a sleepless night in one of the busier parts of town. The entire night was punctuated by car and store alarms going off if you even sneeze too close to them. The pickup driver took us to the lower Chimbo hut situated at 4,800 m (the same altitude as the Cotopaxi hut) just above the snow line. With the benefit of hindsight we dropped off all our non-mountaineering gear here and spared ourselves the mule-like trek up. The second hut is 200 m higher, and we reached it in 45 minutes shouldering pretty light packs, while somberly passing the numerous gravestones of mountaineers that gave their lives here. Chimbo loomed overhead. At the second hut we saw a Finnish team that had just returned from 6,000m. Their advice was to leave early if we wanted to get close to the top. Ian and I talked this over and decided that we'd go around 10pm. We dropped off our bags in one of the dorm rooms and went to the kitchen to fortify ourselves with as much fat, carbs, and protein as we could. Noodles with margarine and tuna did the trick, and we looked forward to 9 hours of sleep as we settled into our bags. Yet something didn't feel right. Our breathing, although normal on the way up, was being screwy as we tried to sleep. I took my pulse; it was lower than at the Cotopaxi hut (good sign right?), and we were only 200m higher now; how much of a difference could this possibly make? As it turned out it was substantial. Though we didn't notice anything while sitting and moving; as soon as wed lie down and try to get some shut-eye, we'd start suffocating. Time after time one of us would begin to drift off and then sit up gasping for air. The first time was the scariest; I had zipped my bag all the way up with just my nose sticking out, and two minutes later wanted to grasp my throat, but couldn't. The horror continued for the next few hours, but it wasn't so shocking anymore. I kept my bag unzipped, and as soon as I felt the lack of oxygen make me start to panic Id intentionally start breathing faster and deeper and everything would settle back down in a couple breaths. This was no way to get rested before a long night of hiking. We began (or rather continued) to doubt ourselves. This mountain is a monster, and what arrogance possessed us to think that we were up to the challenge? The whole breathing thing was screwing with our heads. After two hours of tossing and turning I pulled out the water, aspirin and diamox and shared it with Ian. The afternoon was drifting away as we saw the room grow darker and darker. Still no sleep to be had. I think Ian dozed off for a little while, and I was slightly entertained to hear his Stoke's breathing patterns that continued, but apparently weren't bad enough to wake him up. How I wished I could have slept. By about 7 or 8pm my own breathing began to resemble something normal and I started drifting off to sleep, but it was now time to get up and gear up. Downstairs we found out that there was a 3 person German team getting ready to go, and apparently there was a Japanese group going up with a guide a little later. This presence gave us a fair bit more confidence. The Germans looked like big serious experienced guys; by comparison Ian and I looked like a couple scruffy punks. As we were loading up our packs, filling our bellies and making sure that we had plenty of emergency gear the Germans took off. We followed them about a half hour later leaving at 10:40pm on New Years Eve. The terrain for the first hour from the hut was pretty flat as we neared the ridge. We had an easy trail to follow, and the snow felt crisp and solid under our feet. We downed water and popped aspirin like mad-men and had granola bars handy in our jacket pockets lest we decide that our packs are glued to our backs and can't be removed for any reason, 'paxi-style. We felt good and had plenty of time ahead of us. New years came and went as we exited what would become dangerous rock fall terrain in the morning. The wind picked up as we gained elevation approaching the ridge and el Castillo. We caught a faint glimpse of headlamps ahead of us, and sometime later saw lights behind us. It looked like everyone was on target. There was no way we would be able to catch the Germans, we thought; surely they had extended their half hour advantage into something much greater. Yet we continued, sometimes following the tracks, at others looking for the occasional wand, still at others just looking for the most direct route to where the black ridge connected with the starry sky. Around 1am we gained the ridge just above el Castillo, and immediately got blasted by surprisingly strong winds coming over it. To this point every mountain in Ecuador has been quite calm, but not Chimbo. We took a break to regain some of our energy and to see if this wind would present a problem should we have to stop for an extended period later on. Walking the ridge was quite difficult as we were hit from the side by the gusts. With every step we had to make sure that we had good ice axe plants to avoid being swept off and down the steep sides. We continued unroped, and accepted the fact that the wind would not ease up. Fortunately after another hour the ridge widened as we approached the glacier. The wind direction changed; it was now hitting us head-on, blowing small ice pellets down the mountain right at us. We spotted three lights ahead; they were surprisingly close and seemed to be facing us. To the best of our knowledge no one else was on the mountain, so it had to be the German trio. But why were they heading back so soon? And why were they scattered with one person a couple hundred yards ahead of the other two? Within ten minutes we met the first hiker and discovered that they were all cold; he didnt want to stand around long enough for us to offer some help and bolted off. Ten more minutes later we met the remaining two hikers. One of them was shaking, yet they seemed to have adequate gear on, and I dont think it was colder than the mid teens. We held them up, offering some hot water and food; I took my pack off to give them one of my spare top layers and to search for a hand warmer, but they politely refused and one guy took out some hand warmers to give to the other. I think this brief interlude calmed their nerves, and they seemed to be doing better by the time we parted company. We were now the leading party on the mountain and the Japanese were so far behind and out of contact that we may as well have been the only group on the mountain. The slog continued and the snow field silently transformed into a snow covered glacier. We came to our first crevasse; the way around it was pretty straight forward, but this was a sign that we needed to rope up. Unlike on Cotopaxi we decided to avoid the double rope set-up and just used one to spend less time motionless and exposed to the wind while tying knots. Ian tied in, and I coiled up the excess over my shoulders. Looking back, I think we should have had both ropes out as a precaution. We were much more deliberate this time about eating and drinking, but still as we got higher, we consumed less. Any excess motion required too much energy. For instance, neither one of us wanted to stop to put on face masks, even though they would have saved our skin; the best we managed was to get our hoods over the helmets to protect from the wind. Even though we were handling the altitude much better than on Cotopaxi, exhaustion was beginning to set in. The trail that we followed ended somewhere just shy of 6000m, and everything around us looked identical. The same 45 degree slope, the same blue LED-lit, wind-hardened snow, and no preferred way to go up. I kept looking east thinking that the sky would start lightening up soon, but it was only 3am, dawn was still a long way off. We looked around; I switched over to my halogen to be able to spot the crevasses better and continued plowing uphill. We were walking on about two feet of snow, and I consistently felt my axe smash into the hard ice below. Then at one point the axe just fell through. Another crevasse, and who knows how big it is; there were no obvious signs in the snow pattern. I probed around and then heaved some of the snow to the side. It turned out to be a little one, just barely large enough for a foot to go through, but nothing more. We stepped over it and continued up. Around 4am my headlamp started flickering. What the devil?! I thought. This monster had 6 batteries in a pouch next to my skin and it was dying after an hour of bright bulb use! I guess there is a reason that the SpaceShot 2 was discontinued and REI had it on a big sale. I was cursing up a storm swearing at the batteries and the electronics; a dead headlamp on a moonless night on a glacier at high altitude is not what I needed, but at least it was failing gracefully; the light would flicker and slowly grow dimmer, but not die right away. I figured I could continue with the LEDs for the rest of the night, but then they started flickering too! I guess the batteries have had it. I stopped to pull out my spare lamp and strapped it to my helmet; unfortunately I think this delay made Ian frustrated and cold. I had put on an extra fleece after the German encounter, but I am not sure if he had enough layers, and by this point neither one of us wanted to strip down to layer up. Little crevasses came one after the other, but we just stepped over them, and I am sure there were some that we didnt find with the axes and simply walked over not even realizing that they were there. A couple bigger ones came up, but there were either obvious snow bridges or wands that indicated safe crossing points. Overall the terrain was not very technical, just physically exhausting. Our muscles were fatiguing, and the wind was wearing down our will to keep on facing it and continue up. On our left the sky began to show a very weak glow, and with it we could see the clouds that were now far below us. Above we could more clearly see the outline of the ridge that was our goal. If we were to reach it, we would be at the Veintimilla summit. If you ask Ian this ridge and the ice boulders just below it were my pipe dream. Yet we kept on going, much slower now, but still making progress. Every 5 steps Id stop and put my knees in the snow for a break this was easy to do on a 45 degree slope. Ian later told me that by this point he was in a trance where he could only see the snow directly at his feet and the bright yellow rope leading the way. Hed walk up and see the slack accumulate; then hed stop and wait. Once the rope got moving again hed take a few more steps. At times Id give a tug on the rope as I walked, at other times wed build up a couple feet of slack, but at this point we didnt care much anymore. I had my eyes set on the formation above that didnt seem to get any closer, and he had his eyes set on the rope that was the only link between us. Another hour went by, and the ridge had actually gotten closer. Some of the ice blocks were now beside us and not just above us. The sun was fully out by this point, and I no longer had to worry about my batteries. We were still in the shadow of the summit and could see the beautiful outline of the mountain below. The huts and the road were visible as distant pin points and a piece of winding string. Ian came up next to me and we took a break. The GPS read 20,155 feet and we had substantially cleared the summit of Cotopaxi. The Veintimilla was another couple hundred feet ahead of us, but it was now 7:30 am. The sun was chewing into the mountain on the other side, and soon it would work its way over to us. We were exhausted, windburned and beginning to feel the first signs of altitude. This was high enough, and now our goal was to get down safely. Ian led the way as I tried to avoid sliding down the mountain or stepping on the rope with my crampons. The footing on the way down was much less certain, and we were moving much quicker and with much less control. Numerous times one of us (usually me) would trip and fall and end up having to do a quick arrest with the axe. My harness had a lot of slings hanging from it that werent tied up neatly enough, and every once in a while I would catch some of them with my back points and trip, getting a face-full of snow. After leaving most of the crevasses behind us, we finally reached firmer trail the turnaround point of the few crews before us. Here the walking became a lot easier, and the ridge-walk down was almost trivial with the hut as our goal clearly in sight. El Castillo was a huge rock formation just ahead of us, but we left the ridge before reaching it. We bore to the left and entered the most dangerous part of the return trip. The rocks frozen into the snow above us were getting loosened by the sun, and rock fall was a real danger. By this point I was tripping every couple minutes, sometimes just sitting down on the snow and spending a few minutes not moving; exhaustion was beginning to take over everything in my body. Ian and I switched places; I think it was a kind act on his part to keep me on an 8mm bright yellow leash, but even then both of us were still having a tough time of it. We got off the route that we followed on the way up in favor of a more direct one. Unfortunately the snow ended and we were at the top of steep loose rocks. Mixed down climbing with non-technical tools anyone? We found the least sketchy way to get down and went for it. The descent wasnt vertical and there was a decent run-out at the bottom, but we had a ~50 foot section of 60 degree loose rock and snow to get through. I down climbed knocking off a few pebbles and dislodging some ice while working my crampon points and axe into rock cracks and snow. The rope, as we were tied, wasnt long enough for me to reach the bottom. I stopped in the middle at what looked like a reasonably secure position out of the way of any debris that Ian might knock off on his way down, and waited for him to reach me. One more pitch and we were off the rock and on normal slushy snow once again. We hurried away from the rocks and in another hour reached the hut. It was mid-morning and the caretaker welcomed us with some tea and kind words. I asked him about the Germans and the Japanese. He said that they all were asleep upstairs. The Japanese group left the hut very late, and didnt even get to the ridge. By this point I was exhausted, hungry, in pain, itchy and smelly, and didnt know which of these things I wanted to address first. Ian had a more straightforward approach. He dumped all his gear in a pile outside the hut and went straight to his sleeping bag. Somehow despite wanting to do the same, I just couldnt bring myself up to it. I was worried that the magnitude of what we had accomplished would somehow be lost if I just went to sleep right away. So I roamed around the empty hut, packed up my climbing gear, drank 4 cups of hot chocolate, called my parents on the satellite phone to let them know that I was alive, and then decided to have some fun outside. I grabbed a sleeping pad and stretched it out on the snow, stripped down as far as common decency would allow and laid down under the scorching sun with my arms on the snow. One side of me was burning, the other was freezing, and the mountain was staring down at me as my mind began to drift off. I couldnt think of a better ending. |