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The climb up the glaciers to the summit of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador isn't highly technical. Technically, it is mountaineering, but how hard can it be if I could go to 20,600 feet the first time I used crampons and an ice axe? Actually, I had used them once on a sledding hill near my house, climbing almost 40 feet while people walked past me dragging their sleds, and telling their kids to stay away from me. In any case, here is my mountain hiking or mountaineering story.
First of all, it is much easier to climb a mountain when the guide drives you to 15,000 feet. Don't get me wrong. Hiking and climbing that last 5,600 feet was one of the most difficult things I've done in my life, but not for the skill required. The fact that the air was missing half of its oxygen is what had me quitting twenty or thirty times on the way up Mount Chimborazo. It just gets difficult to move up there.
The Graveyard
The headstones near the first refuge weren't for climbers without skill. The graveyard is a testament to the unpredictability of high places. Chimborazo is very high. It randomly drops large rocks on you, and has weather that changes by the minute. Even as we were hiking up the mountain to the second refuge, we could hear the rocks and pieces of ice falling above. El Refugio Edward Whymper is an unheated hut at 16,000 feet. It is named after the English climber who first made it to the summit of the mountain. After "mate de coca" a tea made of coca leaves, we went hiking for a short while. That was my acclimatization. Then, we ate. I slept for at least an hour before starting the ascent at eleven that night.
A Little About Mount Chimborazo
Chimborazo is in Ecuador, not far from the Equator. Due to the elevation in the center of the country, as well as the moderating effect of the Humboldt Current, which runs up along the west side of South America, the country has perfect weather. A little hot along the coast, maybe, but spring-like in Quito (the capital) , with daily highs in the sixties to low seventies year-round. Wonderful weather almost everywhere - until you get high enough. Chimborazo, at it's peak, is the furthest point from the center of the Earth. Because of the way the Earth bulges at the equator, it is even further out there than Everest. That makes it very cold.
Climbing Mount Chimborazo
My guide, Paco, didn't like the lightweight part of this mountain hiking adventure. He frowned when he saw my 17-ounce sleeping bag, which packed up smaller than a football. My 13-ounce frame less backpack didn't impress him either. In any case, although it did get below freezing in the hut, as he said it would, I stayed warm, as I said I would. No problems so far.
Paco, unfortunately, didn't speak a word of English, and I was just learning Spanish. Since our whole group consisted of him and me, we had some communication problems. I thought, for example, that the $11 fee for the hut was included in the $130 guide fee. He thought that I was a mountain climber. I think he was saying that he didn't like my papery rain suit I was using as a shell. He frowned at my homemade 1-ounce ski mask. When he saw me putting on my insulating vest, a 4-ounce piece of poly batting with a hole cut in it for my head...well, I pretended not to understand what he was saying.
I hadn't intended to go climb up Mount Chimborazo with such lightweight gear, but I came to Ecuador on a courier flight which allowed me only carry-on luggage. I had only 12 pounds in the pack to begin with, so by the time I put on all the clothes that night, the weight on my back was irrelevant. The weight of my body, however, wasn't. Paco had to coax me up that mountain.
Hiking On Glaciers
The glaciers start a short distance from the hut, and hiking soon became mountaineering. I put on crampons for the second time in my life (there was that sledding hill). During one of my many breaks ("Demasiado" - too many, which I pretended not to understand when Paco explained in Spanish), I noticed that my cheap thermometer had bottomed out at 5 degrees Fahrenheit. I wasn't cold, but I was exhausted, at least when I moved. When I sat still I felt like I could run right up that mountain.
We struggled (okay, I struggled) up Mount Chimborazo, hiking, climbing, jumping over crevasses, until I quit at 20,000 feet. Of course I had quit at 19,000 feet too. Quitting had become my routine. Lying had become Paco's, so he told me the summit was just fifty feet higher. Maybe I wanted to believe him, or maybe the lack of oxygen had scrambled my brain. I started up the ice again.
On Top Of Mount Chimborazo
We arrived at the summit at dawn. The sky was a stunning shade of blue that you never can see at lower elevations. Cotapaxi, a classic snow-covered volcano, was clearly visible 70 or 80 miles away. Dirtbag Joe, a nineteen-year-old kid from California with ten dollars in his pocket and borrowed equipment, was waiting for us with a smile. Handshakes all around, and it was time to get off the mountain. I was told that you don't want to be on Mount Chimborazo when she wakes up. She wakes up at nine a.m.
Paco kept looking at his watch and frowning. He got further and further ahead of me. I thought he was going to abandon me on the mountain. I finally caught up to him at the hut at nine a.m., and then I began to hear the rocks fall out of the ice above as the sun warmed it. Now I understood his concern with the time. We really did need to get down to the refuge by nine. A thousand feet lower and my mountain hiking adventure ended with a photograph that doesn't show my shaking knees.
Notes: The sleeping bag was a Western
Mountaineering Highlite, and the backpack was a GoLite Breeze.
I recommend both if you want to travel light. You can find them
at: Backcountry.com. The
rain suit, which weighs only 7 ounces per piece, and is waterproof
and breathable, is from Frogg Toggs, but Backcountry has more
durable rainwear that comes close on weight now.
For another mountain hiking story, read "Climbing Mount Shasta."
For more on Ecuador, visit The Ecuador Travel Site at http://www.EcuadorNow.com