|
|
Time:
1/6 to 1/17.
The country:
Ecuador. This is the smallest South America country with the earth's equator running across it. The Andes mountain range divided it into 3 geographic sections from west to east: the coastal area, the highland and the Amazon jungles. The capital is Quito, the second highest capital in South America, elevation around 9000ft. Official language is Spanish. Very few people speak English there.
Mountains climbed:
Pasochoa (4200m)
Ilinizas Norte (5126m/16817ft)
Cotopaxi (5897m/19347ft): The 2nd highest mountain in Ecuador. Considered by many to be the most beautifully volcano in the country. A national symbol.
Cayambe (5789m/18993ft): The 3rd highest mountain in the country. The equator runs right through this mountain. This is the highest and coldest place on the equator.
Team members:
John: an American lives in Miami. At 58, he's the oldest member of the team. He has climbed the tallest mountains in South America and Africa. He also climbed Mt Blanc in Europe, Shasta, Rainier and numerous peaks in Colorado. He lived in Ecuador for many years as a member of the Peace Corp during the 70's.
Jerry: John's neighbor. Also has climbed quite a few mountains in Europe, northwest and Colorado. He looks and talks like the actor Jack Nicolson (As good as it gets).
Jim: an economist working for the US government, currently lives in DC. He spent part of his childhood in Spain and solo climbed many mountains in Europe about twenty years ago, including Mt Blanc and Matterhorn. He also lived and climbed in Colorado for quite some time.
Robert: a youth hostel manager from Bath, England. An avid soccer player, skier and cycler, he also climbs mountains in England.
Then there're Joe, Glenn and me, proud members of Wild CA, although with significantly less experience than some other folks in the team.
Guides:
The program was provided by a local guide company called Compania de Guias de Montana (Company of the Mountain Guides). From what I can tell, they are the best Ecuadorian guiding company with highly qualified guides and the highest guide:client ratio. For the toughest mountain, they sent 4 guides for our 7 clients:
Marco: the lead guide. 43 years old. Have been climbing extensively in South America and Nepal. Not very tall or big but with great speed and stamina on the mountains. He's also very good at arranging logistics and dealing with people. He's the boss for the whole trip. Speaks fluent English and German.
S. Edicion (Edison #1 as we like to call him): A quiet person with long grey hair and a leather hat of the native highland people. He has the physique and attitude of a rock climber/country singer type. Speaks very little English.
O. Edicion (Edison #2, not related to #1, just the same last name): a freelancer guide who own his own company. Only with us for one climb, an open and lovely fellow. Speaks perfect English.
Mauricio: A warm, easy going, helping and funny fella with absolutely no 'I am the guide' attitude.
Day 0: Joe, Glenn and I arrived at Quito around 9pm. Marco picked us up at the airport. We stayed at Embassy Hotel. We got a suite for 4 people with a big living room and full kitchen. Very spacious. We spreaded the gears all over the place.
Day 1.
3 of us toured the city of Quito. We walked through the new town with its budget hotel district for foreigners where we lived, the old town with beautiful colonial churches and went up some narrow stairs up the hill at the end of the old town with a very tall winged angle statue on top. The tour guide book says the stairs are dangerous because many robberies took places there but we went through without incidents.
Day 2.
The first day of the program. We climbed Pasochoa (4200m) not far away from Quito. Beginning was an easy hike on dirt road, then across some meadows and wet tall grasses. We had to walk close together when passing some aggressive looking bulls (yes bulls with horns, raised for bull fights, not regular milk and meat cows). The ground was covered with pitch black rich volcanic soil, which became super slippery with a little rain. We were surprised to see trees and lush wet-land type of vegetations at 13000 ft. As we getting closer to the top it became pretty steep about 40 degrees covered with grass and wet soil, but the very last section was nice firm volcanic lava rocks. The fog floated around the top making it hard to take a clear picture but everyone was excited to see a condor flew by. We went down the mountain after lunch. Everyone arrived at the van safely, although slippery trails contributed to some dirty pants. We drove back to Quito and spent the night there.
Day 3. We stopped at a hostel for lunch on the way to Ilinizas parking lot. From there we hiked more than two hours to get to the Ilinizas Hut at 4600 m. Carrying the big backpack, I used all my power to keep up with Marco. It's a small hut with about 20 bunk beds and a kitchen. Marco and other guides cooked up some delicious pasta with cheese sauce and mushroom. It tasted so good that I ate half of Jim's share (who lost appetite because of altitude) after finishing my own. While some people suffered from altitude effects like raging headaches and disturbing stomach, I didn't sleep at all simply because my 0F bag was way too hot for the hut (the inside temperature was 55F).
Day 4. We started climbing toward the summit of Ilinizas Norte (5126m) at 6am. The lower part was mostly steep sand and rock slopes. Near the top there were a couple of exposed rock sections where the guides setup some rope belays. The guidebook overstated the difficulty to 5.3 but most people felt it's no more than class 4. We reached the top in 2 hours. From there we can see our next destination Cotopaxi rising above the clouds, its perfect symmetrical snow cone glistering in the bright sunlight. We also admired the snow and ice on the sister peak Ilinizas Sur. We descended and drove to a bed&breakfast called Hosteria la Estacion, which is next to an old train station. It's very nicely decorated with lovely courtyard, fountains, and flowers. A delicious 5-course dinner was served.
Day 5.
After a leisurely breakfast with fresh bakery and juices (the inn keeper gave us a small lecture on the exotic fruits of Ecuador), people went to see the train's arrival at the station. People were riding on top of the train and vendors were busy selling corns and other stuff. Our van arrived at 10:30 and we drove to Cotopaxi National Park. From the parking lot it's another 45 minutes death march with Marco to the Cotopaxi Hut. It's a big hut with a separate sleeping floor. The guides cooked up another tasty chicken and rice dinner complete with soup and dessert. We went to bed at 8pm. I still couldn't fall asleep. When I went out for bathroom, I saw clear sky on top of head with bright stars but lightning flashed at the surrounding horizon, however no thunder was heard. Weird sight, I thought.
Day 6.
Got up at midnight, simple breakfast and we were on our way to Cotopaxi summit (5897 m) after 1 am. This was the first time we brought on the full gears: plastic boots, ice axe, crampons, harness, headlamp and gore-tex. After passing rocky switchbacks for an hour we reached the glacier. We put on crampons and roped up into 4 teams. Marco led a team with John and me. Edison #1 led Jim and Robert. Edison #2 led Joe and Glenn. Mauricio led Jerry. There were numerous crevasses along the way and some of them were pretty big. Most of them can be passed on snow bridges but we had to jump through a few. Those were adrenaline-pumping times. There was also a narrow ledge with a deep crevasse on one side and an ice wall on the other. It took me some effort to squeeze through that part, although on the way back I found it's much easier to pass. Marco started to do his death march right from the beginning and kept passing teams in front of us. John and I were soon exhausted. On top of that John's crampons didn't fit his boots well and fell off at least a dozen times and we had to wait for him to put them back on. Near the top there was a section of 50-degree ice gully where we have to front point up with some rope belay, and then a long section of steep and deep powder snow, which quickly drained whatever energy that was left in John and me. We had to let Edison #1's team pass us while John's fixing his crampons again. We struggled to the final flatter section, totally out of breath. I was so tired that I almost felt disoriented, the rope kept tangling with my boots and crampons. We collapsed to the ground when we reach the large flat top of the volcano. Marco wanted us to descend right away, so I hastily stood up and take a few surrounding shots and asked Marco to take a couple of summit photos for me. I also took a couple of shots into the round volcano crater. No sign of smoke coming out of it. John was still sitting there. I knew he would regret it for rest of his life if he didn't get any summit photo so I begged him to stand up quickly and took a picture of him with the crater with my camera just before Marco started to drag us down. I was leading the rope coming down. Front pointing down climbed the ice section, running through some hanging icicles that started to melt and fall along a cliff, jump crevasses... We reached the end of glacier, unroped and took off the crampons and heading to the hut on the red volcanic rock and gravels. It felt so long and tedious, in the blazing sun. I was mentally in sleeping mode when I finally got back to the hut. Took me a while to gather up the strength to stuff my sleeping bag and gears into the backpack and heading down to the parking lot.
On the way down I learned that only 5 of the 7 clients reached the summit: Jim and Robert with Edison #1, John and me with Marco, Glenn with Edison #2.
We drove to a resort town called Banos. This town is built right at the foot of an active volcano Tungrahua. There is a big plume of smoke coming out the top. The scene of this huge smoking mountain looming above the town and the valley struck everyone with awe when we drove toward it. Immediately after we settled down in a nice quiet bed&breakfast called Hospedaje Higueron, Marco called a meeting with everybody. He explained that our next destination Chimborazo (6310 m) might be out of our reach because of the very icy condition caused by lack of snow in the recent weeks. He also said only 4 of us had the physical condition to go up that mountain and he's not very confident on our skills on ice. The 4 people could try but as soon as he found it became too risky he would turn everyone back. As an alternative he offered ice climbing and glacier skill and rescue training on Cayambe, the 3rd highest peak in Ecuador and a very aesthetic peak with great glaciers. Both Jim and I always wanted to climb this one so we start to ask about the possibility of summiting it but Marco told us nobody was able to summit it in the recent month because of a huge crevasse near the top. At this point the two oldest members John and Jerry decided they had enough fun on the mountains and they didn't want to climb Chimborazo, nor were they interested in the training program. They would just leave the program and do some tours in the country themselves. After some soul searching during the dinner, the rest 5 people decided to go with Marco's training program on Cayambe.
Day 7.
This was a rest day in Banos. Knowing that we would not be doing hard climb anymore, we threw all the cautions to the wind and went wild to enjoy the day. We hiked down to a river canyon with Marco in the morning. Then Robert, Joe, Glenn and I hopped on mountain bikes and went on a 20km ride along a dusty bumpy dirt road on the cliff of a lush river gorge with multiple waterfalls. We reached a place called Rio Verde (Green River), which is the gateway to the Amazon jungles with its signature waterfall and hanging bridge. After a fantastic dinner back at the Higueron, we took a tour bus to a local high point where supposely we could see the glow from the volcano at a good night. We didn't see anything but I was feeling well enough to jump on top of the bus with bunch of young people on the way back. It was great riding on top, people drinking, smoking, singing, dancing, dodging branches and electrical lines...
Day 8.
We originally planned to reach the Cayambe Hut at noon and start the training in the afternoon but because of traffic jams and a flat tire we didn't get to the hut until sunset. While we were waiting for the tire to be repaired in the town of Cayambe, Marco brought us to a local diary factory to see how they make their specialty cheese and yogurt and we ate beef intestine from a street side BBQ next to the tire shop. In the hut we met a climbing team from American Alpine Institute. They plan to summit the next day and their American guide claimed the crevasse was passable by doing some traverse. Jim, Robert and I couldn't resist the temptation of summit while Joe and Glenn still prefer the training plan. Marco decided he would stay with Joe and Glenn to do the training while Edison #1 and Mauricio would accompany the other 3 of us to attempt the summit (5789 m).
Day 9.
The summit team woke up at midnight (another sleepless night in the hut for me) and we had to wait for all the other teams to take off before we started climbing after 1 am. After an hour on sand and rock we got to the glacier. The lower part of the glacier was covered with gray colored hard ice with countless small crevasses. We roped up here. Edison #1 led a rope with Jim and me. Mauricio led the rope with Robert. The gray ice was soon replaced with much steeper hard snow, which goes up at a sustaining 35 to 50 degree angle. While the other teams followed a more zigzag type of route, Edison #1 prefer a more direct straight way up. To my dismay I found out Edison #1 was just as a big egomaniac as Marco. We moved quite swiftly (with alpine standard anyway) and kept passing other teams in front of us. Jim held on tenaciously while I plead for slowdown, but since our guide was not good at English, my words were pretty much all but ignored. We were the first team reaching the crevasse just 60m from the summit. Edison started to search possible ways around the crevasse from the left side then the right. Shortly after other teams reached the same spot and their guides joined the search. It's a huge crevasse with the far side rising up as a snow wall with icicles and crumbling snow blocks. We could see there used to be snow bridges on both left and right but they all collapsed and this whole thing is currently a big unstable area that can collapse at any point at anytime. After more than half hour of attempt, the guides finally had to give up and we turned back. Only 60m from the top but I was happy. It's just such a beautiful mountain and great climb nonetheless. It was way pass 7am. We walked straightly down the steep slope (a little scary at the beginning but the worry eased after we started to trust our crampons). It's a much faster descent than the Cotopaxi but my legs were still pretty beaten up when we got back to the hut. We waited a while for Marco, Glenn and Joe to come back from their training. We also saw the AAI team back in the hut. It turned out they only reached Punta Jarrin, which is a much lower point than the crevasse we got to. I had no idea why they turned back so early because supposely they were the stronger, better equipped and better organized team. We started heading down from the hut and after wasting an hour waiting for the van at a wrong place because miscommunication, we were on the way back to Quito. Program ended.
Day 10.
Free day in Quito. Joe and Glenn went to buy some maps from a military institute and then visited the new Equator Monument. I struggled the whole morning to get my Ecuador visa registered then spent the afternoon in a nice museum.
Day 11.
Flew back to San Francisco.
|
|
发表于 2004-1-22 06:02:27
收藏
支持
反对
楼主
