Cotopaxi

From Cotopaxi

Eve and I returned from Cotopaxi National Park Saturday afternoon. Our goal while in the park was to climb Cotopaxi Volcano (5897m), the second highest peak in Ecuador.

We left for Cotopaxi at around noon on Wednesday, April 29th. After walking down to the Occidental, we caught a bus to the Terminal Terrestre and, from there, another bus south towards the park entrance. Eve bought some chips and napped as we neared our destination.

The south entrance is nothing more than a collection of small buildings, a sign and a dusty dirt road leading east from the Panamerican Highway. We shouldered our packs and began to walk. We passed a shuttered store advertising climbing equipment for sale and rent. This only added to the desolate nature of where we found ourselves. Too this, dump trucks passing from a nearby gravel mine choked the air with a fine brown dust. We finally came to a café where I inquired about transport into the park. Apparently, this could be had at a tienda across the football field of the village. Instead of walking to the tienda, we walked back out to the highway. There we waited for a few minutes until a white pickup truck pulled up and the driver asked if we needed a ride to the refugio. Eve said we did. It had begun to rain as we loaded the bags into the truck and began the long and bumpy ride up to the parquadero.

We were both a little nervous about passing into the park. As we intended to climb Cotopaxi without a guide, we risked being turned away at the park entrance. Not that it is not allowed to climb independently, just that if you do so, then, for reasons of insurance, you cannot hire transportation into the park. As we approached the park entrance, a group of people were standing around near a truck. Our driver wisely pulled to a stop some distance from the group and got out with our $20 to pay the park entry fee. He returned to the truck after a few minutes, his breath smelling of alcohol. He informed us that the park employees were celebrating May Day early and that we had been granted entry into the park. So, we continued up the road, much relieved.

When we got to the main road up to the refugio, we soon fell in behind a taxi. The taxi was having sime difficulty negotiating the road, as it was dirt, steep and in mediocre condition. Eventually, the taxi could not make it any further and so the passengers got out to push. As this was quite obviously getting them nowhere, our driver got out and offered the passengers a ride, promising that at the parking lot, the thick fog that had enveloped us would be gone, or at least would all blow away in the next ten minutes, revealing the volcano. With Eve translating, two of the four passengers hopped into the bed of the pickup.

We arrived at the parquadero just after four in the afternoon. The two Poles from the taxi hopped out and began walking in the fog, uphill and ostensibly towards the refugio. We redistributed the climbing gear we had hidden in the green duffel bag. Looking around we could see, despite the fog, that we had already largely left the world of the living as the vegetation was extremely sparse and there was no sign of animal life anywhere. We shouldered our packs once again and headed up a wide trail in soft, volcanic sand. After thirty to forty minutes of toil, we finally arrived at the yellow-roofed refugio, which appeared all at once out of the fog.

In the refugio, we asked about possible places to camp. We were directed up a path to the west of the refugio, where indeed we found a half dozen tent sites consisting of rock circles surrounding level platforms of pumice and sand. We chose the largest one and began to set up camp at 4868 m (15,971 feet).

I made dinner and soon thereafter Eve and I snuggled into our double sleeping bag, that Eve would soon baptize the empanada. Just before finally falling asleep, I peeked out of the tent. The fog had lifted and high above the clouds, the summit of Cotopaxi greeted us for the first time from far above in the fading light.

The following day dawned with slightly better weather. From our camp we had impressive views of essentially all the major peaks to the north: Los Ilinizas, El Corazon, Ruminahui, Pichincha, Pasochoa, Cotocachi, Sincholagua, Cayambe and, most impressive of all, Antisana glistening blinding white in the rising sun. The barometer was on the rise (from 559 millibars up to 569 millibars) so we decided to do some training, meaning teaching Eve how to build snow anchors and practicing ascending our rope with prussiks. After breakfast, we lounged in the tent for most of the morning as it rained, hailed, and snowed intermittently. Finally, in the afternoon, things were looking good enough to warrant a look about. We packed the bag and headed up to the snow.

On the way up, we passed some Ecuadorian high-school students who had come to Cotopaxi with their class. Four boys had stripped to their underwear and were standing in the snow, posing for photos in front of their classmates and teacher, who incidentally didn’t seem to mind at all. Then the boys pulled down their underwear, covering their genitals with their hands. This was cause for even more laughter and photos. Needless to say, these boys were not shy around their peers.

After this spectacle, Eve and I continued up to the snow, eventually choosing a spot to do some anchor building. After showing Eve how to place a “deadman” anchor, she built her own, despite her extreme discomfort owing to the cold and snow. Her deadman completed, we walked back in the fog down to our tent.

Happy to be back warm in her empanada, I made Eve hot tea and dinner. We warmed together in the sleeping bad and drifted off to sleep.

I awoke before daylight with a feeling of dread. I could hear the wind blowing outside, but our tent fly was making no noise of any kind. For an instant, I feared we had been buried under the night’s snowfall, but the tent walls were not sagging and, peering out under the fly, I could see that only a dusting of snow had fallen during the night. I reached out and touched the fly. It was cold and rigid. Our tent was covered in a layer of ice. Tapping the fly lightly sent shards of ice tinkling down the side of the tent to the ground. Relieved, I soon found sleep again.

The next morning was May Day, and so we expected a large number of tourists. It was also slated to by our rest day, as we were to climb that night. The weather had continued to improve, but we learned that the icing the night before had been rain on the mountain. This can be devastating to a climb, as rain weakens snow, making it prone to avalanches and increasing the risk of crevasse fall. The summit was out and when the sun did peak through the clouds, our tent quickly grew uncomfortably hot.

Wanting to hike before the crowds rolled in, we soon set out up the ridge to the snow field. After a bit of a scramble across loose gravel, we made it up to the glacier. The sounds of the glacier creaking, groaning and echoing with the dripping with water was unnerving to Eve.We took a GPS reading, verifying that Eve was indeed above 5000m for the first time. We snapped a few photos, before heading back down to the tent for lunch, which was to be Eve’s last pre-climb meal.

On the way back down, I picked up a discarded rice sack, probably left by someone using it as a sled. Both Eve and I had been dismayed by the amount of garbage everywhere, consisting mainly of plastic bottles and food wrappers. Soon Eve and I had each collected a large bag of trash from around the campsites and along the trail. It was distressing to find so much garbage, much of which had been intentionally placed under rocks, littering a national park and place of such otherwise breathtaking beauty. We hauled our bags over to the refugio and asked to dispose of them. The caretaker thanked us and lamented the fact that touristas nacionales (i.e. Ecuadorians) were responsible for so much of the littering. They simply do not have the same environmental ethic as park employees or foreign tourists come to see Cotopaxi.

After lunch and a short rest back in the tent, we headed over to the refugio once again, this time to wait for our climbing partner Fabian to arrive from Ambato. Fabian was a friend of our neighbor Joe in Chicago who first put Fabian and I in contact with one another. After several hours of waiting, Fabian had not shown up and Eve and I began to doubt seriously whether he would. As time wore on, I became increasingly glad to have rented a rope and a could pickets along with Eve’s climbing gear. While waiting, Eve had struck up a conversation with the other climbing teams in the refugio. Three were guided while the other group, like us, was independent. All offered that we climb with them and an American named Jannah even lent us her cell phone to use as an alarm clock. Relieved not to be entirely on our own, we headed back to the tent for dinner (for me, at least) and a nap before the climb. Our packs packed, we wrapped up in our sleeping bags against the deep chill of night.

Due no doubt to the excitation and anticipation of the climb, however, we slept very little. At three minutes to midnight, we began getting dressed. At midnight, our alarm went off. Getting ready and repacking our bags for the climb, about twenty minutes passed before we were ready and left for the refugio. There, we found the other climbers eating breakfast and organizing their own gear. Eve and I sorted out our rope while waiting in the light of half a dozen headlamps for the others to be ready.

At 1:15AM we set out in light fog. The pace was slow, which allowed me to warm up, and soon we arrived at the snow. There we put on our crampons and some teams roped up.

The snow had a layer of wind slab about four inches thick covering a single wet layer of unconsolidated summer snow at least three feet deep. Unfortunately, the previous night’s rain had not yet dried nor frozen. Given the low angle of the slope and the thickness of the wet layer, we figured that an avalanche was only likely in the afternoon, but that if there was an avalanche, it would be big. Weighing these factors, we decided to keep climbing but to turn around at first light, so as to be off this particular slope before midday. Hopefully, the snow would solidify as we climbed higher and the night advanced.

While studying the snowpack, we fell in behind a guided group climbing at a painfully slow pace. Cold quickly began to overtake us, as the wind picked up and we were no longer moving quickly enough to stay warm.

Finally, we made it to the glacier. Great walls of blue ice dangling with icicles surrounded us on all sides and the shadows cast by our headlamps gave the night a demonic feel. Roping up, Eve and I continued past ice cliffs twenty feet high and around gaping crevasses bridged by drifted snow. We continued climbing hour by hour, but advancing much too slowly, I realized, to have a realistic shot at the summit by sunrise. The pace became maddeningly slow, but there was nothing to do, as we could not pass the team in front of us unless they stopped to rest.

Eventually, we were able to pull ahead, leaving the lower glacier and climbing onto a broad ridge. By this time the batteries in my headlamp, charged the night before our departure, began to give out and so the beam of my headlamp began to slicker annoyingly. Also, Eve, frightened, exhausted and cold, would stop suddenly, if only for a moment, to catch her breath. This would cause me to jerk the rope, throwing us both of balance. As my headlamp continued to flicker, Eve’s gave up completely. Bravely, and lit only by the lamps of those climbing behind her, she continued on in the dark. A light fog had settled around us, limiting our visibility and the monotony of the trail made it difficult to gauge our progress. Still, every hour we would stop to rest and our altimeter showed we were slowly nearing our goal with each step.

Dawn broke with us 300 meters below the summit. Two teams descending from above reported that the snow on the upper mountain was in bad shape with verglas and avalanche danger ever present. Because of this, they had been forced to turn back. Relief washed over Eve’s face, as we decided to turn around.

We stayed for a moment at 5560 m (18,241 feet) as the day grew brighter and the fog lifted. We were high above the clouds, standing in the sun on a wide expanse of perfect white rolling hills of snow, ice cliffs and crevasses glistening blue. The summit ridge loomed invitingly above us. Finally, content to have made it this far and committed to our planed turn around time, we prepared to leave. I ran up the ridge to 5580 m (18,308 feet) to have a look, one last time at the trail to the top, then returned down to Eve. I was bothered to rely on the judgment of others that the climb was not possible, but happy to be where I was with Eve. We took some pictures before returning down the mountain.

The hike down was more beautiful than words can describe. Huge masses of ice tumbled down the slopes to our right in a great ice fall. Our trail led us back over mostly stable terrain. The few crevasses we crossed yawned menacingly as we traversed them on frozen bridges of snow-covered ice. We left the glacier and continued down the slope of concern regarding avalanches. We found the snow pack much more stable after the cold night, to our relief.

We unroped and stowed our crampons before continuing back to the refugio. There, we rested a moment, discussing the climb, before heading over to the tent. After dropping off our packs, I went back to the refugio to use the bathroom, and when I returned to the tent, I found Eve fast asleep on her pad. She awoke momentarily to wrap herself in my sleeping bag before falling instantly back asleep.

After perhaps twenty minutes, I awoke Eve. She complained that her boots had hurt her foot, so I took a look at it. Her nail of her big toe was bruised and black. I told her I figured she would lose it in the next few days, as I gave her some ibuprofen for the pain. We began packing up our camp and soon were ready to heft our packs for the hike back to the parquadero. We said good-bye to the caretakers at the refugio and soon were back in the parquadero where we caught a ride to the Panamerican and from there a bus back to Quito.

To see a slide show of photos from our climb on Cotopaxi, check out my Picasa Web Album.