Travel Destination: Ecuador - Climbing Mount Chimborazo
The climb up the glaciers to the summit of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador isn’t considered highly technical. Technically, it is mountaineering, but how hard could it be, considering that I went to 20,600 feet the first time I used crampons and an ice axe? Okay, I had used them once for practice, on a sledding hill near my house. I climbed almost forty feet while people walked by with their sleds, warning their kids to stay away from me.
Travel Destination: Ecuador - Climbing Mount Chimborazo: Driving Up Mount Chimborazo
It is easier to climb a mountain when the guide drives you to 15,000 feet. Don’t get me wrong. Climbing that last 5,600 feet was one of the most difficult things I’ve done, 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 Chimborazo. It just gets difficult to move up there.
Travel Destination: Ecuador - Climbing Mount Chimborazo: The Graveyard
The little monuments near the first refuge weren’t for climbers without skill. The graveyard is a testament to the unpredictability of all 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 to the second refuge, we could hear the rocks and pieces of ice falling somewhere above.
El Refugio Edward Whymper is a simple, unheated hut at 16,000 feet, named after the English climber who first made it to the summit of the mountain. Okay, it isn’t entirely unheated. There is a fireplace, and when somebody feels like carrying wood up to 5000 meters, the fire might raise the temperature in the hut by 3 degrees.
We had “mate de coca” a tea made of coca leaves, which are also known for another product made from them–one that is taken up the nose. Then we went hiking for a short while. That was my acclimatization. We ate, and I slept for at least an hour before starting the ascent at eleven that night.
Travel Destination: Ecuador - Climbing Mount Chimborazo: A Little About Mount Chimborazo