Field Trip: Cotopaxi, June 2013
Latest draft, April 2016
“No, no,” Pete said to Segundo in Spanish. “I’ve known this
man for eighteen years. He’s one
tough bastard. It’s not fitness;
it’s the altitude.”
I was on my knees, leaning on my ice-ax. Sleet, wind, and freezing rain pounded
down on us. I could make out the shadows of the two men in my headlamp. It must have been about 4 AM, with the
light just coming up on the glacier, but I hadn’t had the energy to
pull back the cuff of my glove to check my watch for the entire
three-plus hours we’d been slowly marching uphill.
“Solo faltamos trescientos metros,” Segundo said to Pete.
One tough bastard himself, our guide Segundo said we were only 300 meters from the summit. Another hour, he said. On the list of the many bad-asses I’ve
met in my life, Segundo is at the top of the list. He spoke in meters while I was on my knees, trying to convert meters to feet in my head. I’m not so quick with numbers, even in the best of circumstances. What I now know is that we were resting
there, near the top of a glacier, on the side of Ecuador’s second highest peak
and the world’s tallest active volcano, Cotopaxi, at about 18,300 feet. Since I don’t have any real
mountaineering ambitions, it is likely the highest I will ever go on foot.
I also now know that I was experiencing altitude sickness,
or Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), and possibly even hypoxia. Whatever it’s called, my body was not
cooperating with my brain due to a lack of oxygen. While
from the outside the symptoms look like intoxication — and actually felt like
it — my brain was hyper-aware.
Though I was babbling incoherently, I remember perfectly the details
from the trek, the dialogue between Segundo and Pete in that moment — and,
ultimately, the decision to turn back.
Pete and I laughed later about the “eighteen years” line because it was
so random and specific at the same time — and short a couple years.
My most vivid memory on the glacier was setting tiny goals:
ten steps, just ten steps, then rest.
Then I’d count out five or six crunchy footfalls in the narrow beam of my
headlamp before I’d drop to my knees and rest on my ice-axe again. I have tested myself in many kinds of
endurance events, and this one blew them all away. I’d sooner run another marathon, barefoot and blindfolded,
than take another ten steps at 18,000 feet.
I might have even enjoyed the sensation, had it not been for
Thor’s Hammer knocking incessantly on the inside of my skull, a sensation I now
think was probably my pulse. This
was my biggest crime (and I should have known better): dehydration. I just could not get enough water into
my system. I should have had Advil
and coca leaves — the latter of which is renowned among indigenous people of
the Andes and climbers alike for its ability to counteract the symptoms of
AMS. By the time we reached the
high camp where I’d attempt to sleep, my head was pounding a thousand times
worse than the worst hangover I’d ever experienced.
So Pete and Segundo made the call to retreat, and I am
forever thankful for that decision.
I remember well the feeling of disappointment being eclipsed by a
massive sense of relief. The
weather was nasty, as it can often be at 18,000 feet. Later, when we stepped off the glacier, we were coated in a
layer of ice so that, when I bent my arm, all these little pieces of ice would
shatter off. There was little to
no chance we’d have a clear view from Cotopaxi’s famous cone summit, which I’m
sure made the decision to turn back a little easier.
Cotopaxi is the iconic symbol of the glaciated Andean
volcano: it rises to 19,347 feet above sea level, a mind-bogglingly massive
and, at a distance, perfectly symmetrical cone. And distances can be deceiving. Often referred to by indigenous locals as the “Shy Lady”
because it’s so often shrouded in clouds, Cotopaxi literally means “shining
pile” in Kichwa, which is still widely spoken in the Andes. Its sprawling flanks and surrounding páramo
form the Cotopaxi National Refuge, and that covers more than 33 thousand hectares
— or upwards of 90,000 acres! At
base camp, we were able to glimpse the summit through clouds a couple of times,
and I remember thinking, all I have to do
is walk there. I know from
running track that, in my day, I could have covered 300 meters, or just
under1K, in 40 seconds or so. Yet
standing at 18,300 feet of elevation, just 1K below the summit, I might as well
have been looking up at the moon.
The difference, of course is elevation. And high elevation climbing is all
about acclimatization. Ideally,
you spend at least a couple of weeks taking as many high elevation forays as
possible. Just two weeks earlier, however,
I’d been training by surfing and running on the beach in Canoa, a little
fishing village on the Manabí coast.
After nine months living and cycling and hiking from 8,400 feet and
higher, we’d moved to the coast, to sea-level — and thus, I’d forfeited all of
the elevation conditioning I had gained in the previous months. In terms of elevation acclimatization,
it only takes a week to lose what it takes months to gain. This would prove to be a big part of my
elevation problem, or at least that’s my theory. It’s said that some people, regardless of fitness, just
can’t do high elevations. It’s
possible that I’m in that boat as well.
By the time we got back to Andes from the coast, I’d only have two weeks
to re-acclimate and do a few high elevation hikes – none of which was in excess
of 15,000 feet, which is lower than base-camp from which we departed for the
summit. So I may have been doomed
from the start.
Cotopaxi is usually attempted from the north side, but my
friend Pete had connections with the owner of the less popular Refugio Cara Sur
(south face refuge, or retreat). Don Eduardo, whose land abuts the National Park had, picked
us up in Quito in the early morning.
Driving his LP gas modified Toyota Land Cruiser, he stopped once for
groceries, and then drove us up the rutted out road to the Refugio, which sits
at just under 13,000 feet. There we
ate a lunch of chicken soup, bread and tea, and then got outfitted with our
climbing gear: hard plastic boots, crampons, gaiters, heavy shells, helmets,
harnesses, and the indispensable ice-axes. Shortly thereafter, we met Segundo and promptly set off hiking
into the páramo, which soon gave way to the iron-streaked lava-scree moonscape
of the volcano where high camp was situated, just below the edge of the
ice. So we wound up and up from
Quito to high camp, all in the same afternoon.
Before we left the high camp at a little after midnight,
Segundo had asked if we had any extra batteries. Neither Pete nor I had any extras… just one small headlamp
apiece. Oh well, he’d said, like
it was nothing. Segundo had
upwards of 35 summits under his belt on the south face; he knew it like his own
backyard. Well, it was his own back yard. He’d grown up in Latacunga below, on
the shoulder of Cotopaxi. While
preparing soup at base-camp he spoke Kichwa to another guide who was leading a
solo climber from Germany. I
assume they were discussing logistics.
Whatever the discussion, he’d led us, he and Pete and I, roped together,
winding through crevasses, dropping hundreds of feet in some cases, literally
in the dark.
The logic behind the midnight start-time for the summit hike
is the stability of the ice. When
the day warms, the ice becomes more dangerous. The typical game plan then is to summit around day-break,
take a couple pictures, slap some high-fives all around, and descend before the
daylight temperatures warm up the ice pack.
We turned back just as dawn was creeping into the valley
below. As we descended, I noticed
the mine-field of crevasses we’d navigated. “Holy shit,” I said aloud to myself several times. There was one thin spot, especially,
where Segundo had us anchor him with ropes and ice-axes as he crossed a narrow
ice bridge. They put me in the
middle, incidentally, because I was the heaviest by far, and if I went down a
crevasse — the thinking goes — there’s an anchor on either side of me. If I were first or last and went into
the abyss, conversely, there was the fear that I’d drag my two fellow
mountaineers down with me.
Ironically, a big part of the timing for our hike was the
fact that June is one of, if not the best times of the year to attempt the
summit. The weather is the most
peaceful, and the ice is the most stable.
While we were down on the beach, however, just a few weeks before our
anticipated climb, I read in a national newspaper that a Canadian woman was
killed by a massive falling chunk of ice while attempting the summit on the
north face. She was in her early
20s and fit, proving that the mountain doesn’t care who you are – a sobering
reminder of the consequences of high altitude adventures.
By the time I was back in Otavalo, in the Andes, we had lived
in Ecuador for ten months, and despite having to start all over elevation-wise,
I was feeling pretty comfortable getting around. Fuya Fuya Volcano was my local “hill”, my main go-to hike,
and it was becoming familiar with several training hikes. After looking at it for so long and
living just under it — and even circumnavigating it — I’d finally hiked
Imbabura Volcano with Pete at just over 15,000 feet. Still, I wonder how I would have done without living for a
month at sea-level.
Pete shook me awake, and the hammers started in my head
again.
“We have to get down.
Now. The longer you stay up
here, the worse it gets.” He was
right. I’d lost two nights of
sleep, one due to trip anxiety and 0-dark-thirty travel, and one at the high
camp where we were to “nap” from dusk to midnight. The combination of cold (I had a short, badly insulated
sleeping bag) and hurricane-force wind whipping the tarps of the camp, as well
as chronic dehydration, I didn’t sleep for a nano-second. I’d just drifted off for the first time
in 48 hours, and the delicious sensation was seductive.
I crankily roused myself, stuffed my feet into cold-hard
mountaineering boots, slid on my outer layers, gathered my gear, and followed
Pete down the volcanic moonscape trail back towards the paramo and the
Refugio. With each step we
descended, I felt the pressure on my temples let up, and when we got back to
Eduardo’s place, I happily gobbled Ibuprofin like skittles and drank a couple
pints of water. On the walk down,
I began to re-occupy my own head.
Squat purple and yellow wildflowers dotted the trail, and couple of
rainbows even bloomed over the quebradas below
us. What an unearthly and utterly
beautiful place.
By the time Don Eduardo was driving us back down toward
Quito, I was back to normal and grateful, first for being alive and second for
the chance to walk on a glacier.
Cotopaxi and its sister volcanoes Illiniza and Antisana
supply Quito’s 1.6 million people with potable water. But the glaciers are melting. Quickly. Pete’s
lived in Ecuador for ten years, and he’s seen the white line receding up the
mountain. Some scientists give the
dozen or so glaciated Andean volcanoes another ten years before the ice runs
out completely. t’s a sad state, and one that Americans are responsible for
at least as much as Ecuadorians, whose carbon footprints are generally a lot
smaller. Yet it’s Ecuador and the
people of the capital who will have to struggle with some sort of replacement
long-term — and neither gringos nor South Americans, at least in my personal
experience, are good at planning for the long term. Maybe if Ecuador figures it out, they can give California
some pointers.
Back in Vermont, water is still plentiful, and I still take
hikes. But few if any of my mountain adventures around here require climbing harnesses and ice-axes. Camel’s Hump, my neighborhood go-to
hike, always reminds me of a miniature Cotopaxi. Its summit takes me just over 4,000 feet which is a perfectly fine elevation for me. Resting Lion, as the indigenous people
named it, is also conical in shape, though formed by colliding continental
plates rather than uplift. It’s
also much older, having been worn down by the last glaciers that roamed freely
over North America, and finally retreated into the arctic. Unless socked in with clouds, I see it
loom over the valley on my evening commute home from work. And while I only hike it a few times a
year, I often think, all I have to do is
walk there.
Original Cotopaxi post with pictures:
http://fargobrook.blogspot.com/2013/06/field-trip-cotopaxi.html
