Quito, Ecuador
I'm not sure whose idea it was. I know it wasn't mine. Climb Mt. Cotopaxi, all 19,700 ft of it. I don't know what made me think that I should be climbing the highest active volcano in the world, when I think the highest actual mountain that I had ever climbed previously was probably Mt. Si (a smallish mountain near my house) or something similar. But the weekend before we climbed Guaguapinchicha, which is about 15,000ft. So, I thought, hey only 4 or 5,000 more feet, no problem. Wrong. I think that it was the hardest thing that I have ever attempted. Even though we started at 1:00am, I still felt like I was in pretty good shape after climbing up the first part of loose pumasy hillside. Even after scrambling and hopping over and around deep cracks in the ice in the crevasse section, I felt fine, though my headlamp had gone out about thirty seconds after we had started, I was the last person on our three man rope and I couldn't see five feet in front of me.
It was when we were about half-way, around dawn, when I was able to look up and see how far we had to go, that I realized how exhausted I was. It seemed like we had been hiking for an eternity, but hadn't gone anywhere. But we just kept going, digging our crampons into the steep icy hillside, the thin air scraping our lungs, the fresh corn-like snow blowing in our faces. Finally at about 6:30 in the morning, our guide pointed up and said 'look almost there'. Though my gaze went up, my face dropped. We still had probably another 600 or so vertical feet to climb, and it looked to be the hardest, steepest section yet. I'm still not sure what kept me going during the final 2 or 3 hours. In the last section there was, out of the original nine of us, my friends, and classmates, Patrick and David, roped up to their guide, and this Australian guy that came with us, Erik, and myself roped up to our guide. Like I said, I was on the end of the rope, so although there was a beautiful sunrise, and an outstanding view of the other distant volcanos, all I looked at was the rope in front of me. When it moved, I moved. After about an hour, we had only made it about half way up, and as I sat, stuffing a frozen yet life-giving snickers bar into my mouth, I heard my guide call his boss on the radio and ask nonchalantly, 'hey, we're a bit late, should we finish, or come back down' I stared at him in disbelief, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! We had already come so far. Turning back down, was not an option to me. I tried to voice my opinion, but didn't have the energy. Luckily, I didn't have to. The boss gave him the go-ahead to summit.
Finally, we crawled, scraped, and staggered our way up the last section,and with our emanciated breath freezing in front of our faces we finally reached the top. It was a full five minutes, when I saw Patrick and David inching their way up to the summit, before I could feel triumphant. We sat on the top for about a half hour, celebrating with candy, and taking pictures, when the full effects of exhaustion, dehydration, and altitude sickness finally hit me, and I was more than ready to go back down. The only thing to sour our accomplishment, was that none of the girls had made it up with us, but as we carefully made our way down the last section, we ran into Melanie and Erin, still plugging along, tired but determined. Now our triumph was complete. Only Alicia, who was 'feeling pukey' and Sunshine who had contact issues, couldn't make it, but I'm confident that they would have on another day. Though I felt an incredible sense of accomplishment, I was now dead tired. I could barely put one foot in front of another to make it back down the mountain. On the way we picked up Rolando, David's host brother, who had been roped to Erin and Melanie, but had looked at the last section and respectfully declined.
Coming back down, I felt like I was in a daze, struggling even to maintain consciousness. I became a little bit more awake, making our way back through the crevasse section, and actually seeing for the first time what we had been jumping over in the dark. Deep, dark cracks, that looked bottomless and unforgiving. We were making our way down a part that at first had a steep section that we had to climb down backwards, using only the front two prongs of our crampons, and our ice picks to hold our weight, and then make our way over a small ice bridge that crossed a formidable crevasse. It shouldn't have had been a big deal. It was far from the most technical part of the climb. The guide was first, the Aussie second, Rolando third, and I was last. The guide and the Aussie made it over easily, I had to start to climb down the steep section, as Rolando was just finishing it, as there was not enough rope for me to wait for him to cross the bridge. I made my way down slowly, concentrating, though my mind was mush. What happened next, I can only remember in flashes.
All of a sudden, I was lifted away from the wall, and smashed down on to the ice bridge. For a split second, I thought that I was going to be able to hold myself there, but something dragged me, head first, into the crevasse. Before I knew what had happened, I was hanging upside down thirty feet below the surface, in a crevasse, with the bottom, a conglomerate of ice and snow three feet below me. What had happened was, that Rolando had fallen when stepping from the wall to the bridge, and he took me with him. The only thing that saved me from being a mangled wreck at the bottom of a crevasse was that the Aussie jammed his ice pick into the ice, and him and the guide were able to secure themselves, just before being dragged in as well. So here we were, Rolando and I, hanging upside down in a crevasse. I was just close enough to the bottom, that I was able to swing myself right-side up and reach an area where I could stand up, and let loose some of the weight on the guys above, giving the guide enough leeway where he could set up an ice screw. They could only pull one of us up at a time (and I was more than a little skeptical that they could pull me up at all), so I had to unhook from the rope so they could pull up Rolando. I was a tad bit nervous about being where I was, standing on a very precarious lump of snow at the bottom of a crevasse without a rope, but finally after about twenty minutes of fiddling around setting up another ice screw, they threw me down the rope to attach to my harness. The plan was, that they would pull while I used my ice pick and crampons to try to climb out. The problem was, that the wall was made of thick, hard, slippery ice that the ice pick and crampons wouldn't stick into, only chip away, and my muscles were so dead tired anyway that I doubt I could've pulled myself out of a cardboard box, so I couldn't help much, and in the end, they weren't able to pull me out themselves. The only choice was to wait for Patrick and David's group to get there and help. Before they were only 15 minutes behind us, but they ended up taking 25 minutes to negotiate an earlier crevasse. So I got to wait for a total of about 45 minutes to an hour. This gave me plenty of time to realize what a precarious position I was in, to realize what had almost happened, and to snap some photos. They finally made it, and with the help of their guide (Patrick and David, took pictures and watched) they were able to pull me out. Well, now I was drained in every way possible, and more than a little shaken, but we still had an hour to go. We finally did made it back down, however, every one safe and sound, a mixture of exhilaration and relief rumbling in our bellies.
Well, hey this is exciting. You guys are all caught up. This happened yesterday. I'm sorry that this email ran a bit long, but the story had to be told. I hope everyone is having a lovely January. Moe.
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