Cotopaxi

Well, we headed to Cotopaxi National Park on the bikes with the intention of trying to climb the volcano. Cotopaxi is the classic image of a volcano cone, glacier dipped, and sits at 19,640. We spoke with a number of guides and several tourists that had climbed it and decided that we could attempt it by ourselves as Steven has some glacier and mountianeering experience; by all reports it was a very straightforward route. It sounded like there was a path in the glacier due to the numbers of parties that climb it.
We camped for free in the office where we rented our equipment, and one of the guides, Francisco, had us to his house down the road for evening coffee (nescafe with a ton of sugar) and converstaion, all in spanish. He lives in a typical cinder-block house, very poor by our standards. The conversation was rich though; we talked about climbing down here, politics, his kids... We learned that all school here requires tuition, there is no free education. Its rough on a lot of parents to even get their kids to elementary school so some just don´t go.
The next morning we met with a Kiwi friend by the name of Mike (he also has some mountianeering experience) who was joining us for the climb up, and we took transport with Francisco to the refugio which is at like 15,500 feet. The 45 mintue hike up to the refugio was pretty hard and got me wondering about the climb to the top! We relaxed in the afternoon and tried to drink tons of liquids in preparation. The only other party up there was a group of three Italian alpineers who totally styled us with real parmasean cheese and some fancy meat that was straight from Itally! Oh, to eat good cheese! They explained that their food was from a particuar town in northern Itally and very distinctive... they had bottles of wine, espresso... I want to go to Italy if all Itallians are like this.
We went to bed at 6. Its hard to sleep that high, I woke up with my heart pounding and gasping for air, its a very disconcerning feeling! We started climbing at around 1 am by headlamp. The stars were out, it was totally calm, and we hit the glacier after about 20 minutes. We roped up and donned our crampons and ice axes and started the slow traverse to the top. There was a well definted trail for the first 2 hours or so but then it became less well defined as there had been some snow over the past few nights and the glacier was windblown; we started to have to look harder for the trail.
The snow glitter in the headlamps, and as you hike glacial walls and the contours of the volcano come out of the shadows as you approach. We could see the headlamps of the Italllians heading up behind us.
As we got higher I got sick to my stomach and had to stop to go to the bathroom twice on the way up, no easy task on a steep glacier with crampons and a harness. Ugh. Its menatlly tough to feel sick as the going is pretty hard. We walk slow, pace ourselves, and stop frequently to breathe.
We kept slowly climbing and eventually encountered an ice wall in front of us and crevases on either side, it looked possible to traverse past them but at this point the trail was far from obvious. We went back down a bit and waited for the Itallians and they weren´t to sure of the route either. We went back up and looked again; at this point the sun was rising so we had a better idea of our surroundings. The sun coming up on the volcano was simply beautiful, the glacier sculps such amazing formations as it moves down the mountain; there are huge walls, caves, ridges, crevases. Its a different world! We could see the peaks of other volcanoes including Ilinizas, pink in the sun.
As the route was not obvious we decided to not push it (we know that this is DEFINITELY not the environment to push anything, we played it super safe) and headed back down, exploring a little and debating a lot about where the route might have been. We all were a little dissappointed that we didn´t make it to the top (and in the inforamation we got about the ease of the routefinding!) but were all super psyched about the experience as a whole, it was so amazing! We made it back to the refugio at around 8, exhausted.
Our ride was picking us up at 10 (Mike had to catch a bus later that morning), so we packed up. The ranger (guarderia) at the refugio said we should try again, we explained that we couldn´t afford to stay another night up there and rent equipment for another day, and that we had to pay for part of the transportation back as that is what we had agreed to do with Mike, logistically its difficult to get around in the park. Of course Steven and I were both thinking about that possiblitiy, but left the refugio and headed down the steep trail to the car park to meet Francisco, accepting that we didn´t make it to the top but that we had a great experience.