Damn you Cotopaxi!

It´s beginning to look like all the posts are the same. As I mentioned in the last post, we were heading up to climb Cotopaxi. And as has happened basically every day... we had rain and winds. We stayed in the lower hut the first night and just before sunset the clouds parted and we were welcomed with amazing views of Cotopaxi. (We never saw it again.) Dennis will be trying to upload some of the photos we took today also.

After spending the night at the lower hut (12,500´ I think) we drove up to the parking lot below the main hut (which sits at 15,250´). We had about a little over an hour hike from the parking lot to the Refugio. This was also our first true ¨carry¨ since we had to haul up food, and all our gear (about 50 pound packs). The Refugio is pretty nice as these high huts go.

Dennis and I brought out MP3 players and the guides had little speakers so we were having dealing songs. The B52´s Love Shack was the big hit. Even the German women climbers were singing along.

Ok... The climb. Well, we got up at 11pm to get ready for the climb, we went outside and could actually see stars! Except... if you looked towards the mountain you couldn´t see any. hmmm. That should have been a clue. Well, it didn´t rain on us , but we had 60kph winds that blew constant the whole time. With the wind chill, it had to be 10 below. It was the coldest I have ever been on a climb.

And the steepest! Man was it steep, we climbed straight up. No switch backs at all (ok, I think there was 2 or 3). The high humidity and the winds caused us to have a coating of ice over everything. I eventually put on my down coat under my gortex shell and those trusty Cloudveil gloves (they should pay me) then I was warm.

Peggy just couldn´t get warm enough so she had to turn back first, then the rest of us stopped at this flat spot at 18,150 feet where everyone except me and Rick wanted to go back down, but since it wouldn´t be safe to split the group, Jose Louis decided that we should all go back down. We figured it was around 3 hrs more to get to the summit since the old cravasse had changed so we would have to traverse around it.

It was truly exhausting, but 18,150 feet isn´t anything to sneeze at so at least we got a good attempt on the mountain (vs that damn Cayambe where we didn´t ever get a good start on).

Now we are living the good life at the local hacienda and trying to dry out our gear to see whats next... The weather just isn´t cooperating so we don´t know if we will be able to attempt another peak or not. Stay tuned...