Maybe there is such a thing as bad weather...

Before I start Cotopaxi II, an update.

Peggy decided to fly back early, so I´m back in Quito today and she flew out yesterday.
Bruce and Dennis decided that they had enough of the bad weather and returned to Quito a day early to sample the food and beverages.

So that left Brian, Rick, and I to try to summit Cotopaxi again.

As before, we drove to the parking lot (around 15,000 feet) and hiked up to the refuge (15,800 feet), but this time instead of rain, we had SNOW. It was just snowing a bit, but it didn´t stop snowing at all, as a matter of fact, it snowed around 6 inches at the refuge and as much as 16 inches up at 17,000 feet.

We got up at midnight and got ready, it was still snowing. But we started out anyway. At around 16,500 feet the actual glacier starts, before that it was just snow covered dirt and rocks. As we arrived at the glacier, the first party of climbers had turned around talking about avalanche danger. (hmmm, this is a new one)

Jose Louis said that we should go check it out for ourselves to make sure, so we put on the crampons, and roped up. The only nice thing about so many people bailing on us, was that we each had our own guide, so we had 3 2-man rope teams. Brian and Javier, Rick with Eddie, and me with Jose Louis.

We climbed up about 300-400 feet (in altitude) up the glacier when Jose Louis said, "Did you see that lightning?".
I said no... but as I looked up the whole sky lit up and you could see the entire mountain. Jose then yelled, "We are going down now, fast!". We basically ran down the mountain back to the refuge, we even left our crampons on until we arrived all the way back down. All the teams on the mountain was in a mad dash. It was pretty wild. We got back to the Refugio at around 3:30 am and had some hot tea and talked for a while.

Dang... let´s see...
We had side ways rain and 50-60 kph winds on Cayambe.
We had frozen sheets of ice and sleet plus the 50-60 kph winds on Cotopaxi (first time).
Then the second time on Cotopaxi we get Snow and electrical storms.

It´s like the mountain just didn´t want us being on it.

So, the saying "There is no such thing as bad weather, just cheap gear." isn´t always true.
Sometimes, there such a thing as bad weather.