Success on the Summit of Cayambe! Satrday 1/14

We just managed to miss Friday the 13th and started our climb at 12:19 for the climb of Cayambe. Gary as still feeling the effects of the fumes and altitude so he decided to skip the climb. Bruce and Emily turned around at around 16,500 because of a prior arrangement. Bruce was having leg problems and Emily was really tired from our earlier practice climbs so they were on the same rope team. I was lucky to just be on a rope with Jose Louis so it was nice to be a 2 man team. Scott, Dale and Rene were the other team. Cayambe is long and steep. The weather started out cold and windy, but once the sun came up the wind went away. Jose and I stepped on the summit at 9:15 at just less than 9 hours up. The weather was clear and I got some great photos and video from the summit. The other rope team got up around 30 minutes later. Scott had some effects of altitude sickness and Dale was really tired. It took us about 3.5 hours to get back to the Hut. All in all it was a great but really tiring climb. It was really steep and we had to put in some protection to hook the rope into so we wouldn´t slip down into some big old crevasse.
It was nice to finally summit Cayambe after last years rain storm fiasco.
We packed all out gear and went back down to the Hacienda for showers and some good food.