soroche and the beast

ecuador, ecuador, ecuador. the country where you can buy cuy (that would be guinea pig), freshly roasted on a spit, off the street and the bus drivers are crazier than their guatemalan counterparts. i love it.

quito´s old town is amazing. unfortunately, no photos were taken becauase after three girls got robbed at knifepoint and the hostel across the street got raided, i decided that my mind´s eye would be sufficient. my favorite building was the basilica del voto nacional, a beautiful gothic cathedral with massive naves, stained glass reflected rainbows on the stone floor, and the best part, sea turtles and monkey statues instead of gargolyes keeping watch on the exterior walls. i wanted someone to be the guinea pig and try cuy (get it??!?!) but haven´t had any luck yet. we wandered out to the middle of the earth and jumped back and forth across the equator, southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere, just because we could, and balanced an egg on a nail for the heck of it.

bring on volcan cotopaxi, who at nearly 6000m is the highest active volcano in the world. it´s everyone´s idea of a perfect volcano, cylindrical at the top and dressed with white snow. almost like a child painted it. she is a beast. and for some reason, i decided to climb her.

2 things of note: 1.) soroche, altitude sickness, is a very real thing (i mean, really, who knew?) and 2.) summiting cotopaxi is not hiking or trekking. summing cotopaxi, my friends, is straight-up, hardcore, don´t mess with everest mountaineering. owning to the fact that i am no mountaineer, in any way, shape, or form, i think we all know how this story will end.

¨how long have you been in quito?¨asks the tour guide operator. ¨a couple days.¨¨oh, you should probably give yourselve some more time to acclimatize.¨¨nahh...i think we´re ok.¨ ¨have you climbed any other mountains to practice?¨¨oh...nope.¨¨hm, you should probably do that before attempting cotopaxi.¨¨eh, we´ll be fine.¨ after giving us the once-over and a shrug, she signed us up and we were off to the races.

i had gone running for the first time in 5 months 2 days before. franky had never even SEEN snow before, let alone climbed in it. it was a 2 hour trek to base camp and a 6-8 hour strenous climb to the summit, and we were running around at the bottom with our ice picks like little kids.

and so the climb began. loaded up with a sleeping bag, crampons, ice picks, plastic snow boots, fleece pants, snow pants, fleece jacket, rain jacket, 2 pairs of gloves, 3 pairs of socks, a baclava, beanie, scarf, water, and food, we started our trek up to base camp. already, i felt the effects of the alitutude and we were only at 4000m. as my body struggled for oxygen that wasn´t there, i thought (for the first of about 300 more times) that maybe a longer acclimitazation wasn´t such a bad idea. everyone said that the beginning was the hardest, so we continued uphill, our packs on our backs like dead weight, struggling against the wind, panting, hearts pounding like we were sprinting. and that was just getting to the refuge. two other independent groups of climbers, american and french (and all men, by the way), were already there when we arrived. they were talking about training for EVEREST. franky and i exchanged looks--oh lord, what have we gotten ourselves into? tea warmed our already-frozen fingers, our guides whipped up a quick dinner, and we were off to bed by 6 pm, shivering in our thermal sleeping bags--out of cold and nervousness--and fruitlessly tried to get some sleep before midnight. you climb during the night, because during the day the sun will melt the snow. the wind was howling outside. twice i woke up freaking out, thinking there had been an avalanche, but then i realized that the refuge is probably the safest part of the mountain.

a 12am wake-up call, a scramble into oversized clothes that made me look like a color-blind snowman, filled my water bottle with hot water (so it wouldn´t freeze on the mountain), forced down half a banana into my nauseous stomach. even though i was feeling fine the night before, i woke up with a pounding headache, my head throbbing like i had just downed 20 shots of tequila. one of the first signs of altitude sickness. fabulous. gulping two steaming mugs of mate de coca (coca tea--yes, made from coca leaves that locals swear by as a cure for soroche), i crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

snow boats on, crampons loaded, ice pick in hand, let´s go climb a volcano!

we headed off into -10 degree darkness. ok, i don´t exactly know what i was expecting--a trail maybe, a winding path of sorts. no no. we were literally climbing up the face of the moutain. straight up. it was pitch black, no moon to light our way, only frozen-over headlamps. all you could see was a steady stream of lights heading up and the snow-covered back of the person in front of you. the americans brought ski poles for walking sticks--smart. the wind was blowing ice in my face, and sometimes the gusts were so strong i nearly fell over. great, i´m going to fall off this god-forsaken mountain, my body will be eaten by wolves and i´ll never be found because i wrote down a fake passport number. literally, hell had frozen over. no, i did not sign a waiver. yes, this is supposed to be fun.

the higher up i got, the more lightheaded and dizzy i became. my nose was running, so i had nice little snot icicles hanging from my nose. there was so much pressure i felt like my head was going to explode. remember, this is supposed to be fun. at 5650m, we turned back. being that lightheaded and with the weather conditions so horrible (it had started to snow), it wasn´t safe to continue on. i´m not sure how many people made it to the summit. i honestly don´t remember much from the glacier, just thinking, ¨get me off this mountain.¨our guide got lost four times coming down because our trail had been blown away. he would stop, scan the horizon with his lamp, find a marking on a rock or a footprint or a star constellation or something, and continue on.

we were back at base camp by 5am, smelling like mountain and defeat. it´s a mind over matter climb, and i´ve never felt so let down by my body. to be honest, it´s the first physically demanding thing i haven´t been able to finish. altitude and the weather played huge factors, and i couldn´t think straight enought to reason with myself, but i let that mountain beat me. now i know how people feel when they fail k2. by 11am, i was back at a normal altitude, my head stopped pounding, and i had already resolved to tackle her again. a year from now, cotopaxi will be mine. it´s my own personal everest.