Cotopaxi

A few weeks back, and following several weekends of fairly intensive training, we climbed Cotopaxi, the world's highest active volcano (5850m). It was really quite something:

We wandered up to the refuge at 4800m around lunchtime on Saturday, with all our equipment, which, although the walk is only about 800m, took 40 minutes because there was a lot of equipment. We then relaxed in the refuge for a few hours, and went to bed there at about 7 in the evening. I couldn't sleep - the altitude, which had other people throwing up and passing out, didn't affect me at all except when I tried to sleep, when I got wildly out of breath.

At midnight we got up, pulled on enough clothing to make me roughly the shape of a rugby ball with a wooly hat on, and had breakfast. Then, at about half 1 in the morning, we set off. We reached the base of the glacier just after 2 and, after strapping on crampons, me and Nicola (another English volunteer) attached ourselves to a guide called Lobo (it means 'Wolf' in Spanish; he had a gun, in case of puma attacks apparently...) and set off. We walked very slowly, which was fine at first. It was pitch dark, but it was a fairly clear night, and other climbers on the mountain made a trail of lights into the sky in front of us. Soon, however, we were on the glacier proper, and it was getting very cold. Eyes were adjusting, so I'd turned off the torch, but it was clouding over, and the mountains around us, and the ground below, were invisible - it was just ice, darkness and the moon, blurred by the clouds. We were still walking very slowly (you have to at that altitude - the lack of air is really rather noticable) but I was getting very, very cold.

Eventually we tied Nicola to another guide who was walking slowly, and Lobo and myself sprinted up the glacier to get some warmth back. Under a huge wall of ice that provided a little shelter we came across the only people from the group who were further up, Theo(dora) and Megan, with their guide Eran, where Theo was in tears saying she couldn't possibly go on. There was some arguing, and Lobo took Theo to go down, and I got roped on to Eran and Megan. Now it was getting cold in earnest, and it was about 4 in the morning - the clouds were getting very thick, but we were on out way out of the top of them. Now the moon was clear, and the ice glinted as we climbed through the dark, out of the clouds into the sky - that was all there was to see. Just ice, the crunch-clink-crunch-clink of crampons and ice axes, and the only ground we could see was the ice we were standing on.

Then we rounded a lump of glacier the size of a house, and the wind hit. No we were out of the clouds, and climbing into the sky. I have never been so cold. The last hour and a half of climbing was full on, hands and feet and ice axe ice climbing, no shelter or stops, and was too cold to go slow but too high to go fast. Suddenly day broke, but sadly and with barely more light than we had from the moon, and the cloud pulled back over the sky. We reached the summit in clouds and it could have been a meteor flying through some interstellar dust cloud, the place looked so totally unlike anywhere on earth. All there was to see was about 20 yards of scoured ice, twisted by the wind into somewhat terrifing statues, and clouds swirling past with the wind. I was 6.30 in the morning, 5850m up, and it was -20 degrees. We didn't stay long.

We were back at the refuge by 9am - only the two of us and Eran actually made it to the summit.