Chimborazo towers above the city of Riobamba in a way that makes you feel dauntingly small. Riobamba already sits at 9000’ elevation, and Chimborazo still rises an additional 11,500’ against the horizon. On the day we were scheduled to begin our climb, the clouds finally cleared enough for us to catch a glimpse of the volcano. Our eagerness to climb was now mixed with some apprehension as we imagined ourselves trudging up the glacier in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, excitement was high and Levi, Matt, and I set off on our trek.
We started our day off meeting our guide and making sure we were properly situated with gear for the climb. After ensuring everything was in order, we drove towards Chimborazo where we had lunch at one of the mountain refuges at the base of the peak, and met up with another climber who would be joining us on the summit attempt. Lunch was spent mostly getting to know one another, joking around in sloppy Spanish and broken English, and figuring out the schedule for the day.
After lunch we drove up to the entrance of Chimborazo National Park where we began our hike to high camp. High camp is where we would set up our tents, eat dinner, and prepare for the summit attempt at midnight. At 15,000’ we could start feeling the beginning effects of the altitude and we slowly started hauling our gear up the trail. The hike was very slow and steady, allowing us to acclimatize and take in the scenery around us.
Chimborazo and the surrounding area is a rugged kind of beautiful, its high altitude slopes being carved and sharpened by the wind for thousands of years. Vicuñas, a kind of wild camelid similar to a llama or alpaca, run around in packs on the barren hills, and their screeching calls make the surrounding scenery feel like a StarWars film on a foreign planet.
As we arrived at high camp, we found ourselves up above the clouds but with the tip of the peak still towering above us. While our guides got camp set up and dinner ready, Levi, Matt, and I decided to climb a little further up the ridge to check things out before our climb later that night. The sun was beginning to set, and with the sea of clouds below us and swirling clouds rolling through camp, it felt like we were somehow inside the sunset itself. The clouds drifting through camp were illuminated pink with the sun’s vibrant rays, and it was hard to do anything but simply stand in awe of the Creator’s majesty on full display all around us.
As the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, we climbed into the cook tent and ate a hearty meal of pasta, ground meat, and peppers that the guides had prepared. It was beginning to get cold outside, but the tent was warm and we sat huddled together as they explained the route for the evening. With stomachs full of food (and butterflies) we climbed into our tents for a few hours of rest before the big climb.
10pm came quickly and slowly all at the same time. Altitude sickness started feeling more significant; my head was beginning to pound more violently, and my stomach began to feel more nauseous. I drifted in and out of sleep, intermixed with bad dreams; waking up every few minutes to note on the clock that we didn’t have much time left to sleep, yet the clock still didn’t appear to be moving forward much at all. I hoped that Levi and Matt were faring better in the tent next to me, and at 10pm finally stumbled out of my tent to begin gathering my gear.
It was now very windy and bitterly cold. The nausea was at full force and I stumbled to the edge of camp and threw up all the lunch and dinner from the day before. My legs felt strong but my body felt like it had the flu, and the mountain silhouette against the starry sky felt impossibly high. There is something raw and visceral about being high up on a big mountain. The sunset earlier had found us looking down on the sun as it dipped behind the ocean horizon 17,000’ below us. The stars were now in their rightful place above us, their eternal expanse lighting up the night sky with little thought or care as to how high we made it up the mountain. The stars closer, the earth further, us trapped somehow in the middle hoping for a glimpse of heaven.
We had one final meeting in the cook tent while we sipped hot tea and strapped on our crampons to begin our assent up the icy slopes. We set off up the ridge above camp and made our way into the cold dark night. The wind was now blowing ferociously, 50mph gusts into our faces that made the cold feel even more biting and the ridge top feel more precarious. Steep slopes dove off either side of our path, ending in rocky cliffs below. We slowly made our way to 17,500’ and began a traverse of the mountain face. We were now roped in, keeping our lines taught in case one of us fell as we made our way across the steep snow field. After a little while our guide stopped us to make a snow cut and to test the snow conditions. He cut out a large square and hit it with his fist. The chunk of snow broke loose from the snowbank and slid quickly over the face of the snow and dropped off the cliff below. It was disconcerting to say the least as we imagined ourselves slowly working our way across the rest of the snowfield.
The guide informed us that it was too dangerous to continue and that we would need to turn back. The mountain wasn’t getting warm enough during the day to allow the snow to compact and to freeze as a single layer at night. The different layers of snow allowed for avalanches to occur and would sweep anything in their path over the cliffs below. A month before our summit attempt, 4 climbers got caught in one of these avalanches and met that exact unfortunate fate. We turned around disappointedly but glad that we wouldn’t spend our last moments sliding off a mountain cliff into the darkness below.
We made it back to high camp and stumbled into our tents to sleep the rest of the night. The altitude sickness had diminished slightly, and it was a more restful sleep than the night before. The next morning shone bright with a cold, brisk wind and we gathered our gear and helped tear down camp. The summit stood tall and proud in all its glory towering above us. Not this time, but perhaps another time. Sometimes that’s the way it goes.
