On a high

 

Here’s a photo of us looking very pleased with ourselves at the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal twelve years ago. It took a week of pretty intense hiking to reach this spot, and at the time we thought we’d struggle to reach this kind of altitude again.

We were wrong. Cotopaxi is big. Stupidly big. Its perfect conical shape rises 19,347 feet above sea level making it the highest active volcano in the world. And because so many people live nearby, it is also one of the most dangerous. This made walking up to the refugio Jose Rivas doubly exciting.

We’re not allowed into the national park without a guide, so we hire Carlos for the day. Not only to take us on the ascent but also to point out the more interesting flora and birdlife at the lower elevations. 

Andean Lapwing.

Plumbeus Sierra Finch.

Pygmy Owl staring right into the camera. Beautiful.

The hike is a toughy. We set off in thick cloud so can’t actually see anything and although the trail is only about a mile and a half it’s very steep. The hardest part though is dealing with the altitude. We have to stop every 2 or 3 minutes to catch our breath and talking while walking isn’t an option either.

That's Carlos on the left by the way, not me! 

So that was yesterday and that was Cotopaxi, and it was fab, giving us a real sense of achievement. But today we travel a couple of hours south to Chimborazo, an even higher volcano with an even bigger claim to fame; its summit is the closest point on earth to the sun. Everest is much further from the equator so falls quite a few metres short of claiming the honour.

No guide necessary this time because the volcano is dormant. So it’s just us two and our redoubtable driver Fernando who don our boots and waterproofs to reach the Laguna Condor Cocha at 5100 metres.

Again, we’re not hiking from the base of the volcano, which makes things a whole lot easer, but the air is even more rarified so it's high fives all round when we get up there.

Staring up at the summit we notice a couple of climbers edging their way down (look closely at the centre of this image and you’ll see a couple of dots silhouetted on the skyline). Wend gets talking to a guide at the refugio who says he’s extremely worried about the climbers as they should have been at our level by lunchtime and they only have an hour before nightfall.

It’s a sobering thought, especially when we see the memorial next to the car park to the climbers who have perished on the volcano in recent years.

The siting of the memorial is deliberate and the message clear: do not mess with the mountains.