Cayambe 18, 900 feet

The charming Casa Helbling in Quito

Standing on the equator, right on the equator , on the way to the snow capped Cayambe, which is completely hidden in clouds

the lovely green and brown hills driving into the mountains toward the volcano with our guides Marco and Romel. Some people don't like guides, but I like to have a guide every now and then.  Anyway, a guide is required to climb any volcano with a glacier in Ecuador because people kept falling in an dying. Falling in crevasses. It was a narrow winding rocky road that gradually turned to ice and snow.  When we could go no further, we put on all of our mountaineering clothes and boots and hiked up to the refuge, which is about 15,200 feet.

 The lonely view from the refuge. The wind was howling  and the windows were becoming covered in ice and snow.  After the hot soup and sandwiches, we  went out anyway to practice ice axe arrests and crampon techniques.

 It was cold and very windy, so we went back inside to get ready for the climb to the peak, scheduled to begin at midnight.  I got up at 11:15 to get ready to start hiking,  but Marco and Romel  said, we are going to check out the mountain, the wind was howling and the windows were covered in ice.   I woke up again around 1:30, but it was the same story, then I woke up at 4:30, got my boots on and then just went to the dining area and talked to Marco about the dangers of climbing, then  drank hot chocolate while he told stories about climbing ghosts.  It was so windy we could hardly stand up.  We decided, wouldn't it be great  to visit  old Quito since we had to travel to Otavalo tomorrow?   But when we walked down to the range rover, in crampons,  it was frozen in ice, so we put our crampons back on and started breaking up the ice on the road  with ice axes so the vehicle could drive back down the mountain.  Finally we started driving down, until we came to the  beautiful valleys with eucalyptus trees and green and brown rolling hills, getting warmer and warmer as we went down.