Chimborazo

 Into the fog of Chimborazo, the highest peak in Ecuador, the peak closest to the sun, which found out the hard way. Marco picked us up at 8:30 and took  us to church for a little while then we headed for Chimborazo, which I expected we will start climbing around 10:00 PM. But instead I am sitting at Casa Helbling with Ray Charles  AKA Spencer Ball. 

 Last night we were in  the emergency room with Spence,  we found out he had sunburned cornea, and was in agonies of pain.   We were in the clouds all day, but on a mountain that is closer to the sun than any place on earth.  

We saw Chimbarazo for a little while the day before yesterday,  but Marco talked us out of trying to climb it, he actually talked about it for an hour, thinking we might want to go ahead and try to climb it anyway.  

 So instead we got up at 4:00AM, got dressed, went downstairs in the refuge and drank hot chocolate and ate breakfast and talked with Marco about Incas and mountains for an hour.  It was very pleasurable, but by the time we went outside, there was no need for headlamps.  The clouds were low, but we could see Chimborazo in the morning light, the highest mountain in Ecuador, the summit is the furthest place from the equator. Below is the only view of Chimborazo yesterday, before it started snowing. 

 I was happy to be out hiking, we decided to go up another ridge where I was hoping to get a good view of the mountain and also check conditions.  The reason we were not going to attempt the summit was that there had been so much snow in the last couple weeks that  there was extreme danger of avalanche. So we walked, going for 3 or 4 hours up to about 18,500 feet, before the snow conditions were becoming too tenuous. The Marco expounded about the snow, dug a few holes but forgot to mention how close we were to the sun. But I was really happy to be so far up the mountains.   I love my crampons. The difficult part was going down, I had to find the way, and it had snowed so much that our tracks were being buried.