The Highest I've Ever Been

(altitude wise, that is)

As long as we were in Riobamba, we had to visit Chimbarazo, a dormant volcano whose peak is at 6,310 m. In fact, Ecuadorians like to claim that it is even taller than Mt. Everest because if you measure from the center of the Earth, the bulge around the equator makes it about 2 km taller than Everest.

Anyways, on Friday afternoon we took a bus to the first base camp at 4,800 m. On the ride up, we saw wild vicuna!

From the first camp hiked up to the main base camp and refuge at 5,000 m, where there was snow on the ground. There were a number of people (including Ecuadorians, Germans, French, Welsh, Americans, and Bolivians) at the refuge that night, but most of them were leaving at 10 pm in order to climb to the summit and reach it about sunrise. We were no where as intense (or skilled in climbing, much of the route is technical). Nonetheless, we were able to go for a bit of a hike that afternoon, probably up to about 5,300 m. We returned to the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. The clouds were below us, so it looked like we were in a plane, and the colors were just amazing.

The next morning, we took the Whymper hike up to 5,400 m. It was rather steep and a bit difficult to climb with the snow being hard, so it’s a good thing that Stu didn’t tell us until afterwards that people have died on that exact hike. Also, according to October’s National Geographic, if you exceed 4,500m, you will probably die. (Of course, that is probably referring to traveling straight from sea level.) Nonetheless, we reached our goal, the ridge at 17,716 ft above sea level. By far the highest I’ve ever been and quite possibly the highest I will ever hike.