Cayambe Lower Hut

Pinsaqui to Cayambe Town

Exhausted and crashing asleep, I fail to notice that I’m sharing a bed with a rubber hot-water bottle, and I wake with the startle of someone realizing their inebriation brought home a surprise guest. I’m not the first person in that situation to slip out for breakfast without saying goodbye.

On way to Cayambe we stop in Cayambe town and duck into a supermercado to pick up extra supplies for the climbers’ hut. Everyone is buzzing—today we finally get on our first volcano.

Lower Cayambe hut

The lower hut is incredible. The large building splits into two enormous floors. The ground floor has a full kitchen and roomy dining area.

A wood-burning stove is usually roaring, and a large fireplace stands ready Giant windows on the backside of the hut frame Cayambe itself — looming, indifferent, magnificent.

Upstairs are two bunk rooms, each holding maybe 30–40 beds. Best of all, we have the entire place to ourselves. Carl and I take one bunk room; the snorers claim the other.

Ossy gets the private guide suite — complete with its own bathroom. I’m certain tomorrow’s hut will suck by comparison.

On the road

The “road” to Cayambe Hut . . . is no road. If a survey of 100 suburban Americans were asked to identify an image of this thing, the top three answers would be “pile of rocks,” “bomb crater,” and “Martian dunescape.” Answering “road” would earn a big red X, and the other family would have a chance to steal with an answer of “Indian burial mound,” “landslide,” or “the Somme.” It is in fact, based on the unimpeachable authority of my blind assertion, the most unroad passageway on the planet. There’s a section that is legit 5.12d, and the drivers that free solo it have balls bigger than Alex Honnold. You would rather be on Cormac McCarthy’s road than this one. Fuck that road.

What happens that afternoon is a miracle. Because we change our plans at the last minute — I will pause to emphasize that MM arranged sufficient trucks for the original plan, and that we are only in this situation because we chose to modify the plan and go up early — we have only one truck available to get us from the lower hut up that abomination to the high hut. One truck for seven people. Five seats in the truck leaves two shit-out-of-luck. Who’s staying behind? Can the truck make two trips? Oh hell no. You’re not going to . . . wait what??? Ride in the truck bed??? On that road??? Alex??? The driver then pulls out a towel. No, I guess that’s not a towel. That’s the thinnest, saddest excuse for a mattress I’ve ever seen. Alex is going to ride in the truck bed, traveling up hell’s highway, somehow protected by a magic towel. Alex is one badass motherfucker.

My mind is still processing this when I consider an even darker reality: someone besides Alex may need to ride in the trunk on the way back down. In case cowardice alone won’t save me, I begin working on an argument: “Amongst this freakish group of giants—do look, I am the only near-normal sized male that can reasonably fit in the middle seat—a seat, you will note, that is far less comfortable than either side in the back, or of course, that luxurious shotgun seat into which Carl’s 7-foot frame now wedges. Wouldn’t it be more fair, Ossy, for Carl or Jeff to ride in the trunk on the way down?” I continue to rehearse, but my debate preparations prove unnecessary. Alex demands a return ride in the trunk. Because, you see, Alex is one badass motherfucker.

Cayambe hike

From the upper hut at 15.3k feet, we hike 1.5 hours up and 30-45 minutes back, on the same trail as we will be traveling on summit night. There’s a bit more scrambling than I would have guessed for the first 30 minutes of a summit route, so prepare to start out with full throttle.

The weather is perfect: sun, scattered clouds, almost no wind. The last 20 minutes of the descent is a joyful scree romp, much like the descent from Kili—bounding downhill like your walking on the moon, sinking your heels deep into soft rubble to form perfectly flat steps. Occasionally a patch of hardpack or an exposed rock tilts you sideways, prompting a quick compensatory step. Protected from wind but not from sun, body temperatures rise and zippers drop. If the weather holds like this, we will see the summit of Cayambe.