Glacier School Day 4: Hooky

We return to the lower hut and energy rebounds instantly. It’s so much nicer—cleaner, roomier, with Wi-Fi—and not another soul around. Unlike the wood-burning stove in the upper hut, which seems purely ornamental, Señor Juan keeps the one here roaring, and we lounge gratefully around it. Dinner is flattened grilled chicken with potatoes and rice, washed down with two-dollar Pilseners. I break out my flask of Don Julio, and our small team sips tequila by the fire. My laundry tumbles in the dryer—a no-brainer at ten bucks for wash, dry, and fold. Then I sleep. Copious, blessed sleep. Nine or ten hours, more than the last two nights combined. After breakfast I take a hot shower and revel in the lower hut’s plush, hotel-grade towels.

Ossy says the weather reports for our summit night tomorrow are not good, but lower-hut spirits are relentlessly high.

Alex, meanwhile, hates his boots. He has rented a pair from an S&M shop in Quito and declined the skis and bindings. If you’ve ever watched skiers struggle to walk up and down stairs, you can imagine what Alex endures climbing a mountain in preparation for a ten-hour dance. First issued to the Hillary reconnaissance team of ’52, these boots prevent ankle sprains through complete refusal to flex in any direction. A normal-sized version of these avalanche-proof shackles could seesaw evenly with a bowling ball. Alex’s size-13s leave fresh crevasses in their wake. With growing, slightly manic animation, he fantasizes about burning them after his last climb. He would happily surrender the $200 deposit—presumably a reflection of their collector value rather than their usefulness—to sacrifice them to the flames. Eventually I realize he’s serious and consider filming it. I ask our trip scientists, Brian and Carl, about dioxins and other airborne nasties I might inhale while documenting the event, and they express concern for my physical and mental state. We drink wine instead.

New crew

A fresh group arrives: five climbers with the prerequisites to place out of glacier school. Three will join us for Cayambe and Cotopaxi; two will continue on to Chimborazo as well. They all have prior glacier experience and are ten to twenty years younger than our group of five old men riding the short bus to glacier school.

Today is a rest day for Carl, Jeff and me. The official schedule has us returning to the upper hut to do some ice climbing. I’m torn—ice climbing sounds fun—but I was tired and underperforming the previous day, and the forecast is poor, with more white wind. The Mexican Chicos go up with Ossy and, of course, the weather is perfect and they have a great time.

Instead, I spend the morning over-organizing and over-planning for summit day. After lunch, Jeff and I head out on a two-hour hike, partly to stretch our legs and partly just to have something to do. Armed with only a vague sense of direction, we struggle to find any trail that doesn’t dead-end immediately. The first half hour is very windy—shell-layer windy—but it gradually goes still and even hot. We cross a couple of canals and some low barbed-wire fences, reach a llama farm, and confront a tall fence that seems particularly unwise to scale. We backtrack and climb higher, where we find an open field and, briefly, relief.

Over the first hillcrest we come face-to-face with a lone bull, twenty yards away, who seems distinctly unhappy to see us. Jeff is wearing a bright red jacket, for which I thank him sincerely. Recalling that bulls are color-blind, I begin evaluating various escape routes downhill, each requiring a leap over a four-foot canal.

Like all my Ecuadorian “adventures,” the danger proves to be entirely in my head. We skirt the bull in a wide circle and cross another fence to a dirt road. The bushwhacking has lost its charm, so we follow the road past small farms balanced on impossibly steep slopes. The wind dies and the high-altitude sun starts poaching us inside our wind shells. I would have taken off my shell pants, but beneath them I am wearing multi-colored Burton knickers. Rather than go full clown, I roll the wind pants up over my knees, letting just the tips of the knickers peek out. I believe I look pfine to the llamas, cows, and the one truck of confused farmers who greet us with unearned warmth.

I do not look so good to an angry, I assume rabid, pig who takes a run at me from a terrifyingly close — let’s say for blog purposes — 10 yards. It has a tattered tether around its neck, which fortunately holds fast when the beast flings its full weight toward me at the end of its chain. (Note to MM, add pig spray to the gear list.) Just before we turn around, somewhere well above 12k feet, a lizard the size of a small squirrel darts across my path. A freaking lizard at this altitude! I try googling about the thing later but find nothing in a two-minute search and figure I’ll just get my friend Doug, the internet junkie, to research it.

Tomorrow we head up to the high hut for our first summit push, superficial tensions and white wind permitting.