Defeat on Cayambe

12 hours of epic suck

We eat a light fish dinner at 5:30 pm at the high hut. Afterward, Ossy announces the plan: normally the climb begins at around 1am, but Ossy says the nasty weather forces consideration of leaving later, maybe as late as 3 or 4am. The guides will come and wake us, and we are guaranteed at least an hour and fifteen minutes to get ready. We’ll have grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee for breakfast and get ready with time to spare. If the weather is too bad to summit, the new crew will still go out for a bit because they need the chance to acclimatize to the altitude. Our old crew would just skip.

At 6:30 pm, we head off to “sleep.” We have one of the big rooms in the main hut, but we fill that space quickly, with 8 climbers in a room with maybe 12 bunks. I take the Mexican Chicos up on their offer to join them in a small separate hut beside the big one. There are only the three of us there, and it has five bunk beds across, directly next to each other. The Chicos take the lower row, and I have the upper to myself, which (best of all) allows me space for my four Diamox-inspired offerings to the piss bottle that night. Our small hut is spacious compared to main hut, which is surprisingly full for a Monday night, though we share the same weary mattresses and health-threatening pillows. (Tip: bring your own pillow case!). The Chicos watch some American boxing movie I didn’t recognize on an iPad, while I listen to a book on tape. As expected, I am too excited to sleep. I get maybe one hour. It doesn’t help that I check the clock obsessively and wonder when we’ll get the knock on the door to kick off my hour and fifteen prep window. 11:45 comes and goes. 12;45 same. 1:45 same. At that point I figure the weather is too bad to attempt the summit, and we’ll probably just be going down.

It’s 2:30am or so, when one of the guides comes in and turns on the lights. I pop up and ask him about the weather. “Very bad,” he says. He speaks to the Chicos in Spanish for a couple of minutes before I follow up: “Is anyone attempting to summit?” “I don’t know,” he grins. “Come look outside and decide for yourself,” he suggests, happily delegating to the client a guide’s judgment about summit conditions. The Chicos come take a look and definitively announce they are OUT. I know the weather at the start will be really bad, so I don’t see how descending my perch for a peek at something awful would matter. I ask when the new crew is planning to leave, and he says he has no idea, but they are dressing to go out now. Based on that misinformation, I assume we are relegated to the back-up plan, and that only the new crew will go out.

Dressed in my sleeping attire of base layers, I head up to the main lodge to confirm. When I get there, I see EVERYONE completely dressed to go. Pablo says we got a radio-report from a summit team that left earlier that the worst of the weather begins to lift after the first 1500 feet. Based on that report, we are ALL going for the summit. Instantly I begin my overreaction. “That’s a completely different message than I got. When are we going???” “30 minutes.” “What!! So much for an hour-and-fifteen guarantee.” I’m hissying loud enough that Ossy hears and swoops in to double down on the overreaction, assuring me I can have as much time as I want, an hour, an hour thirty, whatever I need. “Sure,” I definitely don’t say, “I can just make all the other climbers sit around in full gear and wait for me.” Instead, I say “No problem, I will be ready.” I race to the small hut and scramble to get my shit on and gear packed. It’s wicked wet, so I will need full waterproofs for sure. I’m back up to the main hut in fifteen minutes, at max heart rate and under inconsistent self-control. I’m hungry and look for breakfast. No grilled cheese sandwiches left to be seen. Only the last couple of slices of bread, some apples — who the fuck eats apples before a climb??? — and some cheese slices. I roll a cheese-bread blunt and wolf it down while getting a cup of coca tea.

“Five minutes!” Ossy announces. Fuck. I need to pee. I head down to the one men’s stall (for an occupancy of 48) and someone is in there committing unspeakable digestive crimes. I dart in the the ladies and dangle through my front harness loop. Back upstairs, it’s group picture time. I stand on a bench at the back and fail to conceal my miserable state. As we’re heading out, Pancho, my rope-team leader for the climb, points out I have a twist in one leg of my harness. (Well at least it’s not as embarrassing as that time Ossy points out I am wearing my harness completely upside down.). Off with my pack, as I sit to stretch the harness off and back on over my beefy mountaineering boots. I think I fix it quickly but everyone has gone, with a one-minute head start. Already in the red zone, I struggle to catch up.

The weather is abysmal. Icy rain and whipping wind. Not too cold, but nasty. Takes me half an hour before I find a groove and start to feel better. Body temperature is good, except for my hands. I’m wearing my midweights, and my fingers are becoming very cold. An hour in, we take a first break behind a rock that’s big enough to protect only half of us from the wind. I settle for the eddies. As we start up again, I tell Pancho that I’m going to take a newly-vacated spot against the rock and change my gloves. I put on liners and ridiculously huge lobster-claw mittens. They’re instantly warm, but render my hands nearly useless. Pancho sees me struggle and clips my backpack belt. Off we go. I’m feeling great now, even as we venture into sections more exposed to the wind. At the second break, Ossy tells us we will go about 30 minutes further to the glacier, but if the weather doesn’t improve, he’s turning us back. I point out some stars and suggest hope for clearing skies, and he dismissively (and correctly) notes that the clouds are moving toward those stars and not clearing. We go no more than 5 minutes before gale winds pummel us from our right side. If we didn’t have trekking poles to make a four-point brace, we easily could have been blown off the ridge. In unison, the guides do the hand-across-the-throat “it’s over” sign, and no one offers the remotest grumble.

We slosh back to huts and strip off soaked and muddy gear — disgusting things that must be bagged to haul out. The Chicos catch a ride with a guide and go back to Rumiloma early. They offer me a seat, but I decide to wait for the trucks to take us to the minibus. Ossy stops by says breakfast is at 7:30, and the trucks leave at 8am. I shake off my shells, and they backfire volcanic mud on my face. I hang wrecked gear everywhere I can find and hit my sleeping bag, with an alarm set for 7:30. I pass out in seconds. Staggering from my alarm’s punch, I cram-pack a five-star hotel for mold and haul my bags through the slop to the big hut, I anticipate, just in time to miss breakfast but make our departure. I go upstairs and only Jeff and Brian are there. Well I now have that extra time I wanted. Over the next hour, the guides and other climbers roll in for breakfast, and half an hour later, battered 4x4s rid us of that wretched place forever.

Super low morale and exhaustion join me on the drive down from Cayambe. In deadpan, Carl points out a speed bump on the Cayambe road — the most unnecessary speed bump in history — installed, presumably, as a parting “fuck you” to all who mistook it as a route for actual transportation.

Just then, the mountain apologizes in a spectacular rainbow.

As we near Cayambe town, dozens of kids in school uniform walk up the steep hill to some unknown destination. A super-cute 9 year old girl beams as she approaches our truck and excitedly calls out “Papi!” Our driver rolls down his window. In a universal transaction, the girl says something in Spanish, and the driver slides out his ash tray, grabs a few coins and drops them in the girl’s hand. He smiles warmly without any perceptible change in his stoic face, and we drive on.

Safety and good judgment drove our decision to abandon Cayambe, but those concerns are tossed aside once we are in the minibus. Our driver, as if captaining a hobie cat, believes that by leaning his entire body to the inside of each treacherous curve, he can maximize speed and barely keep four wheels on the ground. Lanes are a mere suggestion. Sleep is not possible. But Rumiloma can heal all.