Cotopaxi, Ecuador's second highest mountain, looks like it a child's drawing of a volcano - a perfectly symmetrical cone, with a white crown of snow. And the climb to the 5,897-meter summit (19,347 feet) is supposedly child's play - by Andean standards, of course.
That is to say it is not technical and can be attempted by even non-experienced mountaineers, provided they acclimatize. While Cotopaxi is just one of Ecuador's many peaks studding the Andean spine of country, its appeal lies in its superlative title as "the active volcano closest to the sun". Other peaks may be higher above sea level, but because of the planet's equatorial bulge, Cotopaxi is furthest from the center of the earth.
When I lived in Quito, on clear days, I would catch glimpses of its sky-scraping shape, deceptively close. How could I not be fascinated? So one fine summer weekend, I took on the mountain, and faced the hardest physical challenge of my life. Each one of the nearly 6,000 meters of the mountain had to be labored for, slowly, painfully, and breathlessly, to reach that final climax.
My climbing group of course had a head start, beginning the ascent from the mountain refuge at 4,800m on the north slope. But in the thin air, I was already struggling just to reach the hut. The 4x4 had zoomed through the scrubby grasslands of Cotopaxi national park, then up the dirt track into a lunar landscape of volcanic rock, before dropping our group at the car park at 4,500m. There, in bright sunshine, we had traded trainers for climbing boots, hoisted equipment onto our backs, and begun the traipse up the slope of treacherous scree.
It was like lugging a refrigerator, with each leg in a cast, and a bear sitting on my chest. Mercifully, a calorie-laden lunch at the refuge restored me enough to walk up to the glacier, where we spent the rest of the afternoon practicing fitting crampons and side-stepping up the icy snow. The sunset was splendid, as the ochre-red of Cotopaxi's incline cut sharply against the naked greenish-brown of the lower foothills.
By 7pm, we were all tucked into our sleeping bags, trying to rest. The ascent is done in the cold of the night because the hard equatorial sun dangerously softens the snow during the day. At midnight, the dorm became alive with the clunks, zips and snaps of equipment being fitted. We marched out into a clear, moonlit night, we roped ourselves to our guides, and set off.
Initially, we kicked our way up scree, in a long line of at least 50 climbers. The lights of Quito twinkled in the distant valley, as if seen from a plane. Orion tilted in the inky sky. An hour later, we attacked the glacier, digging our crampons into the snow. My guide, an Ecuadorean strong as an ox, charged along, sometimes sinking knee-deep into a crevice as he pulled us past other groups trudging up the path.
The cold made my nose run like a tap, the altitude was tightening a clamp around my head, and every time I glanced up at the dark mass of the mountain, the pinpoints of other climbers' lights indicated there was still a long way to go. One step, another step, sniffle, another step, another, one more step, one more...the night dragged on endlessly. I had never felt so weak in my life and kept begging for breaks.
All of a sudden a strip of unnaturally orange light appeared – dawn! I got a second wind and dug my toes into the slope, with the desperate hope of a shipwrecked person sighting shore. The growing light also revealed how horribly steep the mountainside was. Instead I looked at the triangular shape of Cotopaxi's shadow advancing on a blanket of clouds, to the west. After several ridges, each one falsely appearing like the last, we reached a flat area the size of a basketball court, where dozens of others were standing about: the summit, at last.
I was exhausted. I shuffled to the snow-rimmed crater. Looking around through the crystalline air made me feel I was on the roof of the world. From the uniform carpet of clouds emerged a few scattered peaks, neighboring Chimborazo, Cayambe and Antisana, all glowing in the rising sun. An icy wind bit through our layers, and already our guide was roping us together again for the slug down. The climb had been a grueling six hours, the magical summit time less than ten minutes, but I knew which would remain strongest in my memory
Once you’re tried winter climbing in the UK, you’ll know that predicting the conditions and which routes are in good "nick" is a big part of the battle. There’s a mixture of science, local knowledge and intuition involved but fortunately there are plenty of good resources available on the internet to help you with this.
