The Chimborazo Experience

All Photos (30)

Encouraged by traveler's "been there, done that" checklists and wide popularization from guidebooks, superlatives (highest, deepest, furthest, longest) have become something of a phenom in the travel world. Qualifications can, at times, be key. Sometimes subtle in their nature, they sometimes border on ridiculous. Personally, I have survived the world’s deadliest road (Death Road, Bolivia), walked the floor of the world’s second deepest canyon (Colca Canyon, Peru), been to the world's southernmost city (Ushuaia, Argentina - Note the subtlety in defining it as a "city," though all of Antarctica and lots of "towns," "villages," and "pueblos" still can be found further south), and seen the world's highest high-rises (La Paz, Bolivia - Highest not as in tallest, just the high-rises built at the highest elevation). Like I said, qualifications get a bit ridiculous.

However, when enticed with being able to climb to the world's furthest point from the earth's center, I was intrigued. This seemed a worthy challenge, a cool superlative to add to the checklist, and would give me bragging rights on all Everest or K2 summiters (right...). Reaching the 20,702 ft (6310 m) Whymper Summit would not only be a huge goal, but let me break the 20,000 foot elevation mark I have been wanting to do since climbing Volcan Misti. Some might be asking how can a 20,702 foot peak be farther from the earth's center than the 29,035 foot Everest? Thanks to a little phenomenon called equatorial bulge, Chimborazo is in fact 2.1 km further from the earth's center than Everest. However, some GPS surveys have lowered Chimborazo's height, making Huascaran in Peru a contender for the title, thus negating this little conversation and my whole reason for climbing Chimbo. We'll just assume for now that Chimbo still holds the record.

So you can understand the experience a little better, let me describe Chimborazo. Ecuador's highest mountain, its upper summit is the Whymper Summit with the purported height of 20,702 ft(6310m). Just below is the Ventemilla Summit, some 40 m (131 feet) lower, which we will call 6267 m or 20,561 feet, though this may be the actual Whymper Summit elevation. Either way, I wanted to reach the far from the earth's center Whymper summit. Though only 131 feet higher, it is not easily reachable. An exposed snow ridge connects the two summits, taking 45 min to an hour to cross (one way), thus significantly enlongating the trip, and making it dependent on weather and snow conditions at the top. Such is all mountaineering, and if I managed to make it up to the high Veintemilla summit, I would need a bit of luck, not to mention extra strength, to reach Whymper.













Still trying to acclimatize, Kate, Ryan (not me), and myself (me) took a bus up to about 14,300 feet (4350 m) and walked down to a small indigenous village to spend the night at 12,500 feet. After a short walk with bleak scenery, other than Chimborazo nearby, we arrived out our dwelling for the night. Unprepared by such a cozy little place, whose interior took on the popular image of the modern mountain cabin, we enjoyed it to the fullest. We could have spent much more than one night there.













In the morning we were picked up and shuttled up to a base refugio located at 15,750 ft (4800 m), where we prepared our gear and walked up to the climber's refugio at 16,400 ft (5000 m). Now part of our group was Flo, a frenchman who had just started his trip in Quito, and who was biking all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. Burly. We passed a cemetery on the way up, whose headstones honor ameteur and experienced climbers alike, a strong reminder of the power of the mountains (it may have also included the members of 1976 SAETA Flight 232, whose plane wreckage was found by climbers on the remote eastern slopes in 2002). Weaving our way through the Sunday Ecuadorian hoards, we arrived at a crowded refugio an hour later. We decided to walk a bit more to help ourselves acclimatize, ate a lunch/dinner at 4:00, discussed our route up the mountain, then turned in at 6:00 pm. It was an unproductive rest period, where we barely racked up the z's, and did little more than just sit there and be stressed about not sleeping.

At 10:15 pm we were up and getting stuff assorted, eating a breakfast/dinner before starting off at about 11:30 pm. After an hour our group was basically split up. Kate and Ryan went with one guide, and Flo and I each had our own guide. Roped up to our respective guides, we methodically placing one spiked foot in front of the other as we trudged up the snowy, icy hill. As for views, you saw the lights of distant cities and towns in the valley floor below and whatever your headlamp lit up in front of you. Sometimes flakes of snow picked up by the wind fluttered brightly across your view. It was cold, and only got colder with every step up the hill. More exposed regions made us victims to the fierce wind and the icy blasts of air it shot at us, intruders on the mountain slopes it frequently patrols. At 17,400 ft (5300 m) I felt good, at 18,000 ft (5500 m) I started to get a headache. On the way up to 19,000 ft (5800 m) I wanted to vomit and my head was far beyond comfort but not yet troubling, but nearing 19 I felt fine. That only lasted a while, and by 19,700 ft (6,000 m), as my French friend Flo put it at a break, it would be courage that would get us up to the top of this hill. As we climbed still higher my feet were heavy, my body cold, my stomach queasy, my head aching. Every step was cumbersome, every breath forced. Eventually we hit a ridge where the wind blasted over the top, carrying a chilling wind forcefully into us. We started a slightly rising traverse, and despite the relief from climbing, walking still wasn't exactly easy. After just a few minutes though we reached the Veintemilla Summit (20,561-20,430 ft/6267-6227 m). With the nearly flat "climb" to this summit, it was pretty anticlimatic; I didn't even know I had hit it until my guide stopped, threw down his ice axe, then hugged and congratulated me. It was 5:00 am, and the blackness of night still engulfed everything. I asked my guide about going to Whymper, shouting over the severely frigid wind that was stonger and colder on Veintemilla than below. "No way," he said. "Not in this weather. We would freeze on the walk over." And indeed we were freezing already, despite only being stopped less than a minute atop Veintemilla. Disappointed, I had my guide take a picture of me in the dark atop Veintemilla, and even this was a chore, as the camera was freezing in the wind and the view screen icing over. Quickly stashing my camera, we started our descent via the more direct Whymper Route. It was a tiring descent that took 2 hours, with the sun finally coming out and illuminating the mountain side with an hour left to the refugio, about 6:00 am. From there it was a short walk back to the lower refugio, where we were shuttled back to Riobamba to get some rest.



L - Shortly after descent. Blurry, but you can still see the ice plastered on us.


Below - Sunrise on descent















It was the most depressing summit I have ever made. Not only was it so dark that we could see nothing, but my "summit" of Veintemilla wasn't actually the summit, just a flat high spot on the mountainside. I was unable to reach my goal, not because of my own strength or will, but because of bad luck with the weather. But that is alpine climbing. I can't describe to you the cold that wind up top brought, but if we had tried to walk one and a half more hours in it, we would be frozen climbers still atop the ridge. Although descending was the right call, I can't help feel some disappointment in being unable to go on, to top out on the farthest point from the Earth's center. That superlative will have to remain off my achievement list. However, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes qualifications can be key, so I guess I can make my own qualitative superlative here. I could say that I have been to the second farthest point from the center of the earth, but then why not the furthest, reachable point from the center of the earth on the chilly morning of July 28, 2008. Oh yeah.