Club de Andinismo

In my post below about being robbed, I mentioned that life is looking up. That prognosis continues, and as I approach my mid-way point (end of February), I am starting to worry about these last six months passing too quickly. Now I’m on vacation until April. My parents come tomorrow, I travel with them for two weeks to the Galapagos, the Amazon, and Quito, then I have two weeks of free time, then I’m traveling with a family friend from Portland (Caroline Chalmers) for two weeks, and then my vacation is over. Following that, I teach a semester, have the month of August free, and then me voy. It is going to go so quick, it is scary.

One of the reasons why I life is good here is the hiking club I joined at Universidad Católica. I joined with my friend and assistant director of WorldTeach, Katie, in January in that low period in the month when I was feeling kind of lonely and bored. Since Katie is always working, she has not been able to salir with the group on the weekend, but she does go to meetings. Some day Katie, some day.

My first weekend with the club, we went and climbed Rumiñahui, which is a “small” mountain (maybe volcano) right by Cotopaxi (a very big volcano). 15 of us met up at the university at 6 am (why am I waking up so early when I don’t have to work?), drove to Parque Nacional de Cotopaxi, and started climbing around 9 am. We summited the mountain around 12:30 or 1:00, and returned to the cars by 3:30. All in all, it wasn’t too difficult of a hike. The summit is 4712m, 15460 ft. We summited the middle, so we didn’t quite go up that high, but we were somewhere around 4600m. The hike up wasn’t too long either. I estimated the hike to be about 12 km, or 7.5 miles-ish, but some of the other people in the group estimated it to be 15-20 km (yeah right). The hardest part though was the elevation. That high there isn’t nearly as much oxygen, and we climbed probably 3000 ft or so.

Two weekends later, I climbed the mountain Iliniza Norte, 5126m (16800ft). This mountain was much more difficult, and probably the most difficult climb/hike of my life, and the most dangerous. We started climbing around 9:30 am at 3900m (already above 10000ft), and didn’t reach the summit until 3:30 or so. Accept for the first two miles or so, this hike was straight up. The thing about Ecuador, is that they don’t really believe in switchbacks. They believe that the fewer steps you take, the less tired you get. But when I suggested walking faster and breaking more often to move faster, they said that would build up lactic acid too quickly. I guess they haven’t made that transfer of knowledge to steepness of grade yet. This hike though, was not as much fun. It was cloudy the whole way up, so we didn’t get very many good views (although it did clear up at the top to give us a break-taking one), it was hard, and we had to go very slow (almost as if we were dragging our feet). I couldn’t have gone too much faster, but there is something destimulating and rather boring about going slower than you would like, even if just barely.

The other crazy thing about this last outing is that we traveled by bus and truck to the hike. I first took a bus to the south of Quito (1 hr.) to meet up with the others. Then we grabbed a bus to Machachi (1.5 hrs) which the next big town south of Quito, then another bus to Cuapchi or something (30 mins.), and then finally we hired a truck to drive us the last 20 mins. Up the mountain to the trailhead. It was ridiculous getting there and probably added about 7 or 8 hours to my day.

I like the hiking club for a couple of reasons. First, everyone is super friendly and welcoming. They didn’t care that I was new, but still welcomed me on any trip I wanted. Second, even though many of them speak English (everyone studies it and some have been to the US and England), they really only spoke in Spanish to me. That was very nice of them. And last, they are a lot of fun. So I’m excited about the hiking club. I hope to go out with them once or twice a month, climb a mountain, learn how to glacier climb, rock climb, and other things. It is a great way to see the countryside, and just get out of Quito for some de-toxing (pollution) and relaxation.

Hiking club is just one reason though why things are looking up.