The dawn faded before it had really caught fire. Or rather, we dropped below the cloud. Far below, car headlights began to flicker, huge residential districts stretched away, an enormously wide river.. My eleventh flight in the past five weeks was coming to an end. Seattle was the first airport on the way home. And it already feels as though an eternity has passed since it all began… 24 April 2011, 5.55 in the morning. Spring simply will not properly arrive in Krasnodar; it is the end of April and the temperature is +6. That is in the morning, admittedly. It will get warmer during the day, but by then I shall be over the Atlantic. I must be getting old, sentimentality is getting the better of me: this time it is somehow particularly hard to leave. Ahead lie exactly six weeks of wandering. The plan is a few days in New York, more than two weeks in Ecuador and about three in Alaska. 8.45 Moscow. Further and further from spring – here the rivers are solid ice and there is snow lying in the forests.
12.16 Amusing myself as best I can. Surprise number one, and not a pleasant one. The permitted weight of baggage including hand luggage is 33 kg. Not at all what I expected after the last flight, where the allowance was 56. I put on my boots and my jacket, stuffed my pockets, set the laptop and the book aside, hung the camera round my neck – and still exceeded the allowance for both the hold bag and the hand luggage by a kilogram. As I was first onto the aircraft, I heard a loud cry behind me – “oh, hang on, why is your hand luggage so big?” – “I’ve taken off my clothes and my boots, I can put them back on,” I said, nodding at the triple boots in my hand and at a rucksack exactly twice the size of the frame for checking hand-luggage dimensions. The girl waved a hand in resignation. Naturally I bagged the first overhead locker for myself as well. Now I’m looking at the hand luggage everyone else is hauling – not much smaller than my little rucksack. They cram it in until the lockers creak. In short, it is obvious we are flying to New York =) I won’t describe the week in New York; that time had nothing to do with mountains, quite the reverse – it rather knocked the expedition mood out of me =) Skyscrapers, motorcycles, monuments, cafés on the roofs of tower blocks, evening NY from the roof of its tallest building, night-time races, rain and sun, the ocean, Brighton, the bridges and an endless quantity of entirely new, unfamiliar food. An explosion of emotion and a storm of impressions.
Photographs here www.vkontakte.ru/album3230406_133311443?
www.vkontakte.ru/album3230406_135818965
30 April. Early morning.. Colombia.. How much that word holds for the Russian heart.. We managed to fly out without a break and without even putting on my triple Kaylands as usual, because the baggage allowance for Latin American countries turned out to be 70 pounds instead of the usual 50. A night in the air, a connection in Bogotá, a brief visit to duty free, morning coffee, and there we were, looking at Colombia in the morning light through the porthole. The passenger in front of us asks for an aspirin. “That’s what they call aspirin here,” my client cannot resist joking. We carry on joking about Colombian aspirin and how they really ought to sell it in duty free. Beneath us drift those very jungles where the aspirin in question is presumably produced. An hour and a half later the aircraft begins to descend and an unexpectedly large mountain rises up on the right. It is obvious at once that it is at least the size of Elbrus. It turned out later to be Cotopaxi (5897 m). The capital itself, Quito, is beyond taking in even from the air.
It is far bigger than the New York seen at night from the Empire State Building. The average altitude of the city is 2700-2900 m and the population 2 million people. But because the buildings are low, the area the city covers is quite unreal.
At the airport we were met by my friend Oswaldo – also an international guide with a very well-known outfit – who drove us round the hotels we had picked out online in advance. On the way we discussed everything under the sun, from the counter-terrorist operation on Elbrus to the fresh snow on the slopes of the local mountains and Oswaldo’s forthcoming ascent of Pobeda by a new route. There is nothing more pleasant than meeting a dependable old friend on the other side of the globe! Having settled on a cosy place in the upper part of Quito, we scattered all our equipment across the room with great satisfaction, as real mountaineers do, and went out for a walk. Walks from our hotel with three or four hundred metres of ascent were a decent warm-up before the climbs. On the very first day we clocked up more than a vertical kilometre around Quito, simply looking at the sights and deliberately avoiding the temptingly cheap taxis. Many of the streets are so steep that it is a mystery how anyone drives a car there, though it is very clear why a city with eternal summer has no cyclists. Not one.. The Basilica, several parks and the old town made up the programme for the first day.
1 May. Having slept off the flights and demolished the delicious breakfast the hotel offered, we set off on our first climb. The cable car starts right in the city.
Two kinds of ticket are sold for it, standard and express. We tried to buy the standard one (there is only one cable-car line, and it is not clear which of them is supposed to be faster), but as foreigners we were refused. Express only for you, apparently. We had no desire to go into the details, and our combined Spanish left something to be desired as well, so we took the express. The cable car moved about four times more slowly than the one on Elbrus.. But that only gave us more chances to enjoy the view of Quito opening up below. The cable car finished at an altitude of no less than 3950 metres. No wonder it is one of the highest in the world! All around is simply a field, with a road across it. That is the way we went. The road turned into a path and gradually began to climb. Clicking away at our camera shutters without a break (an outdated metaphor, isn’t it?), my client and I steadily gained height. Then suddenly, some 50 metres ahead of me, a dog was sitting on the path. It was not that I was surprised, even though we were a long way from the city, but it was a very odd sort of dog. I looked more closely – a jackal (or are their foxes that scruffy out there?). ?.
It stared insolently and was reluctant to run off. Not long ago I had an unpleasant encounter with jackals in the Elbrus region, with me in the role of prey. Perhaps this one was only a decoy? But no, it gradually disappeared, though we decided afterwards that it had certainly wanted to kill and eat us))) All that happened later was that a few rabbits jumped out from under our feet. An excellent dry path turned into a bog. Not for long, but deep. I swapped my trainers for boots – Kayland brand as it happens, bought on Broadway in a sale for 85 dollars, I didn’t even try to resist. After that I felt invincible: snow, rock, sand, grass and crags only helped me appreciate the new footwear. The summit, wind, mist, a couple of photographs and back down.
?There was not much emotion – the client had started to feel dizzy, and just at that point came the last 50 metres of rock with the opportunity to take flight, all of it dusted with snow. Coming back to the cable car, we understood what the express was for – we were waved past an enormous queue of local tourists straight to the cabin. All the same, an altitude of 4700 came somewhat hard to us that day. The GPS measured 850 m of ascent. And in the traditional way we added another 500 vertical metres around the city that evening, since Quito at night is even more beautiful than by day. Once again the endless parks with their endless sculptures, the Basilica by night (a wedding was taking place there that day – stunningly beautiful and imposing), the parliament, a couple of squares, the statue of the Virgin Mary that rises above the whole city.. We very nearly ended up spending the night there, since all the taxis had gone; by some miracle a group of Brazilians picked us up and dropped us in the centre. For some reason we decided not to take the doubtful pleasure of a walk through the night-time suburbs of Quito.
2 May. We had breakfast with Oswaldo and talked about the volcanoes we were planning to climb and those we were not.
Some of them he has climbed up to 200 times! Deciding that we were short of a few items of equipment, though in fact we had everything, we set off to Oswaldo’s hotel – all the more so as I was very curious to see where it was he had been inviting me to spend my honeymoon with my future wife))) The hotel exceeded the boldest expectations. Stunning interiors, huge windows looking out over the whole of Quito, a beautiful garden, European furniture of the early 20th century. A pity it is so expensive. =) At two in the afternoon a pick-up whisked us off to the cosy mountain lodge of Chilcabamba, at an altitude of 3600 m.
This “refuge”, as they call it, has a hot shower round the clock even though nobody but us was staying at the time, lavatories on every floor, fireplace heating despite the absence of any winter as such, huge fresh bouquets on the tables and a choice of menu, as in a decent restaurant. All of it is looked after by one man alone, Guillermo, who cooks well, is extremely friendly and courteous and manages to get everything done. He even laid the table for us, despite the fact that we cooked our own lunches and dinners ourselves. He was also the first person in my life I spoke Spanish to without any outside help.
3 May. The second acclimatisation outing, to a volcano “nearby” as the locals put it, turned out to be a long one – 32 km with 1500 m of ascent. A shame the client dug his heels in and didn’t want to get up in the morning; we set off late and didn’t reach the summit, otherwise it would certainly have come to 40 km with a gain of more than two..
I got fairly badly burnt – the equator, after all. A little over an hour of sunbathing on the way, that was all. On the descent, though, the weather cleared and there in front of us, plain as day, was our next and main objective – Cotopaxi. Over dinner at the lodge the client said something about that day’s summit along the lines of “I didn’t really want it anyway”, although to be honest I would have liked to look at everything from the top. Or at least to peer into the crater.
4 May. On a bright early morning we set off in yet another jeep, straight to the hut at 4900 below Cotopaxi. Or rather, the jeep only took us to 4700, and from there it was about 40 minutes on foot. We decided straight away to make two carries, because all our stuff for the two of us weighed some 70 kilograms – we had not stinted on food and were even carrying several kilograms of fresh fruit, plus all the odds and ends for the camp, and the triple Kaylands again.. Of course we could have equipped ourselves far more lightly, but we hadn’t bothered weeding out the surplus. The wind was blowing hard enough to give one pause. The client, however, stood firm in his wish to sleep in the tent – it’s an expedition and all that. It’s nothing new to me. I built a wall of stones and ran out the guy lines, though the tent kept trying to fly away. And afterwards we could not stop congratulating ourselves that the tent was windproof Gore-Tex and that it had more than a dozen guy lines. Outside, a real sandstorm was raging. Sand was everywhere. We spent a long time working out how to open the vent so that the sand would not blow in and yet we would have something to breathe. Every trip outside turned into an act of heroism.
5 May. We did overdo the ventilation slightly after all, and a mild headache in the morning was the reward for both of us. Moving to the hut, which stood 100 metres from us, let us breathe properly and the headache receded. The local high-altitude huts, unlike the valley ones, are deadly dull. It is unpleasant to be outside because of the weather, and inside it is cold and grey. It is good if there are plenty of people – at least there is some movement. Judging by the expressions on people’s faces, we were not the only ones feeling the moral discomfort. So once we had moved in for good and had lunch, we pretended to be asleep until the other commercial groups started bustling about. Without hurrying, an hour and a half later we set off after them and managed to overtake most of the climbers. Far below and in the distance, Quito looked stunningly beautiful with a thunderstorm blazing over it..
The mist came down, but the era of dim head torches is over – powerful beams cut through the mist like butter. Forgive the clumsy comparison, but that is the phrase that went round my head for several hours of the climb. At dawn the wind, already strong enough, got stronger, and many people began to turn back. The terrain was not always readable and, thank God or whoever else, we never lost the impression that below us it was steep and deep. At about 9 in the morning we were approaching the summit, though I had my serious doubts about the wisdom of that fact. But in for a penny.. On the one hand you have to answer for your decisions, and on the other, taking clients from other continents only to show them the summit from a distance is not my way either. The last 100 vertical metres took us about two hours to crawl. The wind was laying even me down in the snow, though I felt completely fine and dug in as hard as I could. Nowhere, ever, have I known wind like that. Not even anything close. In the end I was simply hauling the client along on the rope, helping him crawl on all fours. He was no longer making any attempt to stand up, and could not crawl into that wind by himself. The terrain became significantly easier, or seemed so because of the sunlight, but the people coming towards us promised another hour of torment. It turned out to be two. On the summit I got the camera out for the first time that day, if you don’t count three in the morning, although on the way up the beauty and the size of the icicles and the snow “dreadlocks”, up to seven metres long, had staggered the imagination. The summit appeared suddenly. Through gaps in the mist it still seemed for several minutes that there was a long way still to climb, but the tracks ended precisely there. I unclipped and jogged on further – everywhere it was only downhill. We sat opposite one another for two minutes, clicking our cameras; there was no strength left for any emotion.
The client slowly came round; I was already entirely occupied with thoughts of the descent. Somehow we got moving. At roughly the same speed as the ascent. Somewhere far below, dodgy snow bridges over huge crevasses were waiting for us. And those bridges were rapidly turning to slush under the hot Ecuadorian sun. Every so often the client would sit down and stay motionless for several minutes. He particularly liked doing it under the huge cornices hanging 10-15 metres above our heads. By then we understood one another from the movement of the rope alone, and in any case the wind left us no other means of communication, still laying us down in the snow. Three times I simply fixed a rope for the client – and this on a route that counts as a walk! Then I carefully slid down myself with a single ice axe, jamming my free hand into the snow, trying to get down before the next strong gust from the side. After the third such descent came the feeling that we were out of it. The client began to move his legs more briskly, though he had looked truly awful on the summit. The wind eased, my goggles stopped icing up, and the crust of ice a centimetre and a half thick that covered absolutely everything began to break off in huge pieces and fly away after the lumps of wind slab from the slope. And more often than not everything flew straight upwards. The bridges held us, and we struggled through the deep slushy snow just before the hut. And there we were, exactly 12 hours later, back at the hut. Even the half-dead client had no thought of staying there another night. As soon as we had come down those long 200 metres to the vehicles with all our stuff, we tore off down into the valley to the nearest lodge. A shower, a good dinner, a magnificent view of Cotopaxi through the huge windows..
Only the last pieces of ice, still falling off our clothes and being fished out of our pockets, made it possible to believe that none of it had been a dream.
6 May. I was beginning to get used to it – a luxurious South American breakfast
with a view of the mountains, a shower, a jeep, a town. Destination: Chimborazo! Or rather, between the jeep and the town there were 150 km of hitch-hiking with four rucksacks between the two of us, and then a bus as well and another Spanish lesson with the local sitting next to me.
From the bus station we didn’t even take a taxi – we walked. Baños is a small, cosy town with a 150 m waterfall on its edge and a cross that glows high in the moonless sky at night.
It stands on the slope of one of the most active volcanoes in South America. But they monitor something up there all the time and there’s supposedly no danger. Thousands of souvenirs, dozens of cafés and restaurants, bicycle hire, excursions into the jungle, tonnes of fruit, a market selling sugar cane, its juice and local sweets to suit any taste – you could not find a better place to relax. We arrived on the day of an international referendum (they know when to hold them, the devils), so when we ordered wine and explained in our meagre Spanish that we wanted red and sweet, they spent a long time trying to explain something to us with the most radiant of smiles. Then they gave up and said OK. It turned out that they served it in coffee cups rather than glasses, and that was what they had been trying to apologise for. Beer was not sold that day at all. Referendums and alcohol do not mix! =) On the other hand, every corner was selling roasted Cuy – something like guinea pigs – the classic local delicacy.
I couldn’t walk past; I had been told far too much about them. The thing turned out to be tasty and fragrant, as long as you don’t dwell too much on the little paws sticking out of the plate. My client, a vegetarian, was thoroughly revolted whenever he looked at me. But I ate it – after all, he was the one who pointed them out to me first.
7 May. The next stop – Riobamba, a fairly substantial town on the approaches to Chimborazo. I have no idea why we stopped here at all; we could have gone straight to the mountains and set off for the summit that night. But the client wanted to, and I couldn’t refuse him. A few parks, phone calls home.
We also stumbled on some local festival where a skewer of roast sausage and beef costs 30 cents, where everyone is having fun, playing all kinds of games, singing, dancing, eating without restraint and riding llamas – a madhouse, in a word =)
8 May. We set off in yet another vehicle to yet another national park. This highway actually leads to the ocean – which made it very hard not to want to carry on – but the majestic sight of Chimborazo nudged our thoughts back in the right direction.
As is traditional, 200 vertical metres on foot and we were at the hut. The highest hut on the planet and unquestionably the furthest from the centre of the Earth. Altitude 5050 m. 5 rooms, 4 barely living mountaineers and, as tradition demands, a cheerful warden. I have yet to meet an Ecuadorian who doesn’t smile, in fact. A very positive country. But let me not digress. The climbers had come from the mountain; they had had a rough time of it, but they had made it. As soon as they had run off downhill with cries of delight, they were replaced by three Frenchmen and two guides. They said they were just driving past and decided to go up. No acclimatisation, no mountain experience. I measure their oxygen – for now it is higher than ours: 87-95 against 82-85. Never mind, about 4 hours here will put that right; with no acclimatisation it will get to about 70 per cent. Let’s just hope they all come back safe and sound.
9 May. We woke at 11 at night, or rather we heard the alarm, since I hadn’t slept at all, and the client, although he had slept a little, announced from inside his sleeping bag that he felt tired. I took the executive decision to postpone the climb to the following day, and now I regret it. In the end two of the French didn’t make it, while the girl and her guide were round in just 9 hours. Healthy men were feeling bad even at 5000. Hardly surprising.. They are probably back in Quito by now. As soon as the sun came up the client became cheerful and healthy. Laziness had evidently got the better of him in the night. Tonight we go to beat the French “record”. It’s boring, it’s cold, I’m running out of ink, there is not a soul here apart from us and the warden, the mountain is shining, yesterday I ran up to look at the route and gained 400 m in an hour through knee-deep snow, and the terrain is far pleasanter than on Cotopaxi. God willing, tomorrow we head straight for Cayambe. In response to numerous requests, a word about why people start at midnight. The climate is very hot and the mountains, thanks to the ellipsoid shape of the globe, are the closest to the sun, closer than Everest. In the morning everything melts and the avalanches, rockfalls and icefalls begin. The glaciers are also very mobile, so there are many crevasses and the snow bridges over them get weaker. That is why everybody tries to be home by 9 or 10 in the morning.
10 May. 5925 m was our altitude record.
We came out onto the ridge in the dark slightly off route, which earned me some unpleasant climbing on water ice and frozen sand with a single tool and meant fixing short but serious ropes for the client. Then we spent a long time moving along the very broad, steep ridge, slowing down more and more. Compared with Cotopaxi the conditions were paradise; the mountain was ten times easier. When we had slowed to a catastrophic degree I asked the client how things stood. The information about the remaining 400 vertical metres finished him off on the spot. And a simple calculation based on 50 vertical metres an hour led to depressing conclusions. He did not think much of my suggestion of getting to 6000 to log a round number, so we began the descent.
At much the same speed, as it happens. The snow stood in frozen columns half a metre high. Not the pleasantest terrain, though it does add safety – on a steep enough slope it is impossible to slide. Some easy climbing on rock that was now the “right” rock and entirely safe perked the client up with a shot of adrenaline, and after that I didn’t let him rest: lumps of ice and stones melted out of the slope were rolling all around us, and the sun had only just lit the face. The time was 10 in the morning. In the end, dodging rocks and listening to my explanations of why we mustn’t stop, we were at the hut by 12 noon.
Day-trippers were everywhere, mountaineers nowhere. By the evening we were in Quito. Note that a vehicle can only be called to the hut by satellite phone – bear that in mind. You can leave with the tourists if their group is small, but you can also get stuck. The client had flatly refused any further climbs while still on the mountain. A hot shower and a good dinner did not restore his frame of mind, so we decided to dilute the mountains with a trip to the “cloud forest” (not to be confused with jungle) and to the ocean. That way I completed my programme of swimming in two oceans. This part is told only in photographs. Enjoy =)
PS
The expedition and this report would not have been possible without the support of Kayland and their superbly warm triple boots, the Kayland 8001, the outdoor equipment chain “Otkryty Mir” and the active involvement of Sergey Gorozhanin, the director of their Krasnodar office. Huge thanks to everyone!