On May 3rd and 4th I climbed
Cotopaxi. I had been planning to
climb the volcano ever since I arrived in Ecuador and now with less than two months left,
it was time. My two good Peace
Corps friends Talia and Ryan signed up for the challenge with me. Our adventure started Saturday morning
the 3rd when we met our guide, Diego, in front of a mall in the south
of Quito. Diego then drove us to
Machachi, (the closest town to Cotopaxi) where he checked our gear and provided
us with further equipment to rent where we fell short. Ice axes, crampons, and helmets shoved
into our packs we then drove an hour to Cotopaxi National Park, where we would
be resting before the climb. On
the way to the park we picked up Segundo, Diego’s uncle who would be our second
guide.
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| Talia, Ryan and I with our motivational t-shirts "Hasta La Cumbre" |
The refuge at the base of the glacier is the normal point to
start the climb up Cotopaxi, but because it was closed for construction we stayed at a
little lodge a half an hour drive from the parking lot and an hour climb from
the normal starting point of the refuge.
This meant we would be starting our climb an hour earlier than
planned. At 5:00pm Diego and
Segundo served us a wonderful dinner of quinoa soup and steak and then we tried
to sleep from 6:30-9:45pm. By
10:00pm we were dressed in all our equipment and eating a good breakfast of
granola and yogurt. By 11:00pm we
were in the truck and by 11:30 we arrived at the parking lot. As soon as we stepped out of the truck
it was clear this was not going to be easy. The wind was so strong that it would blow away your gloves
if you placed them on the ground and the sideways gusting snow instantly
drenched everything in cold, wetness.
Because it was the weekend there were at least 8 other groups attempting
the climb with their respective guides.
Our group was ready first so we started up in a single final line at a
very gentle pace.
By the time we reached the refuge an hour later we had
drifted to the back of the line of all the groups. Diego approached me and asked if it would be okay if we
split up into two groups so as to respect our different rhythms. I said okay, and we split up. I continued with Diego and Talia and
Ryan with Segundo. Hugging Ryan
and Talia I turned to follow Diego carrying with me a familiar feeling I have
had throughout my Peace Corps service, a feeling of being very much alone. And so now I shift my perspective from
the past to the present because I don’t know that I have ever been so present
in a moment as I was in this climb…
Walking up, up, up stars slip into my gaze for a moment and
then are almost instantly replaced by clouds and I continue up, up. For a moment I see the lights of Quito
in the distance, and then again, blackness. My headlamp illuminates a spot of snow at my feet, my right
hand holds the rope tied to my harness linking Diego and I together and my left hand
clutches my ice axe. Diego tells me
to follow in his footsteps keeping the line between us taut. As we move slowly up the mountain I
think for a moment that I feel lighter than air; this is not so hard, I just
have to breath. Diego leads me past
one group of bobbing headlamps, then past another, up, up. I am alarmed at how steep it is; I
thought we would be zigzagging a bit more. The snake of headlamps up the volcano makes me appreciate
the verticality of the slope. I
feel exposed in the darkness and I am struck by a moment of fear as I realize
that I am in fact clinging to the side of a slippery cone. But Diego has confidence in me; he
must, because he doesn’t stop. Up,
up. He looks back and asks, “How
are you?” “Good,” I say with
deceptive enthusiasm. “Okay,” he
says and we continue up. For a
moment we stop to catch our breath, and once it is caught we continue. Diego assumes I don’t need a longer
break. The truth is, I do, but I
am afraid that if we stop I will lose my momentum to start again.
We silently switch our ice axes to our right hands; my left
hand now clutches the ice-covered rope.
Finally we reach a spot a little less steep so we stop for a ten-minute
break. The armor of ice that has
built on my jacket cracks as I shrug my backpack off. I sip my icy cold water and munch on a cookie. Another group is coming, Diego wants to
be in the lead so I throw on my pack and squeeze my hands into my mittens,
which are now frozen solid. Up,
up, up we start again; there is no relief from the steady up.
It was cold but now it is colder. Every step is harder now. My legs aren’t tired, but my body is. I suddenly feel a wave of nausea and
the cookie I ate lingers ominously in my throat. I realize that if I keep pushing as I am I will not be
able to make it. I need to listen
to my body. I stop ever five
steps, I breath, then I allow myself two more. I become acutely aware that it is just Diego and me. Why am I doing this? What is my motivation? I start to realize that I am completely
miserable. I am so tired. I just want to cuddle up in a ball and
sleep. I want to stop lifting my
feet, but I also know that if I stop I will be shocked to defeat by the icy
cold.
I lingered for a moment; Diego turns and asks, “What is
wrong?” This is my moment to tell
him I feel sick and want to turn around, but… “I’m just tired,” I say and we
continued on.
What started as a physical battle becomes a mental one. I realize the misery I feel is
something I have felt before.
There have been moments in the past two years where I have felt helpless
bouts of misery. In these moments I
had felt completely alone, unable to relate to my family in the states and my
family in Ecuador, unable to get past venomous thoughts of my perceived
insignificance to my counterpart organization. On Cotopaxi I feel this same misery. But I also realize that every day of
my two years in Ecuador I had worked to make things better. I had pulled myself out of darkness
into thoughts of beauty and promise.
I had made it two years when there were so many moments that I didn’t
want to or thought that I couldn’t.
But I had. If I had completed
two years in the Peace Corps, I could do anything. This is what I told myself.
So up, up, up… ice axe, left foot, right foot, left foot…
fight the nausea, brace my head against the wind, ignore the snot frozen to my
cheek… ice axe, left foot, right foot, left foot. There is a battle within me but I am surrounded by
silence. Diego does not say a word;
he stands patiently in front of me gently tugging on the rope when it is time
for me to move. By the last steep
ascent I want to turn back with every fiber of my being. I want to push on, but I can’t. Every step I am fighting nausea. With two hands now I plant my ice axe
firmly into the slope before me I kick my left foot then right foot into the
snow I brace myself and then climb up.
As the cone I am clinging to becomes increasingly smaller in diameter
the wind becomes less forgiving.
Up.
Each step is a battle.
I forced myself to think beyond my body and pull strength from a part of
me I had not known before. My legs
remain loyal to thoughts of movement but altitude has made me a stranger in my
skin. I directed my thoughts only
onto the volcano and myself and I find strength within me that I did not know I
had. Ice axe, step, step… I
concentrate my thoughts into a tangible entity and I hurl them to the top of
the volcano. My thoughts are now
waiting for me there at the summit, knowing that they are resting at the top
planning my celebration I find new motivation to climb.
At 6:30am we make it to the summit. The sun has risen but everything
remains grey as we are standing in a cloud. I try to turn off my headlamp but can’t when I discover the
button is covered in a thick sheet of ice. Diego turns to me and gives me a hug. I pull out two snickers bars to eat in
celebration but to my disappointment they are rock solid
frozen. “I didn’t think I could
make it,” I admit to Diego. He
turns to me and tells me that he has done this for a long time and didn’t
question that I would. I wonder if
others battle as I did to make it to the top. The Peace Corps was the mirror that showed me I could persevere
and endure with patience and strength in vision. I wondered what mirror others used to look into their soul
to know that they could.
Our steps that took six and half-hours up were retraced in
two hours down. On the way down I
noticed for the first time all the beautiful and strange icicle and snow
formations we had passed on the way up.
In reflecting on climbing Cotopaxi I’ve asked myself, was
there a moment in the past two years when I reached the summit, the zenith of
my Peace Corps experience? And I’ve
realized that June 10th, the day I board the plane home, that will be when I
finally reach the top. Walking
down from that mountain will be a journey that will extend throughout of the
rest of my life. Not distracted by
the hard climb I will be able to look more closely and appreciate in a deeper
way the beauty that has surrounded me these past two years. I am only just reaching the sweet
victory of the summit. As I am
getting there I can now tell you that in the past two years I have climbed
higher than I ever have in my life, emotionally, mentally, and now physically...
19,347ft / 5,897m, yeah!
