Higher

On May 3^rd and 4^th 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 3^rd 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. 

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!