The Misadventures of Wurzel Brummage: Baños

The mighty Chimborazo. A scary 6310 metres above fish level

Volcan Chimborazo
Volcan Chimborazo is not only the highest mountain (and a dead volcano) in Ecuador but at 6310 meters, is the furthest point from the centre of the earth, thanks largely to the equatorial bulge. And we´re hopefully gonna be climbing it on a two day trek!

We set out from Baños at 11am and travel 3 hours to the National Park where we hike 40 minutes up to the first refugio which is situated at 5000m. It's already an incredible view from up here and we arrive just as the sun is setting. At 7.30 we eat an evening meal of soup and spag bol and get straight to bed for 2 hours sleep before our utterly crazy 10pm wake up call. (Yes, we are going to be climbing Volcan Chimborazo through the night!)

The refugio at the base of Chimborazo. Not exactly 5 star

Lucy was on bread carrying duty

The view from the first refugio at sunset

The prospect of walking up to 6310 meters is daunting enough but especially so when doing it in the dead of night, with crampons, ice picks and other various bits of alien mountaineering equipment. We're both genuinely buzzing from the prospect of it. At 5000 meters, it's already really hard to breath and the reality of lying in a bed trying to calm your heartbeat down for sleep is simply ridiculous. We don't sleep a wink.

So at 10pm we have breakfast (!) and get all our gear together and by 11pm we are on the icy slopes making our 7-hour ascent towards the summit. The first hour (for me), is utterly grueling. Having no sleep, being at altitude and wearing ill-fitting snow boots and crampons makes it frustratingly hard work. I complain to our guide that the boots are causing blisters and my legs to bleed, but he clearly doesn't seem to give a shit (by the way, the tour group is Rainforestur, based in Quito and Baños and I can't recommend them, simply because the equipment was so bad and our (freelance) guide was such a tit). Lucy however is having a wonderful time and being utterly hardcore, seems immune to the effects of altitude. She's already sick of my whining.

Making the ascent with flashlights

We carry on higher and eventually the guide needs to rope us all together, just in case the ice bridges we are beginning to walk across collapse. At this point, things start to get alot easier for me and the next two hours are alot more pleasant.

After just over the 3-hour mark, the guides stop to inspect the snow and ice and we're told that although the snow is good now (i.e hard enough), the prospect of the same coming back down after sunrise the next morning is not looking good and there will be risk of avalanches. Disappointly we're told that we have to head back down. We're only at 5400 meters and we're all absolutely gutted.

Me, having been told that we're heading back down

The 6310 summit. Sadly it wasn't to be

Lovely Baños from upon high (before the eruption)

Baños is a pretty little town in central Ecuador situated at the base of the (quite) lively Volcan Tungurahua. It serves as a tourist base for gringos who want to partake in various forms of activities including volcano climbing (Cotopaxi, Chimborazo etc), white water rafting and amazon treks. We came here to climb Volcan Chimborazo on a two day trek (see next entry) but as soon as we arrived we realised that there's enough going on here and loads to see to stay a while longer.

Perched on a wall overlooking Baños (pre crazy eruption)

On our second day we went for a trek around the surrounding hills offering us wondeful views of the town below. Looking up however we could see towering clouds of ash billowing up from the volcano behind us. 'Is this normal?' we asked ourselves. A local tour operator we spoke to insisted that we were very lucky and that many tourists come from miles around to see the volcano in action and leave bitterly disappointed. Hooray for us then! He also assured us that Baños is rarely affected by the eruptions as the wind is always blowing in the other direction, affecting nearby towns further east.

The mighty Tungurahua blowing

The next day we awoke to the town being utterly caked in ash. The wind was whisking it up everywhere making the cleanup operation absolutely futile. It was deeply unpleasant to go outside even for a small amount of time. The locals didn't really seem to bat an ash-covered eyelid however and went about their daily lives whilst sweeping up bin liners full of the stuff as the volcano continued on it's grey, dusty belching.