 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
November 8, 2007 – Team Summits Cayambe!
It’s 9am this morning, and the entire Berg Adventures Ecuador Climbing Team stood on the summit of Cayambe at 5,800 meters above sea level. Really an amazing experience and summit day. Besides being quite high Cayambe is an exceptionally unique mountain because the equator crosses right over the summit. Cayambe is right on the equator. My GPS receiver; besides reading 5,801 meters said that the latitude was 00.0, so we truly are on the equator up there. We woke at midnight, had breakfast at 12:30am and by 1:15am we were walking the steep slope above the Cayambe Hut. Within a short time we reached the glacier, put on our crampons and those crampons were to remain on our feet for a long, long climbing day. We did reach the summit after only about 7:45 of climbing which I thought was an exceptionally good pace. The team traveled really well on the glacier, we had two roped teams. Ramiro and I each had a rope and everyone moved really well together. The summit pitch itself was vertical alpine ice, but the team did really well as they kicked their steps front-pointing up with their crampons right to the summit.
Now I am calling you back from the Cayambe hut, and I can report that I have got some very tired climbers here. We just loaded up the 4-wheel drive with all our duffle bags. We have enjoyed sleeping here at the Cayambe hut. The altitude was good for us and the opportunity to reach the top of Cayambe was especially good. We have been three days without a shower now so we are going to go down to a hacienda and shower up. I don’t think the group is really aware of where they’re going to go tomorrow. A hot springs resort which is on our way to future climbs in a few days time. There is going to be some happy soaking in the hot springs. For the time being I just see some climbers who are tired; happy; satisfied and are going to be really proud to drive down the road today heading for some more adventures in Ecuador!
All Text, Images and Audio Files © Berg Adventures International 2007 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
