Illinizas Norte success

Celebrating Hogmanay

On Hogmanay, after relaxing in the thermal baths, we ventured into Machachi City and bought some fireworks, local street food and fruit. In the UK fireworks can’t be bought by children, but in Ecuador we had children trying to sell us their Chinese imports.

After a brief spell in Machachi City we continued our journey to El Chaupi. In Ecuador on Hogmanay, men get dressed up as women and dance in the streets, stopping cars for money. It took a while to make the journey but there were certainly a number of very convincing “women”, one of whom even flashed his nipples at us.

We arrived in El Chaupi on Hogmanay and settled into the hostel and had dinner.

We could hear that there was an event on in a local hall as the noise penetrated the hostel from a good couple of hundred metres away. We planned to go out for the bells and see in 2013 in Ecuador with the locals. We took some of our fireworks with us.

We went to the local hall and the people in the packed hall were watching announcements and prize-givings associated with the best “women” of the day. Chasqui, our guide, told us that we could get some beer across the road in the local shop. We had wanted to buy 4 cervesas however the shop only had 2 so we bought the last remaining beer in the shop and returned to the hall.

During a lull in proceedings, we went outside and fired off some fireworks. The local children were interested in what we were doing and they also fired off some of our fireworks under supervision and we gave several of them sparklers to play with.

We went back into the hall in time for the countdown to the end of 2012 and joined in with the greeting of local Ecuadorians saying happy new year in Spanish (Feliz Ano Nuevo). There was some music and dancing before the bells and plenty more after them.

After midnight, a number of effigies were set on fire and it was interesting watching children playing close to the burning effigies. Then some more serious fireworks came out (not ours) and, having spent years in the UK, I was a bit taken aback with the lack of care being taken with kids and other adults potentially in the line of fire of the fireworks but no one got hurt thankfully.

We left our guide to dance the night away but he was clear that breakfast would be at 5am before we headed out to attempt Illinizas Norte (5,116m).

At 5am, after little sleep, he was nowhere to be found. He was located just after 6am and we got breakfast before heading to Illinizas.

On the summit of Illinizas Norte

We could not see volcano Illinizas due to low cloud and drizzle, however it was anticipated that there would be some snow and ice on it so we carried up our big boots and crampons.

We proceeded up a path towards a refuge at 4700m altitude where we stopped for some lunch and a rest from the wind and drizzle. I could so easily have fallen asleep inside the hut as I was knackered from a lack of sleep the night before.

After about an hour we continued up towards Iliniza Norte following the normal route up the south east ridge. As the ridge narrowed below a false summit pyramid we traversed right on sandy ledges. This section is known as the Paso de Muerte (death pass). This traverse gave us access to the base of the summit block and here we scrambled up gullies with loose rocks to the summit where we found an iron cross marking the summit. At the summit, we had no view but for some excitement George set off a firework.

We scrambled back down the gullies to the pass then followed the scree route down off of the volcano. This provided a fairly rapid descent on loose scree – a bit like going down the great stone shoot of Sgurr Alasdair on Skye but for a lot longer and traversing the volcano as we descended steeply.

We reached the Toyota truck again after 9 hours and 15 minutes, having covered 19.9km and 1,247m of ascent. Once we were all in the truck we then drove to “Cuello de Luna” hotel where we had dinner, started drying out our gear and began packing for our imminent attempt on Cotopaxi (the world’s highest active volcano).

The 1st of January 2013 was a good start to the year with us achieving our goal of doing a 5,116m high volcano. Happy new year everyone and we hope that you have a great 2013.