That is to say it is not technical and can be attempted by even non-experienced mountaineers, provided they acclimatize. While Cotopaxi is just one of Ecuador's many peaks studding the Andean spine of country, its appeal lies in its superlative title as "the active volcano closest to the sun". Other peaks may be higher above sea level, but because of the planet's equatorial bulge, Cotopaxi is furthest from the center of the earth.
When I lived in Quito, on clear days, I would catch glimpses of its sky-scraping shape, deceptively close. How could I not be fascinated? So one fine summer weekend, I took on the mountain, and faced the hardest physical challenge of my life. Each one of the nearly 6,000 meters of the mountain had to be labored for, slowly, painfully, and breathlessly, to reach that final climax.
It was like lugging a refrigerator, with each leg in a cast, and a bear sitting on my chest. Mercifully, a calorie-laden lunch at the refuge restored me enough to walk up to the glacier, where we spent the rest of the afternoon practicing fitting crampons and side-stepping up the icy snow. The sunset was splendid, as the ochre-red of Cotopaxi's incline cut sharply against the naked greenish-brown of the lower foothills.
By 7pm, we were all tucked into our sleeping bags, trying to rest. The ascent is done in the cold of the night because the hard equatorial sun dangerously softens the snow during the day. At midnight, the dorm became alive with the clunks, zips and snaps of equipment being fitted. We marched out into a clear, moonlit night, we roped ourselves to our guides, and set off.
Initially, we kicked our way up scree, in a long line of at least 50 climbers. The lights of Quito twinkled in the distant valley, as if seen from a plane. Orion tilted in the inky sky. An hour later, we attacked the glacier, digging our crampons into the snow. My guide, an Ecuadorean strong as an ox, charged along, sometimes sinking knee-deep into a crevice as he pulled us past other groups trudging up the path.
All of a sudden a strip of unnaturally orange light appeared – dawn! I got a second wind and dug my toes into the slope, with the desperate hope of a shipwrecked person sighting shore. The growing light also revealed how horribly steep the mountainside was. Instead I looked at the triangular shape of Cotopaxi's shadow advancing on a blanket of clouds, to the west.
