Its been an adventurous couple of days, just now getting back to the blog. The weather cleared just enough for us to try the summit attempt on Iliniza Norte. Wow, did I underestimate that rock! Like climbing the Matterhorn, only at almost 17,000 ft altitude!. This climb now joins Cayambe as my new "top 5 scariest things I've ever done."
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| View of Iliniza from Hacienda |
The approach in was long and steep on a trail that had precious few switchbacks. Once we finally got to the massif, then the scramble really began. Steep class IV rock covered with snow and rime ice. We just kept getting "deeper into it" and the wall just kept getting steeper, and the drops larger as we climbed. Finally we all roped up (7 people on the team), and did a knee knocking traverse along a 500 foot dropoff covered with snow, ice, and loose rock. After about two hours of this hair raising mixed climbing we finally got above the snow slopes, and then had just a mild technical rock climb (5.3 or so) about 200 feet to the pinnacle. An that was exactly what is was ... a pinnacle. We had to take turns sitting on the summit .. because it was so small.
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| The Summit View During the March In! |
Unfortunately, my camera batteries died; so I only have one bad summit shot. Hopefully I can get some pics from the other folks. Coming down was just as hairy .. but we were able to find sufficient anchors to rappell past the steep sections .. and this at least .. while still dang scary .. got us down faster. I consider this climb to be the best and most technical routes I've ever done; even when climbing as a kid in the Sierra.
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| The Scary! Summit |
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| My One Summit Pic, Hopefully More to Come |
Next Up is a description of our attempt on Chimborazo.
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