by Chris Comair
To be honest, coming off of Cayambe’s Santa Barbara Ridge, the last thing I felt like doing was writing about it. I was exhausted. After 15.5 hours of hard climbing (plus the previous 10 days), just sitting at our table in the hut’s dining room was difficult. Aside from a few notes, I opted to forego writing anything about this climb for another month.[...]
I knew that the trek in would be interesting when we stopped by a hardware store in Quito to buy rubber boots. We also made a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up 30 liters of water as the Campo Italiano has only a trickle of running water. It seems hard to believe at face value, but because the camp sits on a ridge, very little of the glacier melt is directed its way. Yet another reason wonder why this climb is unpopular, I guess.[...]
Illiniza Sur, Illiniza Norte’s far less popular yet much more difficult sibling, was our main objective. Up until 2009, there were two routes up Illiniza Sur, with the most popular route being La Rampa. As of 2017, La Rampa is pretty much just a melted out rock shooting gallery, so we would be using the other route. Funnily enough, nobody really seems to remember what the current route used to be called back when there were two routes.[...]
Upon gaining the ridge we were presented with an amazing view of Illiniza Sur, our primary objective. The day was beginning to warm up, and the skies were clear. Climbing in Ecuador comes with the expectation of bad weather, so I was super happy that the mountain gods seemed to be on our side. [...]
Upon arriving back to Ecuador for the second time, now few years later, I had all the same levels of excitement as the first, but with something very different in mind. Technical climbs. However, because of how poorly the technical climbs of Ecuador are documented, I had really very little idea of what I had ahead of me.[...]
Somewhere on the internet I read that people could climb Shuksan’s North Face in a long day. I knew that would probably be a bit extreme, so I figured 2 days would be optimal. I sent Chad a message with my timeline and he said he would really prefer to do it in 3. In fact, he would truly prefer to do it in 4. In hindsight, 4 would have been nice.[...]
Stepping onto the route itself was pretty exhilarating. It was something I had been dreaming of for the last few years. Even more exhilarating was our high speed crossing of all the lower slope’s avalanche debris that we did not want to hang around in.[...]
