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Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

The Andes ski adventure – Episode 1, Ecuador

Here comes the first episode from our ski adventure through the Andes. We had a great time in Ecuador and especially around the mountain town of Riobamba in the high sierras and I finally managed, on our third try, to climb and ski the highest point in the country.

Monday, October 17th, 2011

The

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Huascarán 6768 m – An alpine style solo ascent on Peru’s highest mountain followed by some fun skiing

How the dreaming started

When I was a kid and went to high school most of my life surrounded skiing. Every time I got to choose a project I tried to angel it in some way towards skiing, mountains, climbing or some kind of physical or physiological subject that would strengthen me for the adventures I saw was forth coming.

I remember so well how I managed to twist one geography project into a work about avalanches. Not that I was particularly interested in the dangers of avalanches back then, it was more that I wanted to find places to dream about go skiing.

I learnt that the deadliest avalanche in the world came down a huge mountain in Peru (Mt Huascaran) in 1970, killing more than 20 000 people and leaving many more homeless. Shocked as I was about the devastating natural forces I still got impressed by mountains so big that they where able to create something like that. If they are that huge they must also be capable of serving great adventures, so thats where the dreaming started.

The old masters

Along the way I also started reading up on the old masters of mountain skiing and i came over this extract written by Parick Vallencant about the first ski descent of Huascaran. Check it out here: pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Bio/Patrick-Vallencant (scroll down the page till you get to the Huascarán part)

Huascarán north and south seen from Mucho

The Adventure

With all this in mind we stumbled in to the mountain town of Huaraz a week ago. On our journey through south america this has been planned as a stop and it has been the mountain that has been bugging my mind the most.

First of all we are here on probably the worst time of the year. The normal climbing season of this mountain is between june and august and the autumns are infamous for lots of precipitation, storms and bad weather. Swedish adventurer Fredrik Sträng literarily told me that we are going to get in trouble if we go here at this time when I talked to him this summer. If the weather was not going to take us, it was going to be lots of snow, hard winds, no other people and possible avalanche danger.

Secondly its not that easy of a mountain to get up on. Its the 7th highest mountain in south america and the highest in Peru. Out of the ten highest peaks on the continent this is definitely the one with the hardest normal route and as a bonus its highly crevassed and threatened by seracs a good part of the way. Its also, for the record, the second point furthest from the center of the earth, after Ecuador’s Chimborazo.

I mean, if we would have been here during the normal climbing season with sufficient amount of time I wouldn’t have been to worried. But on our optimistically packed itinerary through the Andes this have definitely been the theoretical crux of the journey.

So it was with great respect and with some anxiousness that I approached the mountain last saturday. The weather forecast told us we would have about three days of bad weather before a possible window of high pressure. That felt perfect as we had understood that the approach was fairly long and we needed time to gradually move up our camps to properly acclimatize and to have a good position when the weather window (hopefully) would come.

We took a local mini bus from Huaraz to Mancos early saturday morning. We got squeezed in the back with our gear and could hardly move during the one hour ride. Once in Mancos we managed to take a taxi up to the little village of Mucho on the foot of the mountain. The driver knew, of course, exactly where to let us of and before we knew it we got fed in someones home while waiting fore mules and porters.

I have never used either mules nor porters before but we knew it would save us a few days worth of energy on the mountain as well as its helping out the locals who can make way over average local income on us gringos.

So of we went up the beaten track towards the Refuge Don Bosco at 4800m. Its an almost 1800m vertical rise from the village and we where really glad we had our two new found local friends and two mules to get our heavy backpacks, food for 7 days and ski equipment anywhere near the start of the fun.

It took us about five hours to get to the refuge. As I said before we where here kind of of season and we read in the guestbook in town that the last climbers who sat their foot on the mountain where there more than two months earlier so of course the refuge was closed.

We slept one night outside of the hut and then we continued on our own up to camp one at just below 5200 m. Everything went well but Bjarne got really worked by the second day. And getting really worked and trying to acclimatize to your new altitude sleeping-record does not go hand in hand so he was feel really bad.

The weather was as promised – low pressure with precipitation but not much wind. On the third day we took a rest day in camp 1 so Bjarne could hopefully recover to move up higher the next day. But as experienced before, if you get worked at altitude and you are not acclimatized to that point, recovery goes dead slow, as does further acclimatization.

So Bjarne was feeling the altitude and was really tired and was only slowly getting better leaving moving up to camp 2 a no option. The weather was slowly getting better and we would have our window soon, but I was by my self from here on. To get Bjarne in shape to move up higher we would first have to get him lower down but we didn’t have enough food and fuel to get him rested and then go up again on this attempt. And we where not able to move up camp; leaving an about 1600 m vertical distance of totally unbroken, snowy and crevassed terrain between me and the summit. A total suicide at first view, but after some consideration a small chance of success and a gift given to me in the shape of an adventure so big that I didn’t know if i would be able to handle it. In other words, I would need to dig deep again.

The snow that had fallen had gotten really warm in the day and then refrozen during night. This would mean the lower part of the face got relatively safe in the night and early morning. On the forth day I took of at three in the morning to scope the route with the help of the full moon. But I had a really bad gut feeling and the clouds came in; darkening the mountain making it almost impossible for me to see where to go in the maze of seracs. I wasn’t at all worried about falling in to something as the snow was rock hard and i where on skis, but it would simply take to long time negotiating the way and at the same time the gut feeling told me something was terribly wrong.

I took my skins of and skied back to the tent and went to sleep. Two hours later we both got waken up by a roar from the mountains. At sunrise when I woke up again I could se the track taken by the debris on the lower parts of the normal route where I would have been if i would have kept going.

This is the game of objective dangers we all play on the mountains where ever we are in the world and what ever kind of objective we have. Some mountains are, of course, more dangerous than others, but still; either if we believe in the religions of statistics or faith its a fact we need to live with. The number one rule is still to always, always listen to your gut feeling. Its a rule that have both theoretical, meta- and quantum-physical as well as logical reasons, more on that later.

Waking up on this, the forth day, for the second time it was to become a great sunny day. I ate my second breakfast and took of again up the mountain. I took my time to scope a good way and I self belayed and tested every snow bridge i didn’t fully trust. It was a huge work to create a “safe” route up the lower 900 m of the mountain. But after a twelve hour work day I had made a route up the lower slopes of the mountain up and around to the col between the north and the south summit. I was totally done physically but it felt like the whole enterprise could be done on a good day. I understood directly though that the normal route was not an option as it was to long and also the upper half was highly crevassed. The strategy had to be changed according to the circumstances but I had high hopes in my new plan.

The fifth day on the mountain I hardly leaved my sleeping bag except for eating and going to the men’s room. I was fully worn out, but I knew from the last springs adventure in Alaska that I have the means to recover in a short period of time. The next night i could hardly sleep, my whole body felt energized and ready to perform and at one thirty I just jumped out of my sleeping bag, ate my porridge and took of in the night.

What had taken so much time two days earlier payed of now. I cruised around the seracs and black holes in the dark and gradually gained altitude. Instead of taking the the normal route up the mountain I had decided to take the most direct line up the classical ice face of The Shield. A 600m ice face (grade D+) that starts half way up the face. Up higher I knew the snow would be getting deep and by climbing an easy ice route I would save lots of energy.

After two hours of climbing i started feeling nauseous and now and then I had to just lie down on my ice axes and force myself to not throw up the energy i would need later on in the day. My stomach started fighting its own little war and two times I had to run in to a crevasse and throw my harness of and take a shit. Fortunately I had taken some toilet paper with me, otherwise it could have gotten nasty.

At dawn i found my self at the start of the shield and I celebrated by opening a can of tuna that would, as it seems, save the day. After eating the fish with my knife I started feeling better and with the sun came the warmth and some new found energy. Happily i started up the face that started up at 60-65 degrees with two short steeper steps. I got really impressed by the americans that claimed to have skied this ten years ago. Then again, much change in ten years on ice faces and at this time i was going to enjoy 600 meters of brittle ice, i was really happy I had ski boots that would relieve the calves. Doing this with climbing boots would have been a nightmare.

I slowly gained altitude and I had to be careful with my placements in the ice that notoriously cracked in big plates and fell down in to the abyss. After what seemed like an eternity I arrived at a small plateau for a short break and gave Bjarne a shout on the radio.

“Good work Andreas, you are about one third of the way up the Shield.”

That was not really what I had hoped to hear after what had felt like such a long time of hard work. But the angel eased up the higher I came and i switched over to my ten-ten method. This means i take ten steps, then lie down on my axes for ten seconds and then repeat this till I get where I want.“Persistence is favorable”, says the old proverb and in the end you get where you want in climbing as long as you persist, even if it may feel like an eternity sometimes.
After some hours I was up on top of the Shield on a sharp ridge that would lead me to the summit plateau.

Now came what would be the next test. Wallowing in knee deep snow that would break down in plates almost broke me down mentally. I took two steps up and sank down one. This is enervating on a mountain near you, but on over 6300 m by myself it took all i had to get up this ridge. Instead of ten-ten i had to do three-twenty at times.

The whispering little voice in the back of my mind armed with negative thoughts got stronger and stronger. The scary feeling of tears loading up in the throat preparing to start crying was building up. I didn’t have much more in me and going beyond where you have been is always scary. Fright implies the unknown. And now what I didn’t know was if I was going to have the strength to get back down again.

After ten hours of climbing I finally arrived at the top plateau. It was midday and it was a stellar day, but the wind was chilly. I had all my clothes on started walking on the flat. It was boot deep snow and it was really hard work. I took a few steps and then lay down on the snow like a wounded animal, got up on my feet – to soon again, fall down on my belly.

Fear filled me with doubt. At least I had really given it a good try, but now its time to turn back. Andreas, you can still be proud of what you have achieved today. You have gone beyond where you have been before. I got tears in my eyes, and it felt like I could touch the summit, but I could not have it. What an internal fight!

After have gotten maybe 50 meters in half an hour I got an idea. I threw of my backpack and put my dromedary bag and some powerbars in my pocket. I ditched everything i didn’t needed on the spot and carried on upwards on my skins. It may seem like an obvious thing to do now, but it felt like breaking a mathematical formula there and then on the mountain in that exhausted state.

It was the classical scandinavian fjeld scenario during the next two hours. I would get close to a small knoll that I would think is the summit and then when I got there there would be another one behind. And when I got to the next one another one would still be there teasing me behind this one.

But in the end there where nothing more behind the last knoll than the view of the Peruvian mountains in the south. When I looked back I could see the classical mountaineering peaks in the north as well as Huascaran Norte. Everything below my feet.

I fell down in to a pile of muscle, bones, clothes and equipment. I didn’t know what I had left. I really didn’t know. I took a few photos with my camera, pulled of the skins from under the skis. Buckled up the boots and started cruising down. It was not a beautiful sight. All my old students from my time as a ski instructor would have smiled at me thinking, Andreas, now you’re not living as you are teaching. But at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less.

I got back to my pack and put it on together with my Go Pro, and then continued down towards the ridge that had been such a hard work. I really didn’t have a good idea how to get down this mountain. I skied a few turns, and then sat down hyperventilating, skied a few turns and then sat down to catch my breath. Skiing was dead easy, like most of the time, it was just the art of breathing that was hard. At least my headache was starting to leave me and it got easier to concentrate. On my right i had a fifty degree slope for two hundred meters of really hard snow. I knew that if i wait half an hour i would tear that one up in big turns when the sun had done its work, but I was to tired to bother – I just wanted down.

I slid down without making turns for 100 m, then thought if looked blue further down, so i changed to crampons walked down 50 m and then realized it was easy skiing. The half hour had passed and made the snow soft. It was such an amateur thing to do, but then again I was tired – like hell.

I took of my jacket and didn’t bother putting the camera back on. I jumped the bergschrund and started to try to find a way down through the seracs with poor Bjarne trying to helping me out from below. Together we actually worked it out and it only took me about fifteen minutes to ski down to my old track and it was really good skiing in a magical steep glacier environment.

I doubt this line have been skied before even though it feels much more natural than the normal route, it gives really good quality skiing and its the easiest and most direct line on the mountain. No down climbing or rappelling needed. Maybe a 5.3, D+ or something like that.

The snow got softer and softer the lower down I got and when I was back on my old tracks I didn’t have to think about much anymore. I cruised the last part on autopilot and crashed down at Bjarne’s feet at the tent. It was with great relief and surprise that I sat down to have dinner with my good friend watching the sunset.

We slept another night in our tent and woke up early the next day to ski down the glacier, and walk down to Mucho. The 2200 vertical meters took us about five and a half hour plus a two hour break at the refuge. Someone had broken in to the hut so the guardians where there cleaning and restoring it when we passed by. They invited us for lunch and we sat down enjoying the great Peruvian hospitality below their crown mountain in the warm spring sun.

Well back in Huaraz we are enjoying rest and good food and are trying to catch up on work. We will stay here for one or two days and then continue south, always south!

For more info on Huascarán, check these links out:

http://www.summitpost.org/huascaran-sur/150254

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huascarán

Shitheads:

Andreas: 22

Bjarne: 24

In the bus to Mancos

In Mucho

Our donkey and our horse

Some scrambling

A night outside of the hut

Bjarne Sahlén

Bjarne climbing the slabs

And the glacier

Our camp

Huascarán north and south

The Shield

It was quiet warm in the tent…

Just another self belay

Bjarne working

Breakfast

Our ongoing shithead tournament

The moon at dawn on my summit push

Taking a rest

Climbing

The summit ridge

On the top

Looking south from the top

Looking north from the top

Back down in camp

Bjarne skiing down

In the cab on our way back to Huaraz

In town the same night

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

South towards Peru; surfing in Trujillo and expedition planing in Huaraz

Peluche managing the sun

Today we arrived in Huaraz after a beautiful voyage down the coast by bus. We arrived yesterday morning in Trujillo and had the day to spend before leaving again in the evening for Huaraz.

The choice was easy, we jumped on a taxi down to the coast, hired some boards and went surfing. It was a wonderful day in the ocean followed by great seafood and peruvian ice. Early this morning we arrived in Huaraz and have spent the whole day shopping, sorting out park fees, permits and packing. Now we are set to go up in the mountains again tomorrow. We have food for seven days with us, so you might not hear from us in a while!

Shitheads:
Andreas: 13
Bjarne: 10

Our bunker room in Guayaquil

Another breakfast on the way. We haven’t found good coffee on the whole trip so far

An old Volvo bus got us from Guayaquil to Trujillo

Leaving the pirate town

Happenings on the way…

Our luggage room in Trujillo

This dude knew whats important in life

Bjarne relaxing by the water after a day of surfing

This was not us, but I would say Peluche got pretty close!

Bjarne putting in some working hours on the bus

First glimpse of the Cordillera Blanca

Packing session late at night

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Digging deep

Deep in the darkness beyond that which is known lies the secrets nowhere else to be seen. In the silence behind what can be heard lies the answers we have been searching for for so long. When we walk past the line that indicate our own comfort zone we will learn something new about ourselves.

Its most often not a truth that can be told in fancy words, but still in a comforting way we will grow as wise human beings. Going beyond that which is known means we will have to face our fears because the unknown implies fear. But our human experience will also grow, and that is what i think everyone is secretly searching for.

Of course, the freedom and the painless state is in a world of no boundaries – of no concepts. But as this is a place most beings don’t even understand; why not start with stretching the boundaries we do know. Why not fight and/or love an opponent we do know?

Winning by this society’s standards implies, of course, loosing because we would not know one if we didn’t knew the other. To really win, then, means we can’t play by the game rules of winning and losing, we can’t play the game at all.

Ascending a mountain alone in the darkness when you are more tired than you ever been before, is a stretching experience of ones mind. The fear will creep up on you and there is no where to hide. There are no virtual reality, music, friend or TV that can distract us from seeing whats there in front of us. There is nothing more than the pain, the beauty, the tiredness, the fear and the darkness surrounding you.

Of course you can turn around, but if you are someone pushing this far, you are probably also someone scared of failure as well. Maybe you have to be, to be able to push your self to places where most don’t go – and see things most men do never see.

When you in the end are done and home in safety, and the drugs of sensations have played themselves out, then when everything is still, that stillness is somehow bigger than it was before. That great living room in your head you called consciousness feels bigger than you thought you knew it was before.

This is for me the biggest reward life on the edge gives me. I can not say what its worth in this and that. But, for me, the reason we are living this life is to explore space – in a real kind of sense. You chose your own tools, then answers are always there for those who put forward the questions.

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Guayaquil

The ventilation system is running wavelike in the roof. You can hear the air going through the shack in the middle of the building but we can’t look out. We don’t have a window. The walls where once white, but are now brownish and there is a distinct smell of smoke that fade away after some time in the room.

There is no way of running away from the heat and the humidity in this place. The panic might come creeping, but there is really no way out, so just go with it! Feeling the heat and the pulsating beats of air from the vent system gives me a desire to meditate and a friendly helping hand in to reality.

It feels like we have sailed in to a pirate port in a time long ago and are now enjoying the ups of civilization life after months at sea. In reality we have just arrived to Ecuador’s financial capital and biggest city; Guayaquil. After a five hour bus ride from Riobamba on winding roads from around 3000 meter above sea level, up to over 4000 and then down all the way to the Pacific ocean in a wild chicken race kind of lap against tractors, trucks and kids with death as the only viewable end for the ones that loose.

Still, this feels like a place lost in time and a no place to be for anyone resembling a gringo. The white folks are hiding in fear of reality at the posh hotels and the streets are pulsating with life so naturally human that anyone in fear of dirt will instantly run away. The real life takes it turns out on the streets and anything that goes is a good idea in the game of surviving. Old ladies selling ice cream out of black plastic bags, young boys running around with Coca Cola bottles selling coke by the glace and many others hunkering up on the side of the streets selling whatever they have found worthy looking at.

We are wandering the town in search of the adventure. Everyone we ask where to go tells us Hotel Continental is the only safe place for us gringos. Over there they have 24/7 security and we will not have to worry. After a wonderful chinese dinner we loom after some colombians to check Continental out.

We order two beers and sit down to watch some baseball. After half an hour we are bored out of the sterility of the hotel and wander out. On the way we find out that those two beers where more expensive than the dinner we just had.

It is said that allergy doesn’t exist in farms where the children constantly get in contact with the bacterias from the animals and the dirt. Some kind of connection with that thought hit me when I walked out from the hotel – the only place in town where gringos feel safe.

In the lonely planet book its said that if you are out in town after dark you should take a cab even if only going one block. All the information we get seems to be bathing in fear. Anyways, we left everything worth stealing in our bunker of a hotel.

We head towards the darkest alley we can find in search of finally getting robbed. No guns or knifes anywhere to be seen. Instead we get searched up by two climbers from Mendoza. They liked to go down to the ocean where we a couple of hours before found that pirate ship that came to symbolize this town.

Bjarnes stomack says no, so we run for the hotel. A night in fantasy and fables is coming to an end. I’m mostly happy for not paying the bus driver the three extra dollars he tried to scam us on when we arrived. And sad for the black taxi dude who got caught by the police when driving us to the the terminal terrestre. He paid 25 cents to drive us to the bus terminal from town – that doesn’t feel fair.

Shitheads:

Andreas: 5

Bjarne: 3

Sleepins:

Andreas: 1

Bjarne: 2

The view from the bus

Pit stop

Bjarne “Peluche” Salhén is rocking salsa style

Fires in the streets of Riobamba

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Chimborazo – A long night on Ecuador’s highest mountain and some amazing skiing close to the equator

“Bjarne, dont fall asleep!”

“Ehh, no, I wont!”

15 minutes later:

“Andreas, are you sleeping?”

“Mmm.”

These are extracts from my and Bjarne’s conversations last night. And its not from a normal flatmate discussion, but from a scene where we are both leaning on our ice axes on a mountain side with our faces in the snow somewhere between wake and slumber.

Chimborazo, some say it’s the biggest thing you’ll ever see…

We are on our first stop on our South America adventure – Ecuador’s 6310 m high Chimborazo, also famous for being the point furthest away from the center of the earth (thanks to the ovality of the planet around the equator).

During the last week, most of our concentration and time have gone to this mountain. There are different game rules here in Ecuador from what we are used to back in Europe. The mountains are higher and you can take a taxi to their doorstep. Weather service is by no means exact and the bacterial flora in the food is often much more hardcore than we are used to. It also have to be added that the climbing season on this mountain is December-January and June-August, leaving us on the mountain alone with the worst weather pattern of the year.

We came here with good self confidence but with the second thought in mind that many of our good mountain friends been slapped in the face by the Andean mountains. This was kind of our warmup and acclimatization object of the trip so maybe we where taking it a bit to lightly.

We started in Quito one and a half week ago by going up to the volcano Pichincha at 4800 m twice. Then we took the 2,5 h bus ride down south to Riobamba and right away from there a taxi up to the Carrel hut at the foot of Chimborazo at 4850 m. From here we walked up to about 5300 m just to keep on breathing the thin air. The following days promised excellent weather so we thought we go for it the next day in a on day push with an really early taxi from Riobamba. This was almost a good idea, but just almost. We got up to 5400 m when the sun hit the face on an exposed section and the only sober thing to do was to turn back down before the rocks strated raining. It was a petty though as we where feeling our strongest so far on this trip. Had we taken the taxi one hour earlier in the morning I think we would have made our way to the summit. We thought we make another try the following night, but we where both (me more than Bjarne) feeling really bad from the altitude so we hitched back down to town first thing in the morning. We where totally exhausted from this little adventure and needed three days of rest before we could even think about another try. But three days later the weather in the night looked ok and we thought out another fresh strategy.

We took the taxi at six o’clock PM from Riobamba and arrived at the park entrance gate at seven thirty. The rock n roll park service didn’t at first want to let us through, mainly I think because we didn’t hire one of their local guides, but after some negotiating and showing of Bjarne’s business card we finally was let through. We went straight in to the hut and made us some dinner and two hour later, at about ten PM we took of aiming for the summit of Chimborazo.

Ten o’clock is really early to take of on this mountain. The guides with clients usually starts at around midnight, but we started from the lower hut at 4850 m (most people start from the Whymper hut at 5000 m) and we didn’t feel really well acclimatized for the almost 1600-1700 m climb up to 6310 m, which is more than 100 m higher than Denali. And do I need to add, we wanted it badly this time, optimizing everything we could.

So we where walking through the night (yes, lets call it a walk. I counted three or four climbing moves during the whole walk up and down). Everything went smooth, but pretty slow. Its said that it take a week at altitude before the body even starts making more red blod cells, that are one of the more important factors in long-term acclimatization. 1,5 weeks after coming from sea level and living at 3000 m and climbing above 6000 m is hardly enough for any kind of performance. But then again, time on altitude is what we have lots of for the remaining part of this adventure.

It was a clear night with almost no wind and we where steadily gaining altitude. I was in front and Bjarne followed. The pace was set on such a slow pace that we would be able to get enough oxygen thorough the body while still taking that step upwards. But each 15 minutes, when we took a brief break to drink, we fell down on our knees resting on our ice axe, and on the later part of the night, almost fell asleep.

We had to dig deep within ourselves to get anywhere and at around 5700 meters four o’clock in the morning Bjarne had had enough. He was feeling really sick from the altitude, and we agreed that he was going down. I was feeling worried leaving him by him self in the darkness, but we had our radios on and we where on snow which meant i would be able to ski down to him in a matters of minutes.

I kept on upwards having one of the toughest fights in my life with myself. I had to gather all the concentration i had to just gain a few steps and in between I was lying on my ice axe trying to breath. But slowly, slowly I got higher and soon i felt like I was on the top of the first snow dome, the lower Ventemilla summit. I told Bjarne I was almost there, almost on the summit, but it would take another hour before i stood on the top. But I was not done yet. I still had to ski down about 50 vertical meters and then climb up on the true, Whymper summit. This was the physiologically most demanding thing on the whole

undertaking – to, in a very beaten condition at altitude, put myself in a position where I couldn’t immediately ski down if i started to feel too sick.

But I kept at it, and in the end i stood at the top just after dawn, alone on a volcano a little bit south of the equator, after one of the most mentally demanding things i have done in my life. Its by no means, on the paper, close to one of the hardest things I have done in the mountains. However, combining the physical condition I was in (worn out), the timing and degree of acclimatization I must say I was extremely relived standing on the summit and also breaking my personal altitude record (It has to be added that Bjarne broke his own altitude record for every step he took above 5300 meters).

After skiing down from the Whymper summit and working my way back onto the Ventemilla summit I once again clicked in to my bindings and buckled up my boots. I hadn’t been skiing since I was on Mt Byron in the coastal range in Alaska together with Greg Collins, Magnus Kastengren and Heidi Adamson in june. And it was with a tired but happy smile i took of down the west face in big turns.

Far below my ski tips I had the clouds and desert like lowland of Ecuador. Even though seven in the morning the sun was heating up my face and I was really enjoying the warmth when I now and then had to lie down to catch my breath.

Further down the snow got harder and I had to take it a bit easier, but still enjoying every turn I felt i had earned. Bjarne stood waiting for me at the snowline and all in all i got over 700 vertical meters of skiing in the falline and a great experience from a beautiful mountain.

I got one sad surprise though, when coming below the snow line. My climbing boots that we had hidden under a rock was gone, like everything else we have left unattended on this trip. I guess I shouldn’t blame anyone but myself leaving a pair of boots worth a months wage (for someone with a good job) out on the mountain.

Maybe it was the hardest earned 700 meters of skiing in my life. But the skiing, this time, came as a bonus. The real reward was the secrets I found within myself in the calm and painful darkness. More on that later. Now we are back down at Hostal Oasis in Riobamba and we are looking forward to I night out celebrating in town tonight before we hop on a bus tomorrow – direction south towards Guayaquil and then Peru!