On sunday I climbed my first mountain. Its a little bit embarrassing to admit to it since I have lived in Ecuador pretty much all my life, and this is a country that people from all over the world come to just to climb mountains. But at least now I can say that I've climbed a mountain. The truth is I've been to many mountains here, but this is the first time that I climb all the way to the top.
The whole experience was a lot more difficult that I thought it would be.
We left Quito at 6am and at 8am we got off the bus and started climbing. The first part was pretty easy.
We walked for about an hour and then stopped to rest for a few minutes and to have some food. Then the climb up got a little bit steeper, but still pretty easy and relaxing. Our plan was to go up to the second highest point of the Pasochoa and then the the highest point. After another long hour of climbing we got to our second stop. There the group divided. A couple of people decided to go with one of the guides through an easier route which went directly to the highest point, while the rest of us decided to take the harder way up, this way we could do a little rock climbing along the way. Now I am not an expert rock climber, in fact, it was only the second time in my life that I was attempting to rock climb. The truth is I was terrified. The wall wasn't exactly vertical, in fact I am pretty sure it was not too steep either, but I am very scared of rock climbing because well all you can do is whip out some strength out of your body and push yourself up, if not the only other option is falling off the mountain which is not exactly the best choice. Once you start climbing, you can't go back down, there is only one way and its up. Luckily I wasn't the only girl practically paralyzed with fear. Two girls who were right behind me were actually crying at a point because they didn't want to keep on climbing. It was scary, and there were moments when I doubted I had the strength to go on. At other times I just wondered why on earth I had decided to climb a mountain, but in the end I was fine. I did get some help along the way from some french guy who knew what he was doing. I am glad he was there, if not I am not sure how I would have made it to the top.
At the end of that rock we were finally at the top of the second highest peak and thats where we took our third break to rest and to have some more food. The view up there is absolutely stunning.
On one side you have the mountain which is actually an extinct volcano, and on the other side there is pretty much a cliff that falls right into the crater. The crater of the Pasochoa is huge, its what's left from an eruption that happened thousands of years ago. It pretty much blew off part of the mountain so that it collapsed into the crater. The inside of the crater is now extremely fertile and full of vegetation. Most of the time you get lots of fog in the inside of the crater so it seems like one side of the mountain vanishes into nothing, but when it clears out all you can see is a dense forest inside, its really beautiful.
After the second highest point we walked towards the peak of the volcano (the one you see in the photo above). The climb up to that one luckily didn't involve any more rock climbing, because I don't think I would have made it. Once up there we rested a bit, we got an awesome view of the Cotopaxi for just a couple of minutes and we practiced a little bit more rock climbing and some rappelling as well.
I actually can't believe I did all that, but I am glad I did. I'm not sure if I would do it again, I'm still terrified of rock climbing, but I guess I probably will because nothing beats the feeling of accomplishment once you reach the top of a mountain.
