Saturday, October 21, 2006
in which i conquer my fear of volcanoes
when i was about 7 or 8, i went to see a documentary at the air and space museum´s fancy 3-d surround sight&soound movie theater. the name of the movie was RING OF FIRE or something very similar. it was about all the volcanoes on the pacific rim and the pacific islands and had tons and tons of footage of volcanoes blowing up and lava flowing out and shit getting fucked up. i.was.terrified. for the next few nights i worried about what would happen when (not if, when) a volcano would blow up and fuck everything i knew up. i created plans of what stuff i would grab as i fled my house (my giant world map, and my rabbit) to who knows where. it didnt really bother me that the closest volcano to reston virginia is in washington state...all i knew was that lava was fucking scary and would probably get at me no matter what...since then i´ve come in contact with a few volcanos with minimal flashbacks, but ecuador is the land of the volcano. i live in the shadow of one (pichincha) and everywhere i go there´re new ones, waiting. so in the last few weeks i´ve done a lot to finally put to bed my first phobia. (photos at the end)
stage 1 - Cubilche
this was a pretty easy first step, given that Cubilche is long extinct and poses no threat to anyone...excepts idiots like me and the few others from spanish school that decide to walk up it. we left quito on friday afternoon, heading north to the small village of la esperanza at the base of Cubilche and the active Imbabura...saturday morning bright and early we met up with our guide (during the week a constrcution worker in nearby Ibarra, afterwork a marathon runner, and mountain treker) who lead us up the country road to where the assent really started. it took about 3 breathless hours to get to the top, where there was a pretty little lake...on the way down and around, we got a pretty sweet view of Cayambe, another volcano, this one snow capped...long day, but a good start
stage 2 - pichincha
this is quito´s volcano. there is a gondola that runs up to about 4100m above sea level (you figure it out) and from there you can walk up and up to the sumit. Pichincha is still active, in 1999 it spewed loads of smoke and crap ove quito, its a few years overdue for a major eruption too, so watch it. after the ride up, i had a wander round, admired the views over all of quito, wondered what the hell a horse was doing up there, and rode back down...in the gondola with me was a friendly guy called jorge, we chatted about all sorts of things (mountians predictably, music he was a huge pink floyd and ¿thunderwing? fan, and then he asked me if i believed in aliens...at first i thought he was talking about god because he kept pointing at the sky, so i was honest and said no...as soon as he started talking about green things and flying plates i realized my mistake and quickly changed my answer to ´who knows, there´s a lot of space out there´)
stage 3 - cotopaxi
cotopaxi is ecuador´s most picturesque volcano, its about an hour´s drive south of quito. its active, and due to blow up big time in the next 15 years or so...it has already destroyed the city of Latacunga three times, and will do it again (or so says the guide). for this one i took a trip`with a mountain biking outfit that sends people up mountains in jeeps, and then lets them fly down on bikes...(i was sold withing 2 seconds). we arrived at the gravelly parking lot on the volcano´s south slope at about 8am, then camilo (a guy from quito doing the same trip) and i walked uphill for about 45 minutes to the climber´s refuge. climbers usually spend the night here to get aclimatized to the altitude before waking up early to takle to glaciers on the way up to the summit...once we got back down to the jeep we picked our bikes off the roof and started down. the road is unpaved and a bit rough, at times it felt like riding over a kiddy sand pit (full of kids) or a giant ashtray after a truck full of bricks had crashed...after about an hour of racing down hill we got to a little lake, where we had lunch, then we rode around the volcano for another 2 hours to the park exit and got back in the jeep...
so thats that...and here´s the evidence-
stage 1
looking down culbilce from about a third of the way up
moutain lake...looked a bit cold for a swim
there had been a fire at the sumit, it looked like the moon
cayambe on the way down
stage 2
some douchebag blocking my view of pichincha
how the fuck did this horse get up here? the gondola?
old town quito from pichincha...that statue is of a giant virgin
new town quito...mountain in the background is Cayambe
this is the area i live in
stage 3
cotopaxi
glaciers at the peak
riding down
lake...i forgot the name of the mountains in the back, but they are inbetween the highway and cotopaxi...they look mighty like a bird with spread wings
the road out of the park
stage 1 - Cubilche
this was a pretty easy first step, given that Cubilche is long extinct and poses no threat to anyone...excepts idiots like me and the few others from spanish school that decide to walk up it. we left quito on friday afternoon, heading north to the small village of la esperanza at the base of Cubilche and the active Imbabura...saturday morning bright and early we met up with our guide (during the week a constrcution worker in nearby Ibarra, afterwork a marathon runner, and mountain treker) who lead us up the country road to where the assent really started. it took about 3 breathless hours to get to the top, where there was a pretty little lake...on the way down and around, we got a pretty sweet view of Cayambe, another volcano, this one snow capped...long day, but a good start
stage 2 - pichincha
this is quito´s volcano. there is a gondola that runs up to about 4100m above sea level (you figure it out) and from there you can walk up and up to the sumit. Pichincha is still active, in 1999 it spewed loads of smoke and crap ove quito, its a few years overdue for a major eruption too, so watch it. after the ride up, i had a wander round, admired the views over all of quito, wondered what the hell a horse was doing up there, and rode back down...in the gondola with me was a friendly guy called jorge, we chatted about all sorts of things (mountians predictably, music he was a huge pink floyd and ¿thunderwing? fan, and then he asked me if i believed in aliens...at first i thought he was talking about god because he kept pointing at the sky, so i was honest and said no...as soon as he started talking about green things and flying plates i realized my mistake and quickly changed my answer to ´who knows, there´s a lot of space out there´)
stage 3 - cotopaxi
cotopaxi is ecuador´s most picturesque volcano, its about an hour´s drive south of quito. its active, and due to blow up big time in the next 15 years or so...it has already destroyed the city of Latacunga three times, and will do it again (or so says the guide). for this one i took a trip`with a mountain biking outfit that sends people up mountains in jeeps, and then lets them fly down on bikes...(i was sold withing 2 seconds). we arrived at the gravelly parking lot on the volcano´s south slope at about 8am, then camilo (a guy from quito doing the same trip) and i walked uphill for about 45 minutes to the climber´s refuge. climbers usually spend the night here to get aclimatized to the altitude before waking up early to takle to glaciers on the way up to the summit...once we got back down to the jeep we picked our bikes off the roof and started down. the road is unpaved and a bit rough, at times it felt like riding over a kiddy sand pit (full of kids) or a giant ashtray after a truck full of bricks had crashed...after about an hour of racing down hill we got to a little lake, where we had lunch, then we rode around the volcano for another 2 hours to the park exit and got back in the jeep...
so thats that...and here´s the evidence-
stage 1
looking down culbilce from about a third of the way up
moutain lake...looked a bit cold for a swim
there had been a fire at the sumit, it looked like the moon
cayambe on the way down
stage 2
some douchebag blocking my view of pichincha
how the fuck did this horse get up here? the gondola?
old town quito from pichincha...that statue is of a giant virgin
new town quito...mountain in the background is Cayambe
this is the area i live in
stage 3
cotopaxi
glaciers at the peak
riding down
lake...i forgot the name of the mountains in the back, but they are inbetween the highway and cotopaxi...they look mighty like a bird with spread wings
the road out of the park
# posted by jacob @ 11:22 PM 
