Then it was my turn. I reached the top crawling on hands and knees and stood unsteadily up. Despite the cold wind and sunlight basting my body and face, I opened my eyes wide, and in a rapture that was in every way new to me, gazed away like a blissed-out anchorite. When I could think again, I thought, For the rest of my life, I will be trying to regain this feeling! I don’t know how long I stood there bedazzled like that, staring out at the universe—in memory an hour or more, but in fact probably only two minutes. Eventually, I made my way back down to the protected shelf, and when each of the others had taken his turn at the top, we began the descent.
We got back to the main supporting ridge fairly fast and, at Colón’s suggestion, followed an alternate route down to the paramo, bypassing the lake, a path that turned out to be easier but longer than our route up, so that by the time we reached the plateau, the sun was heading toward the horizon behind us. We were by now exhausted, and camp was still four miles away. Also, to complicate things, a dense fog was creeping in, and before long we couldn’t see more than fifty feet in front of us.
Cold and wet and bone-tired, we plodded in a southeasterly direction, trusting our guides, Colón and Alex, to bring us through the fog to our campsite. An hour went by, then nearly two. The fog grew thicker. Once in a while huge volcanic rocks like dark gray icebergs appeared out of the mists. But we might as well have been crossing the Arctic in a blizzard—everywhere we looked, it was the same. By now, everyone had a different idea of how far the camp was and in what direction it lay. Even our guides seemed unsure. We were almost too tired to care—in retrospect, a dangerous state of mind—when, suddenly, as we came around the front of a low berm, a coyote loped out of a nearby gully and trotted to the top of the berm, where it stopped and looked back at us. Was it the same coyote we’d seen at dawn? We peered around at the landscape, which seemed newly familiar. Twice, then, we had accidentally come upon the same coyote’s den, and it hadn’t fled until we were almost upon it, possibly because it had pups there. But we knew where we were now, and where the camp was. In silence, each of us thanked the coyote for pointing the way and passed on.
After our long trudge back to camp, we were almost too exhausted to complain of a cold supper (malfunctioning stoves) eaten standing around in the dark. And at the end of another freezing, bumpy night in my pathetic sleeping bag, while Mark snored comfortably beside me, I woke at six thirty determined to enjoy in my own way the one free day of our expedition. Luckily, the weather cooperated. It was a splendid day, warm and sunny, and after breakfast George, Laurie, and I lit out together—a four-hour hike across the paramo to a distant set of grass-topped hills, where we picnicked and basked in the reflected light of gleaming Cotopaxi. Later, we followed the meandering Rio Hualpaloma out onto the rolling plain, where brown rabbits bounded across our path and disappeared into the high silver-tipped grass. In the distance we saw bands of wild horses being rounded up by gauchos and moved to fresh grazing land. We passed several small herds of llamas—whose pursed lips and long-lashed, soulful eyes reminded me of Uma Thurman—tended by lone native shepherds who nodded solemnly at us.
On our way back to camp, we looped out toward the center of the broad plain and visited an Inca ruin, a long, rectangular mound fifty feet high. We climbed to the top, where the cut-stone remains of a mostly unexcavated fortress gave a commanding view of the entire valley, and for a long while stood there with the fresh southerly breeze in our faces and traveled backward in time to when these lovely mountains and the wide valley between them were new.
Later, back at the camp, where only Elias, the watchman, had stayed the day, we went upstream a ways and bathed under a heavy, cold waterfall and dried in the sun like contemplative turtles. Afterward, we changed into clean clothing, aired out tents and sleeping bags, tended to our gear, and packed for tomorrow’s trek to the top of Sincholagua. It had been a much-needed, rejuvenating interlude. We three felt pleased with ourselves, for we had grown stronger and more confident with each new day’s test. And we were beginning to learn how to look at this landscape, so unlike anything we had seen before, to understand its logic and scale and to anticipate its forms, and consequently it did not seem as intimidating as it had. Also, more personally, we had needed, in a sense, to renew our friendship, to get away from the others for a while and talk about people and places and notions that only we were familiar with.
Roused at 5 A.M. by Alex—after another long night of having my back pummeled by the lumpy ground and my blood curdled by my cold-pack sleeping bag—I was ready and eager to climb Sincholagua. We had prepared our packs the day before. They were heavier than on Rumiñahui—this time we were carrying serious cold-weather clothing and gear, as well as rain gear. On the IGM 1:50,000 map, Sincholagua is shown with a permanent, mile-long ice cap, but in recent years the snow line has receded and there is no longer any glaciation at the top. Still, the fog and rain on the plain down here turned into snow and ice up there, and at 16,400 feet, the temperature would be much lower than on Rumiñahui.
We left camp and crossed the darkened plain at a brisk pace, set purposely by Alex, who explained that this was going to be a longer, tougher climb than any we’d yet attempted, so we’d have to move fast to make it out and back by nightfall. Which was fine by me, Laurie, and George—we were feeling like Sherpas this morning. Gradually, the dawn light spread silver and gold wedges across the paramo and slowly gilded the mountains from the top down. Behind us, Cotopaxi filled the sky, dominating the landscape, and every now and then I peered back at her and tried to pick out the route that we would follow, tracing how, three days hence, at midnight, we’d leave the refugio, its tin roof a tiny, shining dot situated just below the bottom edge of the glacier at 16,500 feet, and from there follow a spiraling route over the snow, pass to the right along the lower lid of a large, shaded, eye-shaped break in the glacier, where we’d turn back and cross up and over the brow of the eye, then slowly switchback across the ice in the fading dark, until at dawn, just as the sun cracked the eastern horizon, we would reach the top.
For days, every time I looked at Cotopaxi, I had traced out that path, and each time it had seemed inhumanly high and steep, impossible for any but a professional climber like Alex to follow. But this morning, finally, I believed that I could do it. We crossed the Rio Hualpaloma, and when the trail started to rise from the plain toward the base of Sincholagua, I realized that our pace had slowed considerably. We passed over an ancient Inca stone wall, then crossed a bridge, and after negotiating a shortcut through a large, walled paddock of llamas guarded by a pair of native shepherds, we hit the first real hill since leaving camp. No longer worried about my own chances—or George’s or Laurie’s, either—of completing this or any other climb, I had started worrying some about the others, especially Fred, whose rapid heart rate was alarming his wife, Doctor Beth, who took his pulse at every rest stop and wrinkled her brow with concern, and Michelle, who was clearly suffering from the altitude. Her pretty, heart-shaped face was taut with strain, and she was walking at a much slower pace than on Rumiñahui. Mark, too, showed symptoms of altitude sickness; he was moving very slowly today and seemed dispirited.
Soon the group was undergoing fission. Alex walked ahead with me, Laurie, and George, climbing the grassy hills and ridges at what felt to us a useful, enjoyable pace, while Colón, our second guide, fell back with the others. Whenever we reached the top of a long slope or came to an arroyo or cliff that marked a transition between ascending zones of difficulty, we would stop and wait for the others to join us. Then, in a discreet way, Alex would check them for altitude sickness and decide anew whether to push on.
We had gathered on a rocky shelf where the trail dropped down a vertical twelve-foot embankment to a narrow arroyo and led across a dry streambed to the main ridge up Sincholagua. For the last half hour, Alex and I had been chatting optimistically about my joining him next year, perhaps with George and Laurie, and climbing Rainier. Just like the others, I, too, was now ya
kking obsessively about equipment and training regimens and other mountains than the one we were on—a result, I suppose, of my growing confidence and pleasure in my ability to meet this challenge, and perhaps the vanity of a middle-aged man surprised to find himself keeping pace with people in their twenties and thirties. It was a pleasant discovery, and I was savoring it.
First Alex went over the embankment and swung down to the rock-strewn bottom. Mark followed, making it to the bottom safely, but with difficulty. Handholds and footholds were hard to locate without help—he had to descend with his balance tipped by the weight of the pack, his belly facing the rock, his hands clamped on to slippery rotten-rock outcroppings, and his feet hidden from sight, except to the person below. Michelle went over next, with Mark and Alex spotting, and made it safely down. Then it was my turn. I proceeded exactly as the others had. I got halfway down the wall, so that my head was at the level of the shelf, with my weight held solely by my grasp on the crumbly rock there, while my feet groped blindly somewhere below for a hold. Finally, my left foot managed to find a cleft in the wall. Then, just as I transferred my weight—off balance, due to the pack—onto that foot, the cleft gave way, and I was falling. I remember turning in my fall, watching the rocks at the bottom speed toward me, and I remember rolling in midair to avoid hitting my head and spine, hoping instead to land on my shoulder, and then I remember a sound that I recognized as the snap of bone. I was flat on my back, looking at sky. A second later, Alex’s face, dark with fear, hove into view, and I knew at once that my trek to Cotopaxi was over.
EPILOGUE
My right collarbone was broken in two places. Up there on the sloped shoulder of Sincholagua, Doctor Beth and Alex fixed me up with a homemade clavicle splint, and I walked slowly back down to the camp, four hours below, lugging my pack on my left shoulder while the others continued on. Depressed and slightly disoriented from the fall and the pain, it was hard to grasp what had happened and, maybe more important, what wouldn’t happen. I might just as easily have fallen and broken my collarbone while stepping from the shower at home—my accident was in no way a consequence of the difficulty of the climb or of my being out of shape or ill equipped. Right stuff or wrong stuff had nothing to do with it. Bad luck was all. Okay, maybe overconfidence had made me slightly less cautious for a few seconds than I should have been, but still, that’s the sort of mental state I deal with every day of my life. It could have happened to anyone, especially me, anywhere, even at sea level.
Given what I’d set out to do—climb at high altitude in the Andes—I’d succeeded. I’d made myself fit enough to keep pace and sometimes even to exceed the pace and endurance of serious climbers still in the bloom of youth, and getting myself into that condition hadn’t required a significant sacrifice of time or energy. In the last few days, my fellow trekkers, affectionately and without irony, had taken to calling me “The Beast”—no small compliment for an aging boomer.
The greatest disappointment, of course, was that I would not make it to the summit of Cotopaxi, which since my first arrival in Ecuador had become my heart’s desire. But the distinction between failure and disappointment is important. I had not failed; I was disappointed. I’d learned, certainly, that I was more than capable of doing this extremely difficult thing, but I had not been able to do it. A strange mix of melancholy and elation, then, accompanied me as I made my slow way back down the side of Sincholagua and plodded across the plain toward our tents. At the camp, I rested awhile, eventually setting myself the task of gathering firewood, so that when my companions returned cold and exhausted, they’d be greeted by a blazing fire.
They were back by nightfall, a thoroughly dispirited bunch, even George and Laurie, after having been forced to turn back well below the summit. My fall had left the group depressed and discouraged, and several of them were still struggling with altitude sickness. Despite my campfire, everyone retired to his tent early in a funk. I was in considerable pain and had to lie on my back all night long, as cold as I have ever been and as uncomfortable, and slept only intermittently and for a few minutes at a time.
The next day we broke camp—although I could but stand and watch while the others did the work—and, when the bus arrived, loaded it with our gear and rode across the paramo and up the long, winding track to the parking area at the foot of mother Cotopaxi. From there, it was a steep 2,000-foot hike up to the hut, the refugio, which was located at 16,500 feet, where the glacier began. Determined to make it at least that far up the side of a mountain that I had come to love, I walked ahead of the others, whose climb was slowed by the weight of their backpacks. It was a sad, lonely walk for me. Regardless of how strong I felt, regardless of my ability to deny the pain of a busted collarbone, there was no way I could join the others now—no way I could swing an ice ax, haul a heavy backpack, cling to a rope, and make my slow way up to the windblown summit and see the sunrise from above the earth. Still, I wanted to climb as far up the side of the mountain as I could, to get at least as far as the refugio, and I trudged stubbornly ahead until I made it.
Afterward, I descended alone to the bus and rode back to Quito, where I spent the night at the Alameda Real Hotel. The next day I hired a car and traveled for three days—waiting for my scheduled departure for home—in the Indian villages of the north, day-hiking through the twelve-thousand-foot-high lomas up there and spending my nights in small hotels. It was interesting travel, and solitary, the way I usually prefer it, but anticlimactic and lonely. I missed my fellow trekkers—the bumptious Fred and his walking sticks; my tentmate, Special Agent Mark, whose love of equipment was exceeded only by his surprising love of seventies quasi-metal music by groups like Rush and Pink Floyd; Doctor Beth, calm and disciplined and thinking constantly of her new baby at home; Michelle, anxious and fatigued and suffering from altitude illness, but courageously keeping on nonetheless, as if her whole sense of self-worth depended on having climbed these mountains; and, of course, my old Adirondack chums, George and Laurie, who, on returning home, would tell me everything I missed; and finally, our garrulous guide, the incomparable Alex, whom, if he learned to cook, or hired someone who could, I would follow anywhere. But most of all, I missed the mountain, Cotopaxi, looming over my shoulder, blocking the sun, inviting me, like a grand seductress, to come back, come back and try again.
FOX AND WHALE, PRIEST AND ANGEL
Three years after my attempt to climb Cotopaxi in 1997, I returned to the Andes for an even more difficult climb, Aconcagua, at 22,834 feet the highest mountain in the world outside the Himalayas. On the tenth day, at 16,170 feet, the wind rose and the temperature dropped and light snow began to fall. Two days before, under a cobalt-blue sky, we’d hauled ourselves and our gear over slurry talus and scree from the base camp at Plaza Argentina across the rock-scabbed skin of the Glaciar de Relinchos to Camp One. On a broad ledge where the glacier squeezed between one of Aconcagua’s uplifted, sedimented skirts and rubble tumbled from the side of her slightly lower sister peak, Ameghino, we pitched our tents.
We double-poled them and lashed them to large rocks with nylon rope, then hauled ice from an exposed slab of the glacier to melt for drinking, cooking, and cleaning, and got the stoves fired up.
We were nine men, six moderately experienced climbers and three guides. With more than six thousand feet still to go, we were exhausted, and one of us, Chris Zanger, the youngest and possibly the fittest, was showing early signs of altitude sickness: a viselike headache and nausea and disorientation. It had been our toughest day so far. The trail had switchbacked over moraines and alongside deep crevasses where glacier melt splashed over room-sized boulders to the broad Valle de los Vacas thousands of feet below, the slowly ascending valley we’d hiked a week earlier, twenty-seven miles in from the road that runs between Mendoza, Argentina, and the Chile-Argentina border.
Early in the day, I had glanced off to my left and had spotted, trotting along the edge of the crevasse between us, a large red fox. For a long time, the fox over on it
s side of the crevasse kept wary pace with us on ours while we slogged along, the weight of our packs steadily increasing, it seemed. With each turn in the zigzag trail our breathing became more labored. One breath per step. Then, after a while, two. Then, as the day wore on, three. I stopped and studied the fox. It sat and looked across at me. In this extreme Andean glacial world the sight of a red fox trotting watchfully across a page of a large-print geological history of the planet was like a hallucination. The fox is an animal I have long honored—a personal totem, practically. It’s situated at the etymological base of my first name; its image is tattooed on my left arm. It was as if I had spotted across the crevasse a cousin or a neighbor from home. What the hell are you doing here? I almost said. Then it darted behind a boulder and was gone—an omen or a charm, I couldn’t tell which. I asked the man next to me, my Toronto friend David Young, if he had seen the fox.
“Missed it,” he said and kept climbing.
By the time we’d finished supper and cleaned up, the wind was gusting at fifty miles per hour. Snow was falling in tiny pellets. We retreated, three men to a tent. David and I shared a tent with Michael Zanger, one of head guide Alex Van Steen’s two assistants and father of Chris Zanger, the young man suffering from altitude sickness. The eldest members of the group—I was about to turn sixty, Michael was right behind me, and David was in his early fifties—we’d taken to calling our tent the Assisted Living Facility. Nights we read poetry, mostly from Rilke’s Duino Elegies, and listed favorite bebop musicians.