Pasachoa

So I don’t usually post more than once a week, but this Sunday deserves its own. In short, at around 12:30 Saturday night, a couple of my friends told me about their plans to summit the mountain Pasochoa in the morning. Of course I wanted in, so we stopped by my apartment to grab my stuff, and drove to Cumbaya (the suburb of my university) to spend the night at my friend Esteban’s house, so that we could leave early in the morning to start the climb.

After about 3 hours of sleep, we woke up at 5:45, drank some coffee, grabbed some sandwiches, and hopped in the car to Pasochoa Forest Reserve where the mountain is located, about an hour and a half away from Cumbaya. Pasachoa has an elevation of about 4200 km, and is one of the mountains in a series of training summits for people training to climb Cotopaxi (the mountain with the glacier we visited). So our group was a really cool group of people, a lot of whom were working their way up to climbing Cotopaxi in the future. Esteban’s friend Mario was our guide, along with a few other guys who had climbed Cotopaxi and a bunch of other really difficult mountains before, so it was great getting to hear all their stories!

It took about 4.5 hours up to the top, and it wasn’t anything really technical but just a really scenic, sometimes challenging hike. The top was a rock face from which you could see everything, including a huge caldera where a volcano had collapsed behind us, and the peaks of a few of the famous volcanoes in the country. It was pretty surreal, especially to think about how quickly everything had changed to bring me up there—just a really spontaneous decision a few hours before..
Up at the top we took a bunch of pictures (duh) and had a snack before starting the descent. On the way back once it flattened out towards the base we took our time and getting to know some of the people in our group and enjoying the scenery. At the bottom we were all exhausted and hungry but super satisfied. I’d only summited one mountain before (Mt. Leconte on the NC-TN) border, but it’s a pretty addicting feeling to make it to the top…hopefully I’ll get some more opportunities like this as the semester goes on!

ps. new pictures up on picassa, and soon to come on facebook hopefully!