The Summit
This is the third part of a short story about summiting Nevado del Tolimo.
It’s 2 AM. Pitch black. I’m in my tent.
“Etan!” my guide, Rodrigo yells. “It’s time to get up.”
He doesn’t know but I haven’t slept a wink since I went to bed at 7:30 PM.
“Estoy listo” I respond. I am ready.
We’re at 13450 feet, right now. In five hours we will be at the summit of Nevado del Tolimo, 17631 feet, roughly the same height as Everest basecamp.
I am ready for this.
“Summit a mountain” has been on my vision board for four years. I am finally here. I am alive, awake, and ready to take the final step. This is it. It’s go time.
I emerge from my tent wearing all the same clothing I wore the day before. It was too cold to take anything off when I went to bed, and besides, even if it was warmer what would have been the point?
Cowboy Coffee, Granola and 1000 feet of Pain
At 2:40 AM I slug down a mug of cowboy coffee. Rodrigo pours some cereal into a bowl and covers it with milk. The cereal is great. The milk, not so much. Warm and viscousy, with a gamey aftertaste, I assume it came straight off the farm where we are staying. I try not to think too much about it, as it is starting to weird me out. I know I’ll need the energy. I tilt the bowl and pour the warm milk down my throat. It’s time to take off.
With our headlamps secured to our foreheads providing just enough light to see a few feet ahead, we start our ascent. It will begin with a 1000 foot climb on sandy terrain at what appears to be a 45 degree slope.
Compared to the day before where it took us 6.5 hours to get out the door, today it takes us less than 45 minutes. We are off to a good start and Rodrigo seems pleased. It didn’t take long for that bubble to burst. About 50 yards up the climb, I’m already winded. I reach for my water and realize that I didn’t pack any.
“I forgot to pack water” I said sheepishly.
I could literally feel the eye roll from Rodrigo.
I ran down the mountain and poured 600 ML of water into my bottle. Rodrigo and the other guy continued climbing.
My punishment for forgetting my water is that I have to catch up to them. The 1000 foot sand dune is brutal but I’m determined to make up the time. There’s no way I’m going to be the weak link on this climb.
As I get within 25 yards of them, I am gasping for air. My mouth fills with a metallic taste. What is this? It tastes familiar. I realize it’s the taste of blood. It’s coming from the back of my throat. My mind races. Did I go too fast up the mountain? Did my lung just implode? Are imploding lungs a symptom of altitude sickness? Am I gonna die? Then I spit. There is no blood. It’s a relief. I take deep breath and calm down. The taste remains in my mouth. I don’t know the cause but I am at least 75% confident my lungs are still intact.
The one benefit of forgetting my water is that when I catch up to them, I am now climbing behind the big guy. At 210 pounds and carrying a 40 pound pack, he is a good amount slower than. Rodrigo or I and he takes frequent stops. I don’t mind at all.
For the past two days, we’ve attacked the mountain at a torrid pace and I’ve spent most of my mental energy concentrating on not dying. This slower pace has an almost aristocratic feel to it — like sitting in first class of an 1800s steam engine train peering out at the splendor of the American frontier. For the first time during the trip I have the time to take it all in and just observe.
Cologne, Darkness, Twinkling Lights and Sulpher.
The first thing I notice at my new slower pace is the scent of cologne. The big guy in front of me is wearing it. Why he is wearing cologne on a mountain I have no idea but it didn’t last long. As we near the top of the 1000 foot sand dune, the air becomes sour. The smell of sulpher from the volcano fills my nostrils. I stop for a moment and turn around to see the hill we just conquered. I can’t actually see shit, but the black void is beautiful. The crescent moon shines down from above. As we get farther up the mountain, I crane my neck and look over my right shoulder. In the distance, I can see the twinkling lights of the cities fifty miles away.
We pass another campsite and the terrain changes. The sandy earth of the first hill give way to loose rock and gravel. The loose rocks are tricky. Friend or foe? I step on one that comes loose and rolls down about fifty feet before coming to a stop.
The vegetation also changes as we get higher up. At basecamp there were grasses flowers, soil, plants.
Here, the grasses, flowers and soil are gone. It’s just rocky gravel and a few sparse plants species.
After about another 1000 feet or so, Rodrigo tells us we are going to do some scrambling.
“Leave your trekking poles here and take off your gloves,” Rodrigo instructs. “You want all the traction you can get for this section. Be very careful. This part can be dangerous.”
The scrambling itself was not difficult. I wonder why Rodrigo took so much precaution. I’m guessing there must be a cliff behind us and it’s better we’re climbing in the dark when we can’t see it and get freaked out. (On the way back down in the light, I would find out that that guess was correct).
Once we get to the end of the scrambling section, Rodrigo pulls out another pair of trekking poles from his backpack while mine are 60 feet down the mountain. What the shit? I feel a bit angry, kind of like Harry in Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd pulls out the extra pair of gloves. But I quickly figure out why he told me to leave my poles. The next few hundred feet is a lot of scrambling. It’s better to be on all fours with a lower center of gravity than standing upright with poles.
As we get closer to the glacier we stop and take a break. We take some photos and I eat a granola bar. I’ve never been in air this thin. Just taking out a granola bar and unwrapping it gets me winded.
The Glacier
We reach the glacier. Rodrigo takes off his gloves and helps me put on my crampons. It reminds me of one of my first snowboarding trips with my older sister in Utah when we were kids. This was before bindings had ratchets and they were a real pain in the butt to put on. I couldn’t put mine on myself. So at the top of each run she took her gloves off and put my bindings on for me. As a helpless newbie, I had an immense amount of gratitude for her that day.
For the first few hundred yards, we don’t tie up together.
“Follow my footsteps exactly” says Rodrigo “You Dont want to fall into a crevasse.”
After a couple hundred yards it’s time for the three of us to tie up.
The day before I asked Rodrigo what his friend’s name was.
“I don’t know” was his response. “I met him once climbing about a year ago but I don’t know him other than that. He was going to summit by himself without rope but that’s not safe so he asked if he could come with us. I told him yes, as long as he doesn’t slow us down. He’s a pretty big guy which is good and bad. The good news is that if either of us fall, he’ll serve as an anchor. The bad news is that if he falls, he’s taking us with him.”
The Summit
While we were stopped Rodrigo hands me a sunglasses case with my 100% UV protection glasses.
Yes!!!!!!!!!
In case you are wondering, the only reason people climb mountains is to take awesome photos to share on Instagram so that your friends think you are 5X more cool than you actually are in real life.
Well, at least that’s why I was doing it.
And now I was about to be handed the ultimate photo prop. Forget summiting the mountain. This was the moment I had been waiting for.
For at least the last 48 hours, I had imagined the glasses were going to be those circular mirrored ones with the leather side blinders. You know the ones I’m talking about. The kind that only artic explorers and Sir Edmund Hillary can pull off. If you can swing it, these are the glasses that make aviators look like child’s play. You put them bad boys on and you’re instantly 30% cooler.
Instead, when I opened up the case, inside were a pair that looked more like Oakly wrap-around shades. The kind you’d expect to see on a guy at Disney World sporting jean shorts and a high and tight haircut.
This was NOT the look I was going for. Instead of 30% cooler, I looked at least 25% less cool. I also looked 100% more likely to believe that WWE is real and that Obama was born in a foreign country.
Despite these shit.glasses, I declare a five minute mandatory photo shoot to document my badassedness. Then we will face our last big obstacle before the summit, a thirty foot ice wall that requires an ice ax to climb.
After Rodrigo easily climbed the wall, he told me it was my turn. Honestly, if it hadn’t been my first time doing this, it probably would have been super easy. But it was my first time and fight or flight mode kicked in. About half way up the wall I struck the ice with my ice ax. Ice started cracking below me. I wildly clutched for the wall with my free hands and feet. Holy shit! My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. There was no real danger as I was harnessed in but it sure didn’t feel that way in the moment. Another two swings of the ax and fortunately I was at the top.
While my body filled with Adrenalin my lungs felt like they were drowning. “I need one minute,” I gasped. I think I took more like five. And even so, I don’t think I caught my breath again until the summit.
Finally, after four and a half hours of climbing, we reach the top.
It is magnificent. It was one of the clearest days he’s ever seen on the mountain. We had a 360 degree view of everything.
I couldnt believe this moment was finally here. I started to tell Rodrigo how this had been on my vision board for four years and what a big accomplishment it was for me. As I’m in the middle of this, he inexplicably turns around and starts peeing. Yep. Starts peeing. Right there on the volcano in the middle of my story.
I guess when you gotta go you gotta go. At that moment, I thought it an odd thing to do. Actually if I’m being honest, I thought it was weird as fuck. But it didn’t really bother me. I needed to tell someone and since we were the only two at the summit, I decided to pull out my phone and make a video. It’s super awkward. I never really know what to say when there’s a camera in my face.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize how lucky I am that Rodrigo had to pee in that moment. I never would made that video otherwise, and I’m so glad that I did. I’ll have that little nugget of awkward awesomeness for the rest of my life.
I just really wish now that I had those cooler glasses.
