Summit of Antisana and Cotopaxi reached!

Cotopaxi top; tak­ing a break on Anti­sana bot­tom photo

Lat­est install­ment from Ecuador from Amber:

Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Nov. 28^th at 8:40 am, After 7 hours and forty min­utes of climb­ing the direct route up the west­ern face of Anti­sana, Oswal­do, Hunter and Andy reached the sum­mit of Anti­sana. The coni­tions were per­fect: hard packed snow, clear skies with high clouds which pro­tect­ed our boys a bit from sun­burn, and ice bridges which car­ried them safe­ly from one side of the crevass­es to the other.

It was a long day: 11 hours climb­ing in total. The thourough­ly exhaust­ed guys arrived back in the late after­noon to Rumilo­ma where their baths had been drawn, the hot water bot­tles were tucked under the down com­forters at the ends of their beds, and the wait­ers were ready to deliv­er room ser­vice. Way to rough it guys…

They snug­gled in for a well deserved rest and we dont expect to see them until the afternoon.

Anoth­er fab­u­lous sum­mit for the Moun­tain Mad­ness team. Con­grat­u­la­tions guys!!! Next up Cotopaxi.

At 6:40 Nov. 30^th Ossy, Andy and Hunter suc­ces­ful­ly sum­mit­ted Cotopaxi after an aston­ish­ing­ly rapid assent of 4 hours and 40 min­utes. The weath­er was per­fect and they made an equal­ly speedy descent in just over an hour and a half. After Anti­sana, I sup­pose they were in per­fect shape to tack­le the worlds high­est active vol­cano. The group decid­ed against attempt­ing Chimb­o­ra­zo this time, after reports of severe­ly icy con­di­tions. They opt­ed instead for Cotopaxi.

After the unsuc­ces­ful attempt on Illiniza Sur — it appears that the guys were not anx­ious to tack­le black-ice again so soon. They obvi­ous­ly made the right choice as they had ide­al weath­er and con­di­tions on Cotopaxi and were treat­ed to spec­tac­u­lar views of its crater and the oth­er moun­tains along the avenue of the vol­ca­noes. Per­haps they were choos­ing which to climb on their next trip to Ecuador?

They are head­ing back to Quito and Rumilo­ma for a cel­e­bra­tion din­ner com­plete with a few bot­tles of our best Chilean wine and anoth­er sump­tu­ous meal cooked up by our chef-cita. Tomor­row its off to the bull­fights. Just anoth­er day in the life of a moun­tain mad­ness adven­tur­er here on the Equator…