This past Sunday, May 18th, and my dear mother's birthday to be exact, Tim and I climbed Illiniza Norte with a friend from another American school. Tim climbed this mountain in December with Andrew, back when I was sitting out with head colds. So this was my first go of it. The weather was, well, the same as it's always been any time I've tried to climb a mountain here. Norte also had quite a bit of snow, making for fun and mildly technical climbing at times. We hiked from the trailhead at about 8 am and returned to the mighty "Lando" at about 5 pm. All in all---GREAT day, even if I was a little slow. Norte's summit is at 5,126 meters (just shy of 17,000 feet). While we climbed higher than this on Cotopaxi, Norte is now my tallest summit, and therefore, something I'm proud of.
The sun came out for a couple minutes so Tim had to snap off a few shots of the uncharacteristically nice weather.
We crossed paths with some Swedes (well, they may have been German) pulling a full-on Ed Whymper revival. That dude wore his smoking jacket, cotton pants and Panama hat on the climb. You can see how bundled up we were.
Cold and snowy on the summit, and much unlike Tim's first climb here where you could see Cotopaxi all the way across the valley.
And here's Brian with his mighty Land Cruiser which we had to push out of a muddy ditch that very morning:
And the parting shot--Ecuadorian car wash:
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