Only in Ecuador can you visit the centre of the Earth and the top of the world in the same week.
Just 20 km north of the city of Quito is a spot known as The Centre of the Earth. In 1736, a group of French scientists located and marked the exact centre of the Earth (latitude 0-0-0). Two hundred years later, a monument was built on the site to commemorate their achievement.
A less accessible site relating to the centre of the Earth is the inactive stratovolcano known as Chimborazo, which is generally regarded as the spot on the surface of the planet that is furthest from the Earth’s central core.
Last July, Mike Falkenberg of Red Deer journeyed with Wayne Anderson of Red Deer and his son Ryan Anderson of Grande Prairie to explore the sites of Ecuador and climb its highest peaks.
“There is something special about trying to reach the spot on the surface of the Earth that is closest to the stars,” Falkenberg said. “Ecuador was also appealing to me as an alpine climber, because there are 10 peaks above 5,000 metres and three of them close to or above 6,000 metres. They are all majestic, glacier clad, volcanic cones standing high above the other peaks around them.”
One of the unique things about most of the big peaks in Ecuador is that they can be climbed from the trailhead to the summit and back in less than 48 hours if you are acclimatized to the altitude. Someone from a relatively low altitude like Red Deer (800 metres above sea level), must fly to Quito (2,800 metres above sea level) and allow their body time to adjust to the altitude before tackling a climb like Chimborazo.
“Wayne and his son Ryan travelled to Ecuador before me and spent several days acclimatizing themselves,” explained Falkenberg. “I planned a slightly different acclimatization schedule in that I travelled to Colorado to enjoy a climbing trip with one of my sons before heading down to Ecuador.”
By the time Falkenberg arrived in Quito, he had climbed several large peaks in Colorado and was ready to take on some of the smaller peaks in Ecuador.
“On my first full day in Ecuador we managed to climb to the summit of Rucu Pichincha (4,698 metres or 15, 413 feet), a volcano above Quito,” said Falkenberg. “Normally a peak this high is not one you would try on your first day at altitude (Quito is at 9, 200 feet above sea level). However, I was well acclimatized from my time in Colorado and Wayne and Ryan had already been in Ecuador almost a week so we felt safe to give it a try.”
The next day they took some time to explore downtown Quito before hopping on a bus to La Mitad del Mundo, the site of the Centre of the Earth Monument about 20 km north of Quito.
“The bus ride was an adventure in itself and the monument was fun and kind of cool even though it is kind of a tacky tourist trap type of place,” explained Falkenberg. “We also took the time to hike in the Pululahua crater which is a few kilometres north of the monument.”
The next few days were spent attempting to summit Nevado Cayambe, the third highest peak in Ecuador and Cotopaxi, the second highest peak in the country. Nevado Cayambe has the distinction of being the highest spot on the equator of the Earth and Copataxi is the highest active volcano on Earth. On both climbs, the group came within sight of the summit, but high winds and poor visibility prevented them from actually reaching it.
“After failing to summit on Ecuador’s third and second highest peaks, we were determined to succeed on Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest mountain,” said Falkenberg. “The weather was poor on the day of our scheduled climb and we set out knowing that this would be the only opportunity to climb Chimborazo before our scheduled flight back to Canada.”
About half way up the mountain, all the other guided parties turned around and went back down. Falkenberg’s group was left alone high on the mountain.
“It wasn’t very cold (only about minus 4) but the wind made it seem much colder,” Falkenberg described. “As we climbed higher, visibility became worse. Our clothes and equipment became covered with layers of ice. At one point, my neck became very sore and I realized it was caused by the fact that my helmet and headlamp had accumulated several kilograms of ice. It seemed as soon as you brushed the ice off your clothing or knocked it off your helmet, it would start to form up again. It was a bizarre phenomenon.”
When the sun came up they were almost at 6,000 metres elevation, so they decided to keep pushing upwards. The breaking dawn did not make much difference in visibility and the wind and blowing snow seemed to get worse as the morning wore on. A final difficulty they encountered was that the surface of the glacier was covered with a thin wind crust and they would periodically break through to powdered snow up to their knees.
“At 11 a.m., our altimeter said we were at 6,250 metres and through the blasting wind and swirling snow it seemed like the slope started to go down,” explained Falkenberg. “We determined that we had reached or were very close to the Veintemilla summit. To reach the true summit of Chimborazo we realized that we would need to descend a few hundred metres then traverse over one km and climb up to the Whymper summit at 6, 310 metres. The weather was so poor that it was difficult to tell the difference between the sky and the glacier, so we decided that it was too dangerous to continue to the true summit.”
“Again we were so close yet so far,” Falkenberg said “It was very difficult to head back down knowing the summit was so close. I had been dreaming, planning, preparing and training for this climb for more than six years. To me it felt like it must feel to lose a Stanley Cup playoff game in overtime of the seventh game or to miss winning a medal in the Olympics by hundredths of a second.”
In the sport of mountaineering and in life as well, you try to minimize and manage the risks the best you can by having the best equipment, training, and preparation. You try to learn and practise the most efficient and safest techniques. Even more importantly, you try to recognize the value of knowledge and experience.
“We were reminded of this very strongly on Chimborazo,” Falkenberg said. “It would have been very easy for us to have the attitude: well we did all this training and preparation, spent all this money, and came all this way — we deserve to summit this mountain. In my frustration of having failed to reach the true summit, I did have this attitude to some extent but Wayne reminded me that was the kind of attitude that could get you killed. No mountain, not even the Top of the World, would be worth that.”
“Our experiences in the Canadian Rockies, as well as stories of other climbers’ misfortunes, taught us how dangerous whiteout conditions up high can be,” he concluded. “It would have been all too easy, had we continued on to the Whymper summit to have blindly stepped off the edge of a 1,000-metre cliff or into a huge crevasse. The lesson that we had already learned and were reminded of was that the mountains and the weather are in charge, not you. You do not conquer a mountain — it lets you climb it. And sometimes it doesn’t let you. The mountain will always be there.”
Note: Falkenberg’s next mountaineering goal is to attempt Alaska’s Denali (Mount McKinley), North America’s highest mountain.
If you go:
• A Spanish/English dictionary or taking a Spanish course is useful in Ecuador as very few people speak English. On his first day in Ecuador, Falkenberg lost his dictionary and struggled to communicate the rest of the trip.
• The bus ride to the monument on the equator costs only 35 cents but it is jam packed and takes almost two hours to travel 20-km. Watch out for pickpockets in Central America. Falkenberg was robbed on the bus, but since most of his cash, credit cards and passport were in a money bag beneath his clothing, he didn’t lose very much money.
• Want to learn to climb mountains? Consider participating in the Central Alberta Section of the Alpine Club of Canada. For more information, visit their website at: www.alpineclubofcanada.ca/centralalberta.
Debbie Olsen is a Lacombe-based freelance writer. If you have a travel story you would like to share or know someone with an interesting travel story that we might interview, please email: DOGO@telusplanet.net or write to: Debbie Olsen, c/o Red Deer Advocate, 2950 Bremner Ave., Red Deer, Alta., T4R 1M9.