Posted by on Jul 27, 2011 in Hiking, Outdoor Fun | 0 comments

Ecuador Warmup Climbs

Warm up Hikes in Ecuador
Mt. Pichincha, (15,413)
Mt. Fuya Fuya (13,986)
July 26, 2011
Wes Chapman
Warm up hikes and acclimatization
Boatmen talk of “time on the water” as a vital part of any success in dealing with the inevitable problems associated with working on a boat. With high altitude climbing – even moderately high altitudes around 20,000 feet – time at altitude is an absolute must. This vacation involves messing around with day hikes for the first six days to build up enough metabolic capability to push through to 20,000 feet. Failure to do this properly can result in terrible headaches, physical incapacitation, and two very bad acting fatal conditions – high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) and high altitude cerebral edema (HACE). I guess that I would prefer to mess around with a bunch of day hikes than mess around with HAPE or HACE. I have seen people with both on Kilimanjaro, and it did not look like a lot of fun. The first two day hikes on this trip were Mt. Pichincha and Mt. Fuya Fuya (you have to love that name).  
Mt. Pichincha – Quito’s Violent Neighbor
Quito drapes around Mt. Pichincha, which pushes right into the heart of the city. The volcano is a classic Andean strato volcano, which has two parts, Guagua (which means baby in Quechua) and Rucu (old one). Guagua is a naughty baby, and as recently as 1999 erupted, covering the city with several inches of ash. The mountain is accessed from a very slow moving gondola, referred locally as the Teleferico which takes you up the bottom part of the mountain to around 13,000 feet. We climbed the Rucu Peak, which is a little lower, but blessed free of active volcanism. Guagua, on the other hand continues to be active with a variety of fumaroles and a fair amount of gas.
Pichincha Volcano at Rest, as seen from the Teleferico
Naughty Pichincha Guagua behaving badly in 1999
Welcome to the fastest way up the Hill from Quito in the Valley
The hike starts out on a wide dirt path, and ends with a scramble up a rhyolite ash flow. The entire hike took around 4 hours, and we were all sucking wind most of the way up – it takes some time and some practice hiking to get acclimatized. The high country here is grassland which grades into bare rock around 14,000 feet.
Martha joined us on this kick off hike, which was a lot of fun, and she made it up to cave in an old lava tube around 14,000 feet. There we joined a couple of guys who said that they were German, but one looked for all the world like Keith Richards – on a bad day. This guy was wild eyed, and Jill valiantly volunteered to distract him into a photo. You decide.
Jill meets Keith Richards in a lava tube on Pichincha
The team at the first rest stop on Pichincha
After the cave at the lave tube, the hike got a lot more sporting, with a variety of fine grain, late-stage silica based ejecta, old ash flows, and a few volcanic bombs. It was pretty interesting geology, and a fun scramble to the top. The trip down was fast and direct; I was hungry and wanted a late lunch.
Three amigos atop Pichincha
The character of the day was Freddie, our local guide. He sports a three tailed mullet, and is really named Itya, the Sun God. Freddie is a college graduate, and radiates competence. He is a terrific climber, and like all of the guides, in awesome physical condition. Freddie didn’t say much the first day or so, but seemed to loosen up by the second day, when he confessed that he had a 45 model 1911 semi-automatic pistol to deal with any unfortunate eventualities. I love the 1911, and was glad that Freddie had one to deal with whatever problems that might arise. Peace – through superior firepower.
Freddie at rest on Fuya Fuya
Recovery, and off to Fuya Fuya
The trip up Pichincha produced a mighty hunger, and we dined al fresco in the Old Town portion of Quito in a roof top restaurant. What I found most unbelievable was their “empanada del viento” (empanada of wind) appetizer. I had no idea what it might be, but was intrigued by the possibilities of a wind producing empanada. It turned out to be a disappointment in the wind production department, but was the biggest thing that I had ever been served on a plate – a big bag of air.
Attacking a windy empanada
Fuya Fuya was our object of desire the next day, and we got a late start as part of our team stayed out very late teaching the locals North American dance moves, while under the influence of large amounts of alcohol. We rolled out of Quito and headed north, toward Cayambe and Fuya Fuya. The country was principally unconsolidated volcanic ash (over 1,500 feet deep), cut deeply by several rivers, and was pretty spectacular scenery. While the roads were good, it also made for some pretty sporting driving, which verges on a contact sport down here.
On the way to the Hill, we stopped in our hotel for the next couple of days to drop off some gear, the Hacienda San Luis. This enchanting hacienda is owned by a former physician from Ecuador who spent his career practicing in NJ. He has a penchant for raising fighting bulls. After we headed out to Fuya Fuya, Martha did a horse back tour and met the owner, and reported that he is a really nice guy, and seems to produce very large and mean fighting bulls – She saw several.
Mt. Fuya Fuya in the mist
Fuya Fuya is part of a volcanic complex which has been inactive for 165,000 years. It has produced a large collapse caldera named Laguna de Mojanda, which sits inside the collapse feature, much like Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.

Laguna de Mojanda
Mt. Fuya Fuya is a remnant rhyolite ring dike, which was clearly a late stage feature. Other much older examples include the ridge coming off Mt. Lafayette in NH and the ridge of Mt. Rogers in VA. It is steep grassy terrain almost to the summit, and makes for a fast and fun climb. The summit is steep and exposed, and a fun scramble.
Near the top of Mt. Fuya Fuya
Hacienda San Luis
The trip down was steep, a little muddy and a lot of fun. Tomorrow we head off to the hut at Cayambe and up to 19,000 feet.
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Posted by on Jul 26, 2011 in Mountaineering, Outdoor Fun | 0 comments

Ecuador Climbing, a Primer

The Ecuador Climbing Trip, a Primer

July 24, 2011

Wes Chapman

Goodbye Russia, Hello Ecuador

This past January, I was feeling the need for a little high altitude mountaineering, and a shot at one of the Seven Summits, so I signed up to climb Mt. Elbrus – the highest peak in Europe at 18,442 ft. I managed to persuade my friends and climbing partners, Gary and Jill Rogers to come along, albeit reluctantly. My wife Martha wished me well in the land of the erstwhile Commies, and said that she would make other plans.

In late winter I got a prescient email from my friend Stan Spencer, informing me that the revolutionaries in southern Russia were at it again, and had blown up a large part of the infrastructure around Elbrus and had shot several skiers and climbers. In a day or two I got an email from my friends at the guiding service, RMI Guides (a terrific bunch), suggesting the discretion was the better part of valor, and that a trip to Ecuador to climb Cotopaxi (19,348 ft.) and Cayambe (18,996 ft.) might make a lot more sense than getting mixed up in the Second Russian Revolution. While had hated to miss out on a sporting trip to one of the Seven Summits, these volcanoes in Ecuador are great climbs, and not in an active war zone. Additionally, Martha relented, and agreed to come, as it offered some great eco-tourism and a chance to practice her Spanish in an Andean environment.

Mt. Cotopaxi

Ecuador and Quito

Ecuador is a small country in South America, eponymously named for the latitude line that passes through it. Ecuador is the most bio-diverse country in the world (per square meter) with over 25,000 native plants (versus 17,000 in all of North America), and over 1,600 birds (versus 800 in Europe). The country is home to over 5,000 species of butterflies – simply unimaginable. The bio-diversity is best noted in the Galapagos, due to the wildly divergent and idiosyncratic fauna, (and some great publicity from a passenger on the Beagle in 1835), but the vast majority of the diversity is found on the mainland due to the latitude and topography.

Gary, Jill, Martha and Wes on the Equator outside Quito

At 276,000 sq. miles, Ecuador is about the size of Nevada, and is divided into: the Pacific Coastal Zone, the Andean (La Sierra) Zone and Amazon Zone by the Andes Mountains which run North-South through the entire country. Quito is the capital, and at around 10,000 feet is the second highest capital in the world – second to La Paz Bolivia. Quito sits in a narrow (5-10 miles wide) mountain valley, which is overcrowded with almost 1.5 million people, and was named The Avenue of Volcanoes by the great German explorer Alexander von Humboldt in 1802.  
The geology in Ecuador is dictated by very active tectonic activity. The dense, ocean floor Nazca Plate is being rapidly subducted under the lighter (silica based) South American Plate, producing some of the most abrupt and challenging volcanic mountains in the world. The western side of the Sierra is almost entirely volcanic, and the eastern side is highly metamorphic Paleozoic rock.

Lying on the Equator, Ecuador has no noticeable seasons, but is impacted by rainy and dry seasons, which differ on the eastern and western sides of the Sierra. The climbs that we are doing should be fine from a weather perspective, but there are always risks when you only budget one day for a summit over 18,000 feet.

Quito – Beautiful, but Crowded into an Alpine Valley

Ecuador Economy & Politics – The Jeff Hart Theorem

Jeff Hart was an extremely opinionated and popular English professor at Dartmouth when we attended in the mid to late 70’s. He always maintained that it was preposterous that countries like Ecuador were given the same fundamental rights in the UN as Sweden or Japan, when the concept of “Country” could hardly be applied to all in the same way. Every time that he lit off into this line of discussion, which was about every time that I saw him, he used Ecuador as the archetype of the failed nation state. The disastrous economic policies and farcical political events that dominated the news at the time regarding Ecuador made it his favorite goat. I never paid much attention until preparing for this trip, but Ecuador has a long and consistent history as an economic and political Verdun.

I was initially struck by the fact that between 1999 and 2008, Ecuador had 7 governments, only one of which was properly elected. The current President, Rafael Correa, dodged a coup last year, and is best Buddies with the lunatic Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. In looking a little further back, I found that in the 20 year period from 1928 to 1948, Ecuador had 20 different governments, and lost a war with Peru, which cost it half of its territory. Only the military intervention by the US kept Ecuador from being consumed by its neighbors.

Today the official currency is the US Dollar, which was adopted in 1999 in a period of economic collapse. Today the economy seems to be thriving on 1) Oil Production, 2) Banana exports, 3) Eco-tourism, and 4) laundering Narco-Dollars from its neighbors in Colombia and Peru. Wow.

Visiting the Equator

We spent the first day here doing all of the proper tourist stops of cathedrals, plazas and museums, but the highlight of our first day here was a visit to the actual equator. This is a line which I had crossed many times before, but never taken the time to stop and explore in any detail. The site we visited consisted of a museum and science park dedicated to the oddities presented by the equator. The French sent a scientific team to Ecuador from 1736 to 1744, which mis-located the line by about 250 yards. Since their survey was used to determine the length of 1 meter (one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole) the meter has been off by a little bit ever since.

 The science park had all kind of cool exhibits about the special properties of the equator including sink emptying, egg balancing and the magical strength sapping properties of standing on the line itself. I was struck by the demonstration of the Coriolis Effect causing water to spin in opposite directions in two sinks only ten feet on either side of the line, while water in the sink on the Equator actually dropped straight down without spinning. Gary tried his hand at balancing a raw egg on the head of a nail, without much success. You would think that in the course of an eight year expedition to a single site, that the French team might have resorted to using empty wine bottles to test their site selection.

Gary Testing the Magic of the Equator

The museum included an exhibit on indigenous cultures in Ecuador including a pictogram of head shrinking, which was a popular past time among the Amazon Indian populations and included a display of a couple of actual specimens. Most striking to me was the fact the native populations had properly identified the actual line of the equator, and the museum site was located directly on top of some of their old astronomical observation and burial sites and was only 300 yards from the French site. I guess that the French really didn’t bother to look around very much.

Tomorrow is off to a little warm up hike to 15,500 feet.

A Shrunken Human Head

The Virgin of Quito

Guarding the Presidential Palace – Equipped with a Revolving Door
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Posted by on Jul 4, 2011 in Hiking, Outdoor Fun | 0 comments

Climbing Five Peaks in the Adirondacks in Two Days

Iroquois Peak (4,840 ft.), Algonquin Peak, (5,114 ft.), Wright Peak (4,580 ft.)
16.7 miles, July 2, 2011
Nye Mt. (3,895 ft.), Street Mt. (4016 ft.)
9 miles, July 3, 2011
Adirondack Park Weekend, Where the Wild Things Are
A Tale of Climbing and Characters
A long weekend in July promises the ability to sneak away for some real hard core hiking, and this year the 4th fell on a Monday – perfect. I have recently been spending some time in the Adirondacks, and had my sights set on the High Peaks of Macintyre Ridge. These are some of the great hikes in the High Peaks, and the weather promised to be perfect for Saturday.
The High Peaks seen from Lake Champlain
I had been delayed in my departure planned for Friday evening, and didn’t get out until 7:30 Saturday morning. By the time that I arrived at 11:00, the scene at Adirondack Loj was mayhem; thousands of people new to the mountains out to take advantage of a beautiful day and a long weekend. We are talking about babies; chubby, pale white, video game playing adolescents; and big bellied dads in bad hats – a nightmare.
My experience is that crowds on hikes diminish by 50% for every 2 miles from the parking lot and 1,000 feet of altitude gain. My fervent hope was that time – and distance – were both on my side.
I walked in via South Meadows Lane, a 3.5 mile backdoor route to Marcy Dam. The Loj parking lot was full, cars were parked for miles along the road, and a steady stream of vacationers was headed in along the Van Hoevenberg Trail. I was trailed by a group of young and excited hikers from Ontario, wearing little in the way of clothing and speaking loudly in the still popular “Valley Girls” vernacular. They proved nettlesome companions all the way to Marcy Dam.
A Beautiful day at Marcy Dam
By Marcy Dam, the crowd was reduced by around 50%, and falling fast. I beat feet up to Avalanche Lake to get to the trail head up to Iroquois and Algonquin Peaks. Avalanche Lake is a cleft carved out between two massive and very steep mountains (over 60 degrees): Mt. Avalanche to the NW and Mt. Colden to the SE. Avalanche Pass lies at the NE end of the Lake, in the narrow slot between these mountains. The Pass fills up with vegetative detritus and rock sliding down into the Pass, and creates a barrier that requires constant work to remain open.
These are young growing mountains, composed of monolithic hunks of extremely hard, very old, highly metamorphosed rock (principally Anorthosite) pushed up from below. This Pass was created by a series of interrelated faults and dikes, which combined to create the spectacular terrain. One of the unmarked, but most popular trails up Mt. Colden is up a trap dike in the face up from the Lake, which gradually fades into the slide face near the top.
Piles of detritus at the base of Avalanche Pass
The water’s edge at Avalanche Lake
I arrived at Avalanche Lake, passing a family with a 2 year old baby and an old lady with so many pots and pans hanging off her pack that she rattled like a marching Hessian. As I sat down on a log at the beach, I started to talk with a couple of young women, and an old guy in a bad hat. It turned out that he was a professor of philosophy at one of the SUNY campuses, and had recently moved from Alaska where he also raised sled dogs. The women had a sled dog mixed with a Tibetan breed, forming the impetus or some innocuous conversation. The dog owner was young, incredibly fit and wearing a black mini-skirt and a “wife-beater” T-shirt. She had come to climb on the cliffs with some of the guys who were already on the rock. It turns out that she was a professor of physics at UVM, and felt strongly that string theory was a bunch of bull s—. Wow.
The Hanging Bridge on the Avalanche Lake Cliffs
The day was getting late, and I had a lot of climbing left to do. I headed up the trail to Iroquois and Algonquin, right straight up. The trails here can be very steep and run up slides and stream beds, which is fun, but tough on old knees. I passed a number of descending hikers who were really quite fearful and visibly tired. One young group told me that I had at least 3 hours to reach the top of Algonquin – less than .8 miles distant at that point. I hustled up to the top of Iroquois and Algonquin, to have a late second lunch and enjoy the view.
At the top I met a young lady from a western state, who was studying in NYC, and was out for a hike with her boyfriend – who was just barely holding on. She explained that she was studying ballet, which she was paying for by dancing around a pole at an exotic dancing venue in Queens, NY. I don’t know if it was true, but she looked the part, and the story earned her a place in the pantheon of characters from this weekend.
View from the top of Wright
Down and out I went, stopping at Wright Peak along the way, which had some surprising good views. I was famished and had to pass by the campgrounds by Marcy Dam on the way out to my truck. The young campers were settling in for the evening, and the clouds of marijuana smoke were rolling out of the Adirondack shelters and across the lake. The simple pleasures afforded the youth!
I ate at a local watering hole back in Lake Placid, and finally found shelter at a delightful hostel – the Tmax-n-Topo’s (trail names for the owners Terri and David) Jackrabbit Hostel, located just outside the entrance to the Park. The princely sum of $30.28 (including tax) bought me a bed for the evening, and some good advice for the next day – it’s going to rain, so climb Street and Nye, because they have no views anyway.
The Author on Algonquin, with Colden in the background
The hikes up Nye and Street were 9 miles of bad road. There is no maintained trail for most of the hike, although there is a pretty good herd path beaten out by generations of hikers climbing the 46, 4,000 footers in NY. The going was bad, and the views were non-existent, but I did bump into some fellow Pilgrims, who were really fit and hard at it.
Tough going in blow-downs on Nye
This weekend really captured the concept of “forever wild” that is the essential mandate of Adirondack Park. Once you escape the myriad regulations and Officials at the entrance to the Park, anything goes, and anyone can go there. These hills are tough and unforgiving, but gorgeous, and filled with some truly unforgettable characters. I am a fan.
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Posted by on Jul 4, 2011 in Highpointing, Outdoor Fun | 0 comments

Two Mid West Highpoints – Indiana & Ohio

A Blog of Two Midwest Highpoints
Hoosier Hill, IN (1,257 feet) & Campbell Hill, OH (1,549 feet)
June, 2011
Wes Chapman
The morning of June 25, 2011 found me headed East on I70 out of the Indianapolis Airport, and towards the rising sun at 6:15 AM. The day was clear, cool and afforded some great country music on a local station. I had the fastest, most maneuverable vehicle in the world – a fully insured rental car – and I was off for a rare opportunity to grab two state high points in a day.
The mid-continent of the US is part of the great craton, a large and stable part of the crust – very old and quite thin. Both Indiana and Ohio are parts of basin areas in the craton – both uplifted parts of ancient seas and more recent lake based deposits associated with the complicated history of areas near the front of the continental glaciers. The only geological activities that happen in these parts are occasional tension based earth quakes – which are incredibly violent and actually liquefy the deep and moist soils in the area. This produces some really wild and infrequent phenomena such as sand geysers. It has also produced the largest earthquake in US history in the area of New Madrid MO.
This geology has produced some of the finest soils in the world, and is the center of American agriculture. It does not, however, produce much in the way of hills, and the highpoints in these states are more colorful than impressive. It has been quite a problem actually determining the high points of many states in the mid-west, and the high point of IN was claimed by a number of spots in the area of Hoosier Hill Before the matter was finally decided.
Larceny – the price of fame
When I got to Hoosier Hill – on the property of Mrs. Kim Goble – I was disappointed to find that the original sign had been stolen, and only a paper sign in a plastic bag remained on the pole marking the spot. Such is the price of fame. The high point is about 100 feet off Elliot Rd., and in a small grove of trees. It feels like a small shrine to the high point culture, with a picnic table, a most peculiar cairn (a wooden post with a rock topping) and a large brick mailbox containing the register. The guy who signed in before me was from MA, and indicated that it was his second visit – he clearly suffers from a lack of imagination and too much free time.
IN Highpoint – Hoosier Hill
Mrs. Goble’s Farm watches the Highpoint of Hoosier Hill
After the rigors of the ascent of Hoosier Hill, I was off to Ohio on the northern route, down the back roads of Route 36. I crossed into Ohio in the small town of Palestine, and crossed through many miles of corn fields, all more than knee high by the 4th of July (they grow better corn here than we do in NH).  Campbell Hill is an old Nike Missile base which was finally deactivated in 1969, and converted into a Community College. It still has the old military fence surrounding the property, which gives it the feel of another type of institution. This highpoint actually does not require that you get out of your car, but I did anyway to stretch my legs and enjoy the panoramic vista.
After a brief visit, and a couple of pictures, it was time to exit at full throttle, back home and off to the wilds of the Adirondacks for a Sunday climb with my dogs.
Beating swords into plowshares
The vista from Campbell Hill
The Fighting Bunny, Mascot of the 664th Radar Squadron on Campbell Hill
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Posted by on Jul 4, 2011 in Highpointing, Outdoor Fun | 0 comments

Last of the New England Highpoints – RI & CT

The Lowest Highpoints in New England
Jerimoth Hill, RI (812 feet) & Mt. Frissell, CT (2,380 feet)
June 2011
Wes Chapman
These were my last two highpoints in New England, and each was more interesting than I had originally anticipated – but for very different reasons. Frissell is stuck at the end of 10 miles of bad road in the NW corner of CT, where Ct, MA and NY all come together. I managed to persuade my old pal Peter Volanakis to drive us down from Hanover in his hot Audi sports sedan. The car is worth more than the combined GDP of Mali and Burundi, and is capable of speeds in excess of Mach 1.3. In the capable and stable hands of Peter, however, we toured at a leisurely pace never exceeding the speed limit, and at one point we were passed by the Clampets in their signature truck.
The car is equipped with low profile, high speed tires. These are really not ideal for off road applications, and if I were to do it again, I would recommend a different vehicle. To this end, I have requested that Pete bring his new truck for our next outing.
Mt. Laurel on the path up Mt. Frissell
After 3.5 hours of happy motoring, we arrived at the parking area and headed into the wilds of mighty Mt. Frissell. The summit of Mt. Frissell is about .1 mile due north from the highpoint in CT, which is actually on its flank. The hike was short, the views were surprisingly good, and the Mt. Laurel was in full bloom, and absolutely gorgeous. The hike is only about 2.5 miles and well worth the effort.
Pete on Frissel
Pete at the top of CT on Mt. Frissell
The marker at the Top
Jerimoth Hill is the highpoint of Rhode Island, and like the state itself, both diminutive and idiosyncratic. I headed over towards CT through RI, after a successful new business call in MA. Feeling fairly relaxed, I sailed right past the highpoint marker and into CT without realizing what I was doing. The weather was pretty bad, but I had some foul weather gear, and turned around, heading into the wilds of RI.
Jerimoth Hill – the tallest hill in the smallest state
The actual highpoint is about 100 yards up a path and into the woods off the highway. The highpoint is set up like a shrine, set in a wooded glen atop a glacial erratic rock. The boulder is topped with a couple of very suggestive rock cairns.
Suggestive cairns at the RI highpoint
The clearing had a number of storage sheds and, improbably, stands for telescopes with which you could look all the way across the clearing. Only in Rhode Island.
The top of Rhode Island
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