High Camp on Chimborazo

Tonight is the night! The Ecuador Volcanoes team is in place at high camp (5329m/17,484ft) on Chimborazo and resting up before starting for the summit and furthest point from the center of the Earth in just a few hours. Our expedition leader, Terray Sylvester provides this expedition dispatch:

Hello, this is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Ecuador Volcanoes expedition. It’s February 2nd and we are all safely up in Chimborazo high camp (5329m/17,484ft). Everybody’s doing really well with the altitude.

It had a bit of a cloudy walk-up, kind of in a, just in a fog until we got to camp. But we just finished dinner and the clouds burned off and we’re looking up at thunderheads, looking out at thunderheads piled up, catching the alpenglow over the Pacific Ocean – beautiful carpet of clouds. We can see Cotopaxi off to the north over the shoulder of Chimborazo.

We’re all just hanging out outhere, taking photos of the alpenglow on false summit of Chimborazo, which is a couple of thousand of feet above us. We can see our route, it’s in good condition! Forecast for tomorrow is not bad, so we are hoping for good climbing conditions and we’re going to crawl into our sleeping bags now, get a little rest, and then get up at 11:00 PM, have some breakfast, and start climbing.

So, we’ll be in touch!