Resting in Baños de Agua Santa

Our Ecuador Volcanoes team spent the day having fun and resting up in Baños in preparation for the expedition’s culminating climb of Chimborazo. Here’s today’s expedition dispatch from Terray Sylvester, expedition leader:

Hello, this is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Ecuador Volcanoes expedition. It’s February 1st. Today we’re resting in preparation for our ascent of Ecuador’s highest volcano, Chimborazo. We are in the town of Baños de Agua Santa, which means Baths of Holy Water. It’s a hot springs resort town at the foot of an active volcano.

We spent all day resting. We started out the day by doing a one-kilometer long zip-line high above the Rio Pastaza which flows down into the Amazon basin. Then we checked out the biggest of, just one of dozens of, waterfalls that are in the area. We did a swing which sent us pretty high above the cloud forest. It was pretty exciting. Then we came back to Baños, back into town to have lunch and now we are just resting.

We’ll get to bed and wake up early for our drive through Riobamba and then over to the foot of Chimborazo and our hike up to our high camp, which is at 17,500 ft. We should have cell reception and, of course, satellite comms from high camp tomorrow, so I’ll be in touch then!