I remember the summer in Quito when I was little. June, July and August were perfect months to fly kites in the sky because it was windy and dry, our faces were sun burnt and we had dry red cheeks, the grass in the parks was yellow and dry because of weeks and weeks of not a drop of rain water. I don’t know if is an effect of the global warming, or a local event, but this year we hadn’t had that kind of summer. Yesterday in the middle of august, we had a heavy rain and ice in Quito, lightnig storm that put the electricity out for a couple of hours in part of the city.

Trying to pick some summer days, with some friends we planned a three day climb to the south-western ridge of Iliniza Sur, but the weather was not on our side. On saturday we left Quito and get at midday to a cloudy Iliniza Sur, in the afternoon we had less than a couple of hours of sun. We spent the night, from 10 pm to 3 am, in our bivy sacks, fortunately it was not too cold.

We woke up surrounded by clouds, packed our staff and climbed what we thought was the southwestern ridge. Since it was the first time of us in that side of the mountain and didn’t had any view because of the clouds, we got lost, we were anywhere but in the southwestern ridge.

At 4600 meters of altitude we stop to see if the weather gets better, but nothing, we were literally “como burro en aguacero” (like a donkey in the rain), surrounded by clouds and ice, sometimes the clouds are so dense that you feel like if you were in the matrix with only white surrounding you. We waited for 30 more minutes and finally we decided to go back to the refuge. The same day we decide to go back to the parking and back to Quito, all our gear came back home absolutely wet!.

I hope the weather conditions change to make some nice climbs in Ecuador.

iliniza norte from the refuge (usually this mountain does not have snow)

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