Ruminahui rambling

February 9, 2008

The tour of Ruminahui did not go quite as planned. Instead of the neat little out and back trail that was printed so simply on our map, our trail was more like a square with a few zig zags that seemed to encompass every peak in the area but the ones we were actually trying to climb. Alas we did not reach the summit. But we made it up to about 12,000 ft right up next to the really big rocks. We only encountered two people the whole time. They had made it to the top and said it was all foggy and they couldn’t see a thing. So that made us feel better. Highlights of the day included a lot of bushwacking on cattle tracks, crossing a bog the size of a football field, climbing through scorched grasses and bushes leaving nice little ash marks all over us, finding a bull horn, almost seeing Cotopaxi, getting pulmonary edema from the exertion of the climb, and of course almost, but not quite, reaching one of the peaks in the Ruminahui chain of 3. All in all however we spent 8 hrs climbing in the wilderness surrounded by the big boys, up to 16 craggy peaks most of which are over 14,000ft. Saw wild horses, cows, unusual birds, and deers aleaping in the distance. So I really can’t complain, it was a great day out in creation.