Will and I both reached our highest elevations hiking when we hiked up Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano in the world which stands at 5,897m (19,347ft). I should clarify, we hiked to about two thirds up the highest active volcano in the world – but that’s still pretty high. Cotopaxi is in a national park located just south of Quito and can often be seen from quite a distance on a clear day – though we did not have many clear days so didn’t see it until we were there. It is pretty unique in that it has an almost a complete conical shape, basically how you want volcanoes and mountains to look in elementary school. The park was reopened a year ago after being closed due to increased volcanic activity, though when we were visiting you still couldn’t hike to the very top due to gas emissions from the crater. I believe our guide said by the end of January 2017 it would be opened again for treks. 

 

I volunteered in Ecuador back in 2010 and visiting Cotopaxi volcano is something that always stuck with me – hiking up to a glacier when you are basically straddling the equator is not easily forgotten. I decided I needed to bring Will on our trip here. We spent a night in the town near the national park, Latacunga, and booked a tour through our hostel. Along on our trip were 3 others hiking to glacier with us and 2 who were getting horseback rides around the base for a couple of hours (and our luck with equine family continues – but more on that later). We set off on a foggy morning at 8:30am for about a 20 min drive to the park entrance and were planning to climb on the north side, where our guide assured us it was very clear. 

 

 

Pro tip if you do this trip – try to avoid a tour with people riding horses. The ranch we needed to take them was about an extra hour each way from where we were to climb. This made it so our day was primarily spent riding around the national park in the car instead of enjoying the volcano. This caused us to begin hiking quite late in the morning, and I was nervous we would be stuck in the clouds all day, but we did get lucky and got some great views of the peak while we were hiking. 

 

 

The hike begins at around 4,500m (14,700ft) and you only hike up to 4864m (15,953ft) to a refuge on the glacier. Fun fact from our guide – this is higher than the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc, which stands at 4,809m (15,778ft). He was very, very good with remembering altitudes of every mountain he had ever heard of. It doesn’t sound very far, and didn’t take very long, but it is a very high altitude so it is definitely a different type of hiking. While I’ve only been hiking at those altitudes once before, I spent a lot of time at high altitudes as a kid, but this was one of Will’s first experience with it and it can be difficult on your body. Since the air is so thin and there is quite a bit less oxygen than at sea level, it is very easy to run out of breath and get dehydrated which causes other effects – like headaches. He was kinda grumpy. Once we got to the top though and we were able to sit, catch our breath, drink lots of water and hot chocolate, all was better and after a few photos we headed back down. 

 

Afterwards we went to look at a lake and had a delicious potato soup lunch. We headed back to town and on the way, we ran out of gas (see, beware of horses!). It was okay though, we got an ice cream break while our guide ran and filled up a water bottle to get us back to town.