Roads in Ecuador

On every climb I have made, there is undoubtedly experiences that have nothing to do with climbing that become memorable.  In Ecuador, I was not prepared for the poor quality of the roads.  There seems to be well established main highways....but when one leaves the main roads, one encounters awkward cobblestone or dirt roads.   Now that the rainy season has begun, these dirt roads often turn to mud.  On our way to Cotopaxi National Park, we had to rescue a four wheel drive vehicle stuck in the mud.  We pulled it out, but could but could not get through ourselves...so we had to turn around on the typical narrow one car road, double back about an hour and find a different route.  Here are pictures from the muddy rescue:

 

Anyway...back to our unsuccessful attempt to summit Antisana.  Here are a few pictures from our scheduled summit day when, eventhough the weather was perfect, the avalanche conditions were too severe for our guides and they decided that it was too dangerous to take "couch potato" climbers onto the mountain:

Here is a picture of Antisana from the summit of Cotopaxi:

Antisana is a gorgeous mountain...they say it is one of the Grand Ladies of the Andes.  But, like all beautiful women...except for one, I was only able to look but could not touch. 

 

At the base of Antisana, we slept in tents because of the remote location of the seldomly climbed mountain.  In order to get to advance base camp we drove in four wheel drive vehicles across grassy/muddy wilderness hillsides...getting stuck in the mud once or twice.  As a reminder to all, just because I climb mountains does not mean I enjoy sleeping in tents.  In fact, as I repeatedly tell Sherrie, I prefer to do my camping in hotel rooms.  Here is a picture of the place we stayed right before leaving for Antisana and the place we stayed after climbing Cotopaxi.  The hot spring pools were right outside our room: