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So today is the day, we are off on our 2 day trek climbing Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano reaching 5900m at the summit! We woke up and had fruit and Grenola for breakfast, left our bags in the hostels storage and headed to Condor Trekking where we pick up our equipment and met the rest of the group, 2 americans Brittany and Nate, 2 english girls Natasha and Helen, 2 Swiss guys who for ages we thought were German. They looked like veteran climbers and the kind of men action man was based on. We didn't quite catch their names so we called them 'Rodney and Maverick' on the way to the national park we stopped off to pick up the final member a canadian called Jack. The group was set so off we went into the unknown....until we realised that one of the vehicles had a flat tyre, so the unknown would have to wait while the tyre was changed and we had lunch.....then we were back off into the unknown finally!
When we got to the car park we were all starting to get excited and a little anxious so dressed in the gear we set off walking up the mountain and we could see the refuge house...at 4800m it didn't look that far! HA...obviously the rest of the group found it a little easier including Mark, I on the other hand didn't appreciate walking on the ash up a steep incline falling over every other step and unable to get back up! (there was a 6 year old going up faster then I was) This doesn't look good for the rest of the trek...we will see!
Once I finally joined the rest of the group at the lodge, we claimed our beds and then it was time to put on the rest of the gear and grab our crampons and ice axes for a bit of glacier training...so much fun, my confidence was restored as we learned different walking techniques, up and down on your toes, zigzagging up, walking down, cross-foot up and down, how to use the ice axe and how to self arrest (basically stop yourself falling off the mountain...brilliant) and then back to the lodge for dinner and a brief about the summit climb and altitude sickness, by this time the whole group had a headache!! It was an early night as we had to wake up at 11.00pm to leave at midnight for the climb! Although we couldn't sleep a wink!!
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