Terranova Expedition: Chimborazo

We left the hostel at about 10:00 for Chimborazo, which was later than we wanted, but neither Troy nor I are very good at getting up early.

We headed through town, and on to the highway, hoping that there was only one way to get to the road leading up the mountain. There wasn't.

We ended up on the far side of the mountain, and since it is 20km at the base, we ended up having to loop all the way back around, and then ride to the complete opposite side.

After finding the right road, we began the climb from our starting altitude of 9000 feet. As we wound our way around the mountain, I turned my GPS to track altitude. We quickly passed 10,000 feet, and were still at the base. As we rode the twisting, winding highway, I watched the altimeter rise and the temperature fall...

10,500 feet, 18 degrees C
11,000 feet, 16 degrees C
12,000 feet, 12 degrees C
13,000 feet, 10 degrees C
14,000 feet, 9 degrees C
15,000 feet, 8 degrees C

I was having such a great time riding and watching the amazing landscape, I forgot that I was wearing a short sleeved shirt, and a thin windbreaker. Since we were going to be climbing today, we had left our heavy armour and riding gear back at the hostel.

I stopped, and Troy and Tutu (who was on the back of Troy's bike) pulled up. They were frozen too, so we pulled all our thermal gear out and put it in, before continuing up the mountain to the highest place we could ride to.

Our route up the mountain by Motorcycle.

An interesting fact about Chimborazo, is it is the farthest point in the world from the centre of the earth. Farther than Mt. Everest.

From Wikipedia:

The summit of Mount Everest reaches a higher elevation above sea level, but the summit of Chimborazo is the farthest point on the surface from Earth's centre. The reason for this is Chimborazo is one degree south of the Equator and the Earth's diameter at the Equator bulges, and is greater than at the latitude of Everest, nearly 28° north, with sea level also elevated.

Despite being 8,465 ft lower in elevation above sea level, it is 6,384.4 km from the Earth's centre, 7,113 ft farther than the summit of Everest (6,382.3 km from the Earth's centre).

So, we likely rode our motorcycles to the farthest point from the centre of the earth that you can. Which is kind of cool. The GPS read 15,921 feet in the parking lot.

We parked in the lot, there were only a couple other cars there, and began the final ascent to the upper hut. It is a similar climb to the one we did at Cotopaxi a few days ago, and the altitude is even a little greater.

For some reason, I felt better today, and we able to climb it without too much trouble. That doesn't mean I wasn't huffing and puffing the whole way, but at least I made it to the top without feeling like I was dying.

The clouds co-operated and we were able to take some fantastic pictures at the upper hut. Inside the hut, we had hot tea, and got our passports stamped at 5000 meters.