Doug stands triumphant on Cotapaxi's summit

The Frog

The true Frenchy in Doug finally came out. Look at the above picture and observe all the tell-tale signs of classic European style. The violet pants, the red gloves, the face-covering balaclava, and the matching teal jacket. If the picture had a smell you would be sure to recognize the aroma of a bi-monthly showerer. In his best Parisian accent he can be heard saying, "This mountain is sheet! They are bieger and beTTer in France."

Full moon sunrise on Cotapaxi

Cotapaxi cherries

Doug's first mountain. Applause please. Some people climb nearby hills, some climb trees, but no. Doug would have none of that hogwash. He wanted a real challenge. Say go to the equator and climb a 5,897m peak - the 2nd highest in Ecuador. Do it with only 3 days of acclimatization, and do it without any training save his drinking arm. That would be impressive enough for most people, but no, it wasn't enough for this rugged adventurer. He wanted to do the whole thing in 2 days and in the rain. He got his wish. I wasn't pleased with this last request, but some people enjoy misery, like staring at a mathematical models of radiology for a year.

Trouble awaits

Ultra secret recon mission

Doug ventures into the Ecuadorian National Defense area in broad daylight to investigate illegal use of NASA-provided radio telescopes to support renegade drug cartels. Will he survive the mission? We can only hope he knows what he's doing.

Mating male frigate bird in flight

If you've got it, flaunt it

Bigger really is better... at least for the frigate birds. Their inflatable gular sac is as big as the rest of their body and is used to attract females during mating season. If female frigates could talk you could hear them saying, "Dear God, look at the size of that thing! It's so big and red." Such is the life of the frigate bird. To be a celebrity you have to get used to being stared at.

Blue-footed booby & its baby (left)

Boobies everywhere!

I love boobies. You love boobies. Everybody loves boobies. These adorable creatures usually come in pairs - and the Galapagos is no exception. Here they come in the blue-footed, red-footed, and masked variety. Here however, is a varietable Utopia where all the colors live together in peace and happiness. There is no shortable of boobies of any kind. It really is like Valhalla (heaven in the Norse tradition).

Up close and personal with sealions

It takes two to Tango

Playing alone isn't as much fun as having a partner. So says the fur seals (actually sealions & not seals) of the Galapagos. It's a tough life to be a sealion. You have to catch fish for at least two hours a day, which only leaves about 10 hours to play in the water, and 12 hours to sleep on the beach. These adorable guys really want you to dig their lifestyle and convert you to it. They want to play with you more than an 4 year-old only child, and they know all the good games - wrestling, tag, keep away, hide & seek - only they have little patience and know you can't win no matter how close they get. Bigger, stronger, faster, more mobile, and needing fewer breathes is a hard combo to beat. They grabbed Doug's fins, came within inches of my face, and did underwater somersaults around us. Tell me again why humans think we're the smartest creatures on Earth?

Reflections of Mt. Rainier

Mt. Rainier is bigger than you think

Or I thought for that matter. 14,400 feet is not very high. But when you consider that it's a 10,000 foot gain from the base and that almost 90% of that is glaciated you begin to get the picture.

If you ask most triathlon coaches, they probably won't tell you that climbing the countries 2nd largest mountain isn't the best way to cool down a week after your first Ironman. But what the hell, I don't have a coach.

For a week my parents, my brother, and I cruised around the Pacific Northwest from Seattle to Victoria to Olympia seeing Orcas playing in the Puget Sound, kayaking, hiking, and drinking wine. We spent two days hiking at Mt. Rainier and had great weather - we were pumped to start our climb the next day.

So Kumar, Brian, and I started up the mountain. And weather hit us in the face. As soon as we got on the glacier it started raining on us and got worse from there. We barely made it to Camp Sherman in time to set up camp and eat dinner before it was dark. Our plans to summit that morning were foiled by the monsoon-like rain that battered us for the next 6 hours keeping us and every other climber on the mountain in our tents. Because we all had flights out on the next day we had to go back down. But Rainier isn't going anywhere, and we'll be back soon. Hopefully, I can spend 2 weeks climbing Hood, Adams, Baker, and of course, Rainier next summer.

Starting the transition just out of the water

And then came the Ironmen

"To live the dream is to do what was once thought impossible."

For those that don't know, don't bother trying to comprehend - it's mostly abstract to think that humans can swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run 26.2 miles in succession. Considering that the world's first marathon run by Phidippides resulted in his death from exhaustion, one would think this pursuit was not such a bright idea. However, just as the Greeks were inspired by tragedy and mortal risk, so am I.

My first objective, therefore, was not to die. A worthy goal I thought. But to raise the bar a little my second goal was to finish under in 12 hours (hopefully these were not mutually exclusive).

How can one train to bike 112 miles in Bolivia where there are no roads you ask? It requires a bit of determination. Seeing as I was attempting to avoid my mortal demise, I was sufficiently determined.

So after a year of training the day finally came. It was everything I expected and more. There were 2,000 competitors and about 20,000 spectators. I loved every minute of it, even the painful moments. I couldn't get the smile off my face. Finally, I was actually doing the Ironman. After a slow swim I passed over 500 people on the bike and run legs to finish in 11 hours and 48 minutes.

I was so completely elated I didn't even feel sore. It was great to know that all that work finally amounted to something.

South summit of Illimani

Final thoughts on Bolivia

So as today is my final day I have created a list of things I'll miss and won't miss about Bolivia.

Things I'll miss:

· The ubiquitous 20 cent hamburger
· Paying only $150/month for a nice apartment
· The view of Illimani from my apartment
· DVDs and CDs for $1.25 each (i.e. lack of intellectual property rights)
· The 60 cent four course lunch
· Being made fun of everyday at the office
· Bus rides for $1 per hour
· Living 15 miles from glaciers

Things I won't miss:

· Being sick for 3 days from eating the 20 cent hamburger
· Being confined to the city for a month due to political demonstrations
· Having to haggle daily for the price of bananas from the same woman... for a year (as if I didn't remember what I paid yesterday).
· Everyone running into you on the street even though they walk at the blistering pace of a block per 15 minutes.
· Being out of breath walking up the street despite being in good shape
· Being stared at everywhere I go
· Washing my clothes out back at the "lavanderia" (read: sink) with ice cold water every week for a year.
· Buses from the 1920s
· Bus rides for 20 cents per hour that only go 10km per hour and are filled with 70 people and 1,000lbs of potatoes
· Bolivian roads - or lack thereof
· Dodging cars, and the occasional cow, donkey, or llama while running and biking
· Bolivian logic (see note below)

Bolivian logic lesson (i.e. paradox):
Never ask questions (if you care about the answers)
Only ask questions if you don't care about the answers.
This is because answers are only useful for entertainment value.

Example: Greg: "Why does Bolivia have a Navy - they have no coast?" Bolivian: "But we have rivers!"

Bolivia is an interesting and unique place and can best be described as organized (at times) chaos. There is an absolute dearth of reason, logic, and accountability. To quote a good friend of mine, "Bolivia is a country without handrails". No one will keep you from doing extremely dangerous and absurdly stupid things - in fact they often encourage it (like biking down the "world's most dangerous road"). I doubt that anyone would believe the fantastical nature of my stories (I doubt I would if I hadn't lived them myself), but they are all true none-the-less. Such is life in Bolivia, or as I often think... F--king Bolivia!

Illimani is no joke.

Illimani - The Beast!!!

I just got back from climbing Mt. Illimani with my friend Porfilio, who I found out en route has a family in a small village that is only a two hour walk from base camp, and which also happens to conveniently be the last stop on the bus route from La Paz. That is to say where the rutted-out dirt track ends and the really-rutted-out-with-erroded-parts-having-already-fallen-off-the-cliff-4x4-only-if-you’re-crazy-enough-to-take-it track begins. Picture the Hummer commercial. [Rich, you’re the only person I know stupid enough (or should I say brave enough) to actually try it.]

At 21,125 feet (or for the metrically inclined - 6,439 meters) Illimani is the second highest peak in Bolivia, and is a huge 7 kilometer wide massif that looms over La Paz like a giant. Although as the crow flies it’s only about 20 kilometers away, because there are several canyons and deep valleys to go through, it’s over 70 kilometers by road. And that 70 kilometers takes 7 hours by bus! Our return trip seemly had the entire population of La Paz piled in (each person with a huge sack of potatoes they piled in the aisle and then sat on) and yet we still stopped to pick up more passengers. Porifilio said that this was much better than before (only two years prior), when they piled everyone like animals in the back of a flat bed truck for transport. This type of transport still exists somewhat and I witnessed such a truck on the way back.

Porfilio’s village has no electricity or machines of any kind and their way of life is not that different than it was here 2,000 years ago. They use only hand tools and oxen to plow the fields and harvest everything by hand. Aymara is the spoken language, and the only people who speak even a little Spanish are those that have worked in the cities. It’s amazing to see that there are still people in the Western Hemisphere who live that way. They grow a lot of potatoes (there are at least three words for potato in Aymara), and some other fruits and vegetables, but the majority of meals consist entirely of small potatoes.

Anyway, the first day we had breakfast (potatoes) with his family and then loaded up a horse with our gear and walked to base camp. The second day we walked from base camp at 4,700 meters to high camp at 5,500 meters and en route had lunch (potatoes). That night I slept well despite the disquieting sound of avalanches every 15 minutes thanks to the diazepam I took before bed.

The next morning we woke up at midnight and started our summit bid at 2am. From high camp it was completely snow-covered until the summit, except for a few sections of mixed climbing. The flattest grade on the route was about 30 degrees, but most of most of it was not that nice, and there were 5 sections of 70 degree ice walls for 50 meters or more. I am supposed to be in pretty good shape, but I was exhausted and out of breath ever few steps. Porfilio must have told me about 20 times (starting after about 1 hour) that we were “near the summit”, and each time he said it all I could think was, “bullshit, we’re not even close!” Having read a description of the route in a book, I knew that it should take between 5 and 7 hours, and since this was written for mountaineers I thought the best I could expect was about 6 hours. But eventually, and is always the case, the final time he said it, we actually were close, and we reached the summit just in time to see a stunning sunrise. I was amazed that it only took us 4 and a half hours.

When I reached the summit I collapsed like a sack of Aymara potatoes and after a few minutes the only thing I could muster the energy to do was to get out my camera and take a few pictures. It was far too cold to stay long (minus 20 degrees) so after 15 minutes we headed back down. Also on the way up I fell into a small crevasse that was covered by a foot of snow. It was only about 3 feet wide and 20 meters deep and I was up to my waist into it with my arms splayed out keeping me from falling completely in (pretty much like the scene in the movie “Alive”), but as I was tied to my climbing partner I wasn’t as freaked out as I would have been otherwise and was able to crawl out without much trouble.

When we descended further down it was like magic as my strength returned and the return trip took us only 2 and a half hours walking slowly. It wasn’t until we got back to high camp that I realized I couldn’t feel my toes, nor could I remember the last time I could feel them. I borrowed good quality plastic mountaineering boots, but they were a little too small. When I took them off all 10 of my toes were red – for the medically inclined, up to the metatarsals. At least they weren’t purple. In the mountaineering world red is good, purple bad. It’s the closest thing to frostbite I’ve ever had, and now even after 2 days they are still numb. In a few days they should be better.

We had breakfast at high camp and his wife had hot coffee waiting for us. After a hour break for breakfast we broke camp and headed back down to base camp where a donkey and porter were waiting for us. There we ate lunch (you guessed it, potatoes) and I fell asleep. They woke me up to say “vamos”, but didn’t even wait for me to put my shoes on before they were off.

People have often asked me what was the hardest thing (physically) I’ve ever done, and I’ve always had the rather lame answer that it was sprints at the end of football or basketball practice. But now I can unequivocally say that climbing above 20,000 ft. at an average grade of 40 degrees takes the cake. Only about 40 people climb it per year (we saw no one for 3 days), and on average two of them don’t make it down.