Itinerary

Day 1: Machachi (10,170ft/3.100m) – Base Camp (13,451ft/4.100m)

We start from Machachi early in the morning, we will be driving for about 3,5 hours through the amazing “Avenue of the Volcanoes”, then to the East looking on the south side of Cotopaxi Volcano, the drive will be very demanding over very swampy  terrain, where a good 4WD will be needed, we will try  to get as high as  we can with our vehicle, which usually is around (12,467ft/3.800m), on this point we will  organize our climbing and camping equipment in our backpacks and will hike up for another 3 to 4 hours to the  Base  Camp (13,451ft/4.100m),  we will set up our tents and accommodate all our gear inside of them, and will relax the rest of the afternoon, if there is enough time we will go to check  the route, and fix some  ropes on the first section of the mountain. Dinner will be served by late afternoon and overnight in the tents (-/-/D)

Day 2: Quilindaña Summit (16,139ft/4.919m) –  Base Camp (13,451ft/4.100m)

We will wake up early in the morning around 3:00 am get some light breakfast, and put all the gear on in order to start hiking towards the base of the wall, we rope up, and depending on the terrain condition we also put our crampons on, and start our first climbing pitch; the first sections are a lot of scrambling, and  very loose volcanic rocks, we will be climbing for many hours  until getting the saddle between South and North Summit at above (15,419ft/4.700m), from this point we will have better and steeper  terrains with more solid and compacted rocks; there are  many  good cracks which offer excellent places for protections with cams and nuts, these last 200m will be done in 2-3 hours and finally we will get to the summit of  “Ecuadorian Matterhorn”, the views  are  unique specially of the bigger neighbours like Cotopaxi and Antisana, beautiful lakes on the base and much more.  The descent will be done by using many rappels, the first part will be easy and stable, and nevertheless the lower sections will be more complicated due to the poor rock conditions, the entire climb will take us between 11 to 13 hours. We will go back to our Base Camp by late afternoon for dinner and overnight in the tents (B/-/D)

Day 3: Base Camp (13,451ft/4.100m) – Machachi

We will get a relaxing morning, have breakfast and start packing all the equipment in order to walk down for about 2,5 hours to the place where we left our transportation on the first day, we will drive for another 3 hours back to Machachi (B/-/-)

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