Conferences, Cotopaxi, Children, Cock of the Rock

Conferences, Cotopaxi, Children, Cock of the Rock

All kinds of stuff has been going on since I got back from Colombia a million years ago:

1) La Hesperia hosted 25 exchange students for a conference.

2) I climbed Ecuador’s 2nd highest peak, Cotopaxi.

3) A group of 17 11-year-olds visited from their private school in Quito.

4) I visited Angel Paz’s refugio de aves.

I also published my first book, Birds of the Tyler Place.

I’ve been working pretty hard on writing up information about the bird inventory here at La Hesperia. That, along with everything else that’s been going on and the usual power/internet problems have kept me off the blog for far too long.




There isn’t too much worth saying about the conference, especially since I don’t have any pictures. There were a lot of presentations about projects students had worked on all over Ecuador, but I was pretty busy and only got to see a few.

Afterwards I went to Quito with vague plans to travel around and see some birds for a bit. I hadn’t had a day off in three weeks so I was ready to take some time away from La Hesperia. But I ran into a bunch of the visiting students and some volunteers in Quito who were planning to climb Cotopaxi. After several aguardientes I decided to tag along. And that is how these sort of mountainous decisions are best made: quickly. That way if any of the multitude of potential snags (bad weather, injury, hypothermia, altitude sickness, etc.) gets in the way, there is less feeling of failure or loss.

Anyway, Colorado, Monkey Dentist, Charmadizzle and I all dragged ourselves out of bed early Saturday morning to acclimatize.

We hiked around in the park on a gorgeous afternoon with this white-capped beast looming in the background.

I haven’t read the manual on altitude acclimatization, but I hoped that my physiology would be able to keep up with the schedule. I am well used to living around 1400 meters (the elevation of the Volunteer House at La Hesperia). I then spent one night in Quito (~2850 meters), one night in the Cotopaxi park hostal (3750 meters) and then a night in the refuge (4800 meters). Though that last night of sleep was really only about 4 or 5 hours.

While the top generally gets plenty of snow to feed glacial advance on all sides, during a sunny day, the snow and ice begin to melt and the risks of avalanches and of ice bridges collapsing into crevasses increases significantly. Therefore one who hopes to summit must depart from the refuge around 1 am with a head lamp in order to leave the glacier by noon.

I awoke at midnight with a splitting headache (probably a result of brain swelling from the altitude) and had no appetite for breakfast (altitude also tends to be hard on the digestive system). But once we starting hiking up I started to feel much better. After an hour-and-a-half or so of hiking up loose gravel and stones, we stopped to slap on crampons and tie on our ropes.

The next four hours were spent trudging slowing up the steep glacier intermittently wondering how much time might have elapsed and how much further we would need to climb, though our guide, advised us not to worry about time or elevation. We began under a clear night sky with the handle of the Big Dipper and Quito lights at our backs and Scorpio visible just above the mountain face in front of us. Around 6 am the sky began to lighten and we could see Cotopaxi’s perfect pyramid shadow stretching out toward the western horizon.

After just under six hours we finally reached the caldera rim.

We saw some fumaroles venting smoke confirming the volcano’s active status and minutes later we saw a huge cloud of ash billowing from another volcano some hundred kilometers to the south.

After only a few triumphant minutes of soaking up 360 degrees of views that included views of essentially every other significant Ecuadorian peak, we had to begin our decent. While we were exhausted and walking down steep glaciers is rather difficult, the weather was brilliant all the way.

Just after we got back to the refuge, an Andean Condor flew by as if to congratulate us.

I’m no mountain climber, though after Cotopaxi I can certainly understand the allure of the pastime. While I’ve somehow learned to derive satisfaction out of spotting a particularly rare bird, reaching the pinnacle of a mountain with whatever superlative attached (second highest peak in Ecuador, world’s tallest active volcano, etc.) is a real thrill that anyone able to achieve such a feat can appreciate.

I missed a couple days of work with the Cotopaxi trip, but made it back just in time for 17 11-year-olds to show up for a few days from the British School in Quito. I taught them about birds at La Hesperia (their favorite was the Ruddy Pigeon because it says “what’s the problem?”) and took them camping.

For the weekend me and Colorado took off for Ecuador’s unofficial bird-watching capital, Mindo, to visit the highly regarded Angel Paz. His Refugio de Aves is a private plot of primary cloud forest where live a startlingly high density of rare and endemic bird species. He really put on a show, introducing us to all his “friends.” It started with a group of lekking blood-red Andean Cock-of-the-rocks (unfortunately a tour group of 8 grizzled Brits tromped in late and scared them away before the sky lightened enough for good photos). Next, a close encounter with the rare Giant Antpitta, “Maria,” that he feeds worms (this day his other antpitta friends found their own food, as can happen this time of year). At the fruit feeding station, Angel hand-fed bananas and grapes to mountain-tanagers and Toucan Barbets and tossed scraps down to eagerly waiting wood-quails and quail-doves. Topping it all was probably the hummingbird feeders around which at least 12 species swarmed like bees.

It was all capped off by a sighting of the rare Orange-breasted Fruiteater eating berries in the Mora patch. One photographer had come specifically to photograph this bird and while the guide urged us all (and especially the Pommies) restraint, Colorado charged in and snapped a few decent shots before the bird flushed leaving the professional empty-handed.

I've only got a couple weeks left at La Hesperia, so I've got to make them count.
This is Cayambe, another volcanic peak I probably won't get to climb, the evening before we climbed Cotopaxi.