Mark Horrell's Blog, page 18

An ascent of Imbabura, the dragon-back of Otavalo

In local Ecuadorian legend, the god Taita Imbabura is said to have fought the god Mojanda for the affections of Maria Isabel Cotacachi. Imbabura won this battle and took Cotacachi for his wife. As I reported in a previous post Imbabura was so smitten with love for Cotacachi that he erupted with joy upon first seeing her.

But this is a mountaineering blog, not a porn site. What, you may be wondering, does any of this have to do with mountains?

Imbabura rises above the city lights of Otavalo

You may recall from my post two weeks ago, Mojanda was t...

Wanda Rutkiewicz: the mountaineer’s Google Doodle

If, like me, you’ve never got round to wondering why Google never feature any mountaineers on their daily Google Doodle [*], then you would have been surprised to open your web browser last Wednesday to find a cartoon line-drawing of somebody in a pith helmet tugging on a rope.

The somebody was none other Wanda Rutkiewicz, and apparently I wasn’t the only person excited about it. My tweets on Twitter are usually accompanied by an animated gif of some tumbleweed blowing past (until Edita takes pity and gives me a retweet). B...

Fuya Fuya, the most exciting mountain in Ecuador

According to the Urban Dictionary, the word ‘Fuya’ is a portmanteau whose meaning equates to the popular phrase ‘Fuck, yeah!’

If this is true, then the volcano Fuya Fuya, a short distance north-east of Quito, was clearly going to be one of the most exciting climbs in Ecuador.

I had never heard of it before, but our expedition outfitter, Javier Herrera of Andeanface, suggested that we climb it as a warm-up on our second day in Ecuador. He gave every indication that it would be an easy walk up.

The twin summits of Fuya Fuya from the...

Quilotoa: the easiest way in Ecuador to look into a volcanic crater?

Ecuador has some impressive volcanic craters. Some, such as Cotopaxi and Tungurahua – both of which I’m going to talk about later – take a bit of effort to get to. But first, a more relaxing interlude.

Not all volcanoes in Ecuador require hard physical effort for the reward of looking down into their craters. After my collapse in Ecuador’s Llanganates mountain range (as described in last week’s post), I recovered by visiting Quilotoa, a volcanic crater that last erupted in 1280 and now contai...

How to recover from a big altitude misjudgement

Acclimatisation is a funny thing. On the face of it, it seemed like we had a good plan.

After a full day acclimatising at 2850m in Quito, we would climb a 4258m volcano followed by a 4640m volcano. Then we would trek for 5 days, during which we would climb a 4576m volcano.

All of this would put us in good shape to climb a 5016m volcano then round things off by climbing a 5897m volcano.

High-altitude struggling in the Llanganates Mountains (Photo: Edita Horrell)

We have both been at high altit...

Two volcano hikes in northern Ecuador

A quick update from the road in Ecuador.

Edita and I have finished our first two acclimatisation hikes exploring the northern part of the country.

We started with Mojanda, a sprawling massif a 2-3 drive northeast of Quito. Mojanda has multiple summits formed by the collapse of two volcanoes. Its highlight is a large lake at 3700m formed by one of the two craters.

Imbabura rises above the town of Otavalo

We climbed both summits of Fuya Fuya, a twin-peaked mountain formed by the other volcano....

A short escape to Ecuador to climb some of its more obscure peaks

Excuses, excuses… It’s a very short blog post this week. Life has been hectic in the Horrell household recently and I have been struggling to keep on top of my writing. I am currently working full time and have been travelling a lot with work. This has left less time for writing in the evenings, and less time for completing the paperback version of Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo.

On top of this, Edita and I have recently bought a cottage in the Cotswolds to retreat to at weekends. The cottage...

10 great books about mountains that have nothing to do with climbing

The shortlist for this year’s Boardman Tasker Prize was announced this month, and once again five out of six books on the shortlist are about climbing. You can be certain that the winner will be one of the five.

This is not surprising for a prize in memory of two climbing greats, but it’s disappointing for an award whose aim is to ‘promote literature by providing an annual award to authors of literary works, the central theme of which is concerned with the mountain environment’ (a sentence th...

What the North Coast 500 has in common with Everest

While I was travelling in Scotland last May I was interested to read an article in the Guardian about the North Coast 500, a vehicle route that has become one of Scotland’s most popular tourist destinations.

The North Coast 500 is a 516-mile road trip that loosely follows the coastline around the far north-west of Scotland. It was invented by the North Highland Initiative (NHI), an organisation set up by Prince Charles as a way of boosting tourism in the Scottish Highlands. The North Coast 50...

An ascent of Aukštojas Hill, the highest mountain in Lithuania

Since 2015, Edita has been gradually ticking off the highest peaks in the UK. First it was Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales; then Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England; and then in May, Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland and the whole of the UK.

It was high time she introduced me to the highest mountain in her own country, Lithuania. It’s a peak that you may not have heard of. Given that Lithuania is a country of 2.8 million people living in an area four-fifths the size...