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...