kitt's blog

At dinner time tonight, I noticed that everyone across from me was in four layers. For each of them, the top layer was a puffy jacket. Surprised by this, I asked S if he were cold. No, he said, he felt fine. If he took off the jacket, however, he'd be cold.

I was sitting there, quite comfortable in a t-shirt and my long-sleeved t-shirt hoodie. And with the sleeves pulled up to my elbows.

As someone who has always run cold, running warm is an interesting curiosity.

I know that I can go short sleeves until 16˚C if I'm moving and minimal wind. I know that 15˚ is when I put on the long sleeved t-shirt, if I'm not moving, and 12˚ is when I do wear if moving, not in sun, or if there is wind. I know that climbing up the mountain, I'm in a t-shirt, long-sleeved hoodie t-shirt, and an R1 Patgonia fleece, and I'm just fine down to 8˚ no wind. Hell, if Baker is any indication, I'm good down to -2˚C with those three layers, and likely still sweating at the end.

While waiting for the rest of the team to return from the Cotopaxi summit, I wandered around inside and outside of the lodge after I caught up somewhat on sleep. In the lodge, there is a wall of crocs, each pair, if you can match them, available for anyone to wear:

Day hikers come up to the lodge, which is awesome. Hike up to the lodge, kick off your shoes, have some tea or hot chocolate, maybe a sandwich, head back down. A lovely afternoon adventure.

And while I appreciated the wall of available lounging shoes at the lodge, I have to say I have made better choices than the one I made when I decided to wander out to walk along the ridge and take a picture of the mountain in these:

Subtitled: Dizziness is my devil

After two very vivid dreams, Mauricio woke me at 22:10. I suspect he thought I would have my own alarm, but I did not have one set, assuming he would wake me. While he did, in retrospect, that was a bad plan. I lay in the sleeping bag for a couple minutes, then rose to start this day. I had all the various clothes and equipment laid out, but was slightly unsure what order to dress in, so opened up my list from Cayambe and cranked through it.

I went downstairs quickly to start eating. I had cream cheese and jelly on a roll, and in the next thirty minutes managed to eat most of it. I had hot water and made my green tea, downed that. Went to the restroom because I really did not want to use a wag bag on the glacier. My body agreed with this desire and helped me out.

Yeah, so, Juliana did warn us that unusual dreams are very common at altitude. I had two last night, in the very short time available to sleep before we started for the Cotopaxi summit today. One confusing AF and the other delightful if only merely confusing.

In the first dream, there are seven forms of Kitt in this universe. Each incarnation of me manifests in one of these seven forms: scientist, tech person, athlete, mother (clearly orthogonal from the previous three), adventurer, and two others that I don't recall. All of us have allergies to authority, all of us seem to have the same mental thoughts and processes. More succinctly, we all think the same, with some variations.

We are at Los Molinas Lodge tonight. It is quite a lovely place, with seemingly good wifi, so I'm happy.

Our schedule has us going up Cotopaxi tomorrow night. Having had a difficult time on Cayambe, I had asked our lead guide, Juliana, yesterday for an alternate climb today. This evening she brought out her computer to show me alternatives. I had spent the day, however, considering Cayambe. My issues were intake mismanagement and lack of crampon glacier experience. An alternate peak may not give me the chance to work on those issues. So, I asked if I could climb Cotopaxi, but differently.

So, we have arranged for me to start 2 hours before the rest of the team, and stop every 30 minutes for food and water. I am hoping this change will address the dehydration and lack of calories I had on Cayambe. Cotopaxi is the best choice for the experience I need, so giving it a go.

And fixing those equipment issues.