Beautiful, blue skies at 0715, when we topped out on the Veintemilla summit. Of course, it was cold and windy as hell! Our feet were cold the whole night, so the sun was a welcome help--thawed us out pretty nicely. The El Castillo route is a seriously mind-numbing climb, perhaps the Glacier route would be more interesting. Trip report
Boriss Andean - Sep 20, 2007 9:15 pm Date Climbed: May 17, 2006
Route Climbed: Normal Route Via El Castillo.
Climbed with great weather and perfect snow/ice conditions. Edgar, Ran (Israel) and I got to Veintimilla's summit in about 4 hours from the refuge. Great views of Cotopaxi, Illinizas, Antisana, Cayambe and Sangay.
We continued up to Whymper 6,310 m (20,561 ft), this time with soft knee deep snow. Got to the top in a good time, but clouds rolled in pretty fast.
We made our descent by the same route. Rock fall danger from El Castillo to "el corredor".
marauders - Jan 23, 2007 6:36 pm Date Climbed: Jan 18, 2007
Snow & Avalanche
It snowed all afternoon and all night. The obvious decision was to call it quits, too much snow and subsequent avalanche danger. A guide and client team tried to go up anyway and encountered nasty snow, ice and avalanche conditions. The turned around about 1/3 of the way up.
Scott - Jan 22, 2007 4:45 am Date Climbed: Jan 17, 2007
Harder than expected
Chimborazo wasn't in very good condition and in my opinion wasn't that fun when compared to the other peaks I climbed in Ecuador. Lots of falling ice and falling rock on all routes due to the dry weather I guess. The "normal route" El Castillo has been plagued by rockfall. The Wymper Route has falling ice and was shooting baseball size rocks at us.
After reaching some serious avalanche danger (we also heard but did not see a huge avalanche in the dark on the way up), we had to backtrack 1000 feet/300 meters down the mountain (very tiring at almost 20,000 feet or around 6000 meters) and do an icy traverse over to the upper Castillo Route in order and reclimb the elevation lost to reach the Veintimilla summit. It made our elevation gained 1615 meters/5300 feet that day which made me very tired at that altitude. Hopefully conditions will improve. It used to be a straight forward ascent but conditions weren't good for our trip. On the other hand, the weather was great.
moneal - Jan 21, 2007 3:14 pm Date Climbed: Jan 12, 2007
Castillo route
Was about 1 minute away from getting crushed in a rock/ice avalanche in the rocky section of the Castillo route. Then it was very hard ice in the two steep couloirs on the ridge. Ice axe wouldn't go in and we had to front point up two 50 foot sections. I bonked hard after the steep ice at about 18,000 feet. Unfortunately after the avalanche it was unsafe to go back down so I had to climb up to 19,000 feet so I could traverse across and go down the Whymper route. Why the hell we didn't go up the seemingly much easy Whymper route is still a mystery to me. Local guides didn't serve us well today....
tjbst47 - Jan 11, 2007 10:11 pm Date Climbed: Jan 11, 2007
whymper
Climbed the Castillo route Jan. 5 and 11, and I was surprised at how much snow melted off the bottom section. In my opinion, the bottom is dangerous due to loose rock to trip over and frequent rock fall. I think it would be better approached starting left up the Castillo ridge, but there is not a road or hut there.
6.5 hours to Whymper and 3.5 hours down. It only took 1/2 hour from Vientilla to Whymper.
tjbst47 - Jan 5, 2007 11:42 pm Date Climbed: Jan 5, 2007
Veintemilla
Made it to Veintemilla summit, but I would have liked the Whymper summit. Conditions were cold, windy, and cloudy all up the ridge and REALLY cold and windy at the Veinemilla, so I called it good enough.
Jesus Malverde - Dec 23, 2006 9:48 pm Date Climbed: Dec 6, 2006
some thoughts
Whymper summit or Veintemilla summit via the El Castillo route; choices, choices...
some thoughts for what they are worth:
Several people told me that it can take 3+ hours (round trip) to get from the Veintemilla summit to the Whymper summit when the penitentes are exposed. Conceivably, This might add up to three hours to your climb if you started at the Whymper Refugio. One safety consideration on the El Castillo route is getting down below the obvious lower section (that is prone to rockfall) before 10:00 am. The tradeoff may be that you need to leave earlier than say 12:00 am to allow for more time cross the penitente field between summits as well as making it down below the lower section by 10:00 am. The key seems to be getting a good estimate on how long it will take your party to make that "round trip" from Veintemilla to Whymper and back and then leaving that much earlier before 12:00 am. This approach also puts you on the very upper part of the mountain at the coldest time of the day and also might mean that you are still approaching the Veintemilla in the dark of the morning.
We had a party of three fairly strong and acclimatized climbers on one rope that left the EW refugio at 12:00 am. We summited the Veintemilla at ~6:15 am and were back at the EW refugio at 9:30 am. So we made it down below the rockfall-prone section at before 10:00 am, but probably wouldn't have made this "cut off" time if we had gone for the Whymper summit. There had been a bit of snow over the previous week on Chimborazo and the penitentes were fairly covered, but the snow didn't look too consolidated on the summit plateau. My guess would have been that it would have taken a bit of negotiating to get over to the Whymper. This would have no doubt eaten into our time frame of getting down the El Castillo route to try and avoid potential rockfall on the lower section.One work around for this slim-time-margin scenario might be to put a high camp on the route so that a party would have more time on the upper mountain to get over to the Whymper summit. But this would mean carrying full loads up to the ridge above the El Castillo. Hmmmm...
On a different note, I wouldn't skimp on handwear on this route. For example, I brought Black Diamond Guide gloves (retail $154) thinking they would be overkill on this mountain. They turned out to be ideal for the conditions we encountered. Something like an 8000m mitt would be probably be overkill, but would advise beefy, warm gloves/mitts for the upper mountain. I would also definitely recommend plastic double boots instead of leather w/ supergaiters. I used the newer model Koflach Arctis Expe boots and actually had cold feet very briefly near the summit. Weird.
Anyway, just one crazy alpinisto's opinion....:)
Outdoorpartner - Dec 16, 2006 1:00 pm Date Climbed: Dec 13, 2006
Avalance Danger
Caught in a storm at 18,000 plus... lightening. Dumped 4 inches of fresh snow during the 2 hours we bivuaced. Turned around in very dangerous avalanche loaded conditions. Went from clear skies to storm in 30 minutes.
thenewpassion - Dec 10, 2006 6:46 am Date Climbed: Dec 6, 2004
Grrrrrr
Horrible weather all the way up and down. Could never see more than 10 meters in front. Still,made it to the top completely covered in ice.
Normal Wymper route. Climbed with a couple of friends from Oreagon who I met in Ecuador. Summit was unfortunatly in mist just like Cotopaxi!
Woodie Hopper - Oct 31, 2006 6:55 pm Date Climbed: Oct 28, 2006
Castillo/Ruta terrible
Great weather but very tough conditions. I had to use the lower hut (4,800 meters) since the Whymper hut route had a lot of black ice. There was a lot of black ice leading up to and past the Castillo. Above the ridge there was a lot of very hard blue ice requiring multiple consecutive pitches. My axe sometimes glanced-off the surface! After this there were some crevasses and a huge penitente field up to 6-7 feet high starting below 6,000 meters and covering the Veintimilla summit. The route to the Whymper summit and the summit itself was protected by extensive penitente fields up to 10 feet high! Of course I didn't go past the Veintimilla summit.
peakrat76 - Aug 14, 2006 10:28 pm Date Climbed: Nov 20, 1991
Thielmann Glacier Direct
Stayed in the comfortable Whymper Refugio following climbs of Cayambe and Cotopaxi. Midnight start. Encountered some fun ice on the glacier. Pointe Veintemilla reached in fog. A great climb. (Cold beer at hut on return.) Perfect end to a great expedition.
n8jojohnson - Jul 30, 2006 3:49 pm Date Climbed: Jun 19, 2006
Normal Route
First climb where I hit 'the wall' (I was a walking zombie, taking 10 breaths per step) Luckily, though, we were only 10 minutes from the summit.
In 1989 with some of my climbing buddies we went to Ecuador. At the time I was 18. I remember that we were racing toward the summit just for the fun of it.
summiter - Mar 30, 2006 12:16 am Date Climbed: Oct 16, 2005
Route: Normal route from above Whymper Hut
Camped on the glacier at 19,200 ft. Awesome experience. First day to camp gave us blue skies and great views. We had a good strong start. I hated the Ventimilla dome. Had a little clear skies on the summit (Whymper) but it clouded in fast. There was an increadible white-out traversing back to Ventimilla, very depressing as I could not see my progress until I got there. Had a quick descent. Very enjoyable.
Our American guide brought his 10 yr old son along. He made it as well. Youngest I've ever heard of making it up Chimbo!
Liga - Feb 27, 2006 3:22 pm Date Climbed: Jan 25, 2006
Route Climbed: El Castillo
Chimborazo is a real challenge when the weather does not cooperate. I was not lucky, so the climb was really tough because of extremely cold and windy weather. Anyway, impressive mountain and rewarding summit!
Route Climbed: normal via el castillo Date Climbed: january 22 2006
After terrible weather on Cotopaxi, the absolutely perfect starry windless night on Chimborazo was a relief. At the Whymper summit for sunrise and nearly every volcano in Ecuador could be seen. My partner got AMS early on and the guide took her down. He then reascended and caught up with me and another rope team a few hundred meters higher. I would definitely recommend Freddy with Moggely climbing as a guide. We summitted in 6 hours. Remember- Veintimilla is not the summit.
utclimber - Jan 8, 2008 12:32 pm Date Climbed: Dec 26, 1999
Normal RouteFun peak, but a long day. Very exciting to watch the considerable volcanic activity from Tungurahua from this route.
mnichols - Sep 22, 2007 11:33 pm Date Climbed: Jul 30, 2007
El CastilloBeautiful, blue skies at 0715, when we topped out on the Veintemilla summit. Of course, it was cold and windy as hell! Our feet were cold the whole night, so the sun was a welcome help--thawed us out pretty nicely. The El Castillo route is a seriously mind-numbing climb, perhaps the Glacier route would be more interesting. Trip report
Boriss Andean - Sep 20, 2007 9:15 pm Date Climbed: May 17, 2006
Route Climbed: Normal Route Via El Castillo.Climbed with great weather and perfect snow/ice conditions. Edgar, Ran (Israel) and I got to Veintimilla's summit in about 4 hours from the refuge. Great views of Cotopaxi, Illinizas, Antisana, Cayambe and Sangay.
We continued up to Whymper 6,310 m (20,561 ft), this time with soft knee deep snow. Got to the top in a good time, but clouds rolled in pretty fast.
We made our descent by the same route. Rock fall danger from El Castillo to "el corredor".
marauders - Jan 23, 2007 6:36 pm Date Climbed: Jan 18, 2007
Snow & AvalancheIt snowed all afternoon and all night. The obvious decision was to call it quits, too much snow and subsequent avalanche danger. A guide and client team tried to go up anyway and encountered nasty snow, ice and avalanche conditions. The turned around about 1/3 of the way up.
Scott - Jan 22, 2007 4:45 am Date Climbed: Jan 17, 2007
Harder than expectedChimborazo wasn't in very good condition and in my opinion wasn't that fun when compared to the other peaks I climbed in Ecuador. Lots of falling ice and falling rock on all routes due to the dry weather I guess. The "normal route" El Castillo has been plagued by rockfall. The Wymper Route has falling ice and was shooting baseball size rocks at us.
After reaching some serious avalanche danger (we also heard but did not see a huge avalanche in the dark on the way up), we had to backtrack 1000 feet/300 meters down the mountain (very tiring at almost 20,000 feet or around 6000 meters) and do an icy traverse over to the upper Castillo Route in order and reclimb the elevation lost to reach the Veintimilla summit. It made our elevation gained 1615 meters/5300 feet that day which made me very tired at that altitude. Hopefully conditions will improve. It used to be a straight forward ascent but conditions weren't good for our trip. On the other hand, the weather was great.
moneal - Jan 21, 2007 3:14 pm Date Climbed: Jan 12, 2007
Castillo routeWas about 1 minute away from getting crushed in a rock/ice avalanche in the rocky section of the Castillo route. Then it was very hard ice in the two steep couloirs on the ridge. Ice axe wouldn't go in and we had to front point up two 50 foot sections. I bonked hard after the steep ice at about 18,000 feet. Unfortunately after the avalanche it was unsafe to go back down so I had to climb up to 19,000 feet so I could traverse across and go down the Whymper route. Why the hell we didn't go up the seemingly much easy Whymper route is still a mystery to me. Local guides didn't serve us well today....
tjbst47 - Jan 11, 2007 10:11 pm Date Climbed: Jan 11, 2007
whymperClimbed the Castillo route Jan. 5 and 11, and I was surprised at how much snow melted off the bottom section. In my opinion, the bottom is dangerous due to loose rock to trip over and frequent rock fall. I think it would be better approached starting left up the Castillo ridge, but there is not a road or hut there.
6.5 hours to Whymper and 3.5 hours down. It only took 1/2 hour from Vientilla to Whymper.
tjbst47 - Jan 5, 2007 11:42 pm Date Climbed: Jan 5, 2007
VeintemillaMade it to Veintemilla summit, but I would have liked the Whymper summit. Conditions were cold, windy, and cloudy all up the ridge and REALLY cold and windy at the Veinemilla, so I called it good enough.
Jesus Malverde - Dec 23, 2006 9:48 pm Date Climbed: Dec 6, 2006
some thoughtsWhymper summit or Veintemilla summit via the El Castillo route; choices, choices...
some thoughts for what they are worth:
Several people told me that it can take 3+ hours (round trip) to get from the Veintemilla summit to the Whymper summit when the penitentes are exposed. Conceivably, This might add up to three hours to your climb if you started at the Whymper Refugio. One safety consideration on the El Castillo route is getting down below the obvious lower section (that is prone to rockfall) before 10:00 am. The tradeoff may be that you need to leave earlier than say 12:00 am to allow for more time cross the penitente field between summits as well as making it down below the lower section by 10:00 am. The key seems to be getting a good estimate on how long it will take your party to make that "round trip" from Veintemilla to Whymper and back and then leaving that much earlier before 12:00 am. This approach also puts you on the very upper part of the mountain at the coldest time of the day and also might mean that you are still approaching the Veintemilla in the dark of the morning.
We had a party of three fairly strong and acclimatized climbers on one rope that left the EW refugio at 12:00 am. We summited the Veintemilla at ~6:15 am and were back at the EW refugio at 9:30 am. So we made it down below the rockfall-prone section at before 10:00 am, but probably wouldn't have made this "cut off" time if we had gone for the Whymper summit. There had been a bit of snow over the previous week on Chimborazo and the penitentes were fairly covered, but the snow didn't look too consolidated on the summit plateau. My guess would have been that it would have taken a bit of negotiating to get over to the Whymper. This would have no doubt eaten into our time frame of getting down the El Castillo route to try and avoid potential rockfall on the lower section.One work around for this slim-time-margin scenario might be to put a high camp on the route so that a party would have more time on the upper mountain to get over to the Whymper summit. But this would mean carrying full loads up to the ridge above the El Castillo. Hmmmm...
On a different note, I wouldn't skimp on handwear on this route. For example, I brought Black Diamond Guide gloves (retail $154) thinking they would be overkill on this mountain. They turned out to be ideal for the conditions we encountered. Something like an 8000m mitt would be probably be overkill, but would advise beefy, warm gloves/mitts for the upper mountain. I would also definitely recommend plastic double boots instead of leather w/ supergaiters. I used the newer model Koflach Arctis Expe boots and actually had cold feet very briefly near the summit. Weird.
Anyway, just one crazy alpinisto's opinion....:)
Outdoorpartner - Dec 16, 2006 1:00 pm Date Climbed: Dec 13, 2006
Avalance DangerCaught in a storm at 18,000 plus... lightening. Dumped 4 inches of fresh snow during the 2 hours we bivuaced. Turned around in very dangerous avalanche loaded conditions. Went from clear skies to storm in 30 minutes.
thenewpassion - Dec 10, 2006 6:46 am Date Climbed: Dec 6, 2004
GrrrrrrHorrible weather all the way up and down. Could never see more than 10 meters in front. Still,made it to the top completely covered in ice.
Whitesail - Nov 26, 2006 1:53 pm
1998Normal Wymper route. Climbed with a couple of friends from Oreagon who I met in Ecuador. Summit was unfortunatly in mist just like Cotopaxi!
Woodie Hopper - Oct 31, 2006 6:55 pm Date Climbed: Oct 28, 2006
Castillo/Ruta terribleGreat weather but very tough conditions. I had to use the lower hut (4,800 meters) since the Whymper hut route had a lot of black ice. There was a lot of black ice leading up to and past the Castillo. Above the ridge there was a lot of very hard blue ice requiring multiple consecutive pitches. My axe sometimes glanced-off the surface! After this there were some crevasses and a huge penitente field up to 6-7 feet high starting below 6,000 meters and covering the Veintimilla summit. The route to the Whymper summit and the summit itself was protected by extensive penitente fields up to 10 feet high! Of course I didn't go past the Veintimilla summit.
phydeux - Oct 7, 2006 4:43 pm
normal "Whymper" Route 1990Fun, if not a long, one day climb.
peakrat76 - Aug 14, 2006 10:28 pm Date Climbed: Nov 20, 1991
Thielmann Glacier DirectStayed in the comfortable Whymper Refugio following climbs of Cayambe and Cotopaxi. Midnight start. Encountered some fun ice on the glacier. Pointe Veintemilla reached in fog. A great climb. (Cold beer at hut on return.) Perfect end to a great expedition.
n8jojohnson - Jul 30, 2006 3:49 pm Date Climbed: Jun 19, 2006
Normal RouteFirst climb where I hit 'the wall' (I was a walking zombie, taking 10 breaths per step) Luckily, though, we were only 10 minutes from the summit.
ElCapitanKoolAid - Jun 18, 2006 3:44 pm
First 6000 mIn 1989 with some of my climbing buddies we went to Ecuador. At the time I was 18. I remember that we were racing toward the summit just for the fun of it.
summiter - Mar 30, 2006 12:16 am Date Climbed: Oct 16, 2005
Route: Normal route from above Whymper HutCamped on the glacier at 19,200 ft. Awesome experience. First day to camp gave us blue skies and great views. We had a good strong start. I hated the Ventimilla dome. Had a little clear skies on the summit (Whymper) but it clouded in fast. There was an increadible white-out traversing back to Ventimilla, very depressing as I could not see my progress until I got there. Had a quick descent. Very enjoyable.
Our American guide brought his 10 yr old son along. He made it as well. Youngest I've ever heard of making it up Chimbo!
Liga - Feb 27, 2006 3:22 pm Date Climbed: Jan 25, 2006
Route Climbed: El CastilloChimborazo is a real challenge when the weather does not cooperate. I was not lucky, so the climb was really tough because of extremely cold and windy weather. Anyway, impressive mountain and rewarding summit!
colint - Jan 22, 2006 11:48 am
Route Climbed: normal via el castillo Date Climbed: january 22 2006After terrible weather on Cotopaxi, the absolutely perfect starry windless night on Chimborazo was a relief. At the Whymper summit for sunrise and nearly every volcano in Ecuador could be seen. My partner got AMS early on and the guide took her down. He then reascended and caught up with me and another rope team a few hundred meters higher. I would definitely recommend Freddy with Moggely climbing as a guide. We summitted in 6 hours. Remember- Veintimilla is not the summit.