At 10 till 10pm everyone seemed to wake up and start moving simultaneously, quite a different performance from our alpine start on Cotopaxi. Scott asked if anyone else had just experienced "4 and a half hours of deep thought?" I had managed about 90 minutes of sleep.

Breakfast consisted of a roll with olive oil and yogurt. Travis commented that I should remove a layer of clothing to keep cool after all the calories I was consuming.

We headed out the door right at 11pm and started making our way across the moraine and rock fields. The group from Argentina got ahead of us and we took a rest break to make sure they were well ahead of us and would not knock down rocks on us.

We soon passed them again however, as they seemed undecided how best to access the glacier. We put on our crampons and made our way up a snowfield then onto a dirt and rock covered section of the glacier. Making our way up to the ridgeline above us we got off route and each rope team fended for themselves until we all hit the ridge and regrouped.

The moon rose above the ridge opposite us and the Californians passed us by as we approached the first dome. The route guide referred to two "domes" or steeper sections of the ridge that leveled off at the top, I guess not unlike a dome shape. Travis and Bob set a few pieces of protection into the ice for us to clip into as we went by. This running belay would help the rest of the rope team catch a falling teammate. A few sections of this dome were steep enough to require front pointing with our crampons instead of walking flat-footed. However, I never did use the second ice tool that Scott lent me for this climb.

Atop the first dome we took a short break and Renato announced that the steep slope was wearing him out to quickly for him to make the summit. So we changed rope teams around and Travis guided Renato back down while Bob, Steve, Scott and I headed up. Renato had made it to 18,700 feet, which wasn't his personal best, but still as high as Orizaba in Mexico.

Bob picked up the pace now that there were fewer of us and we covered the next 1000 feet in one hour, including additional steep climbing on the second dome. The night had remained clear and I occasionally turned off my headlamp and hiked by the moonlight. I was watching the moon's reflection sparkle in the snow to my right when I noticed a strange boxy green light suddenly appear in the snow. In a second I realized it was Bob's GPS unit and I called out. Bob had just taken a way-point and didn't even notice when the GPS fell out of his jacket and slid down the snow. Thankfully, the unit had stopped on the pot marked surface. I traversed over a few feet to pick it up and handed it back to Bob.

Bob and I debated about which constellation was the Southern Cross and finally agreed after checking a compass bearing.

As we gained altitude I keep trying to breathe deeply and obtain more oxygen from the thin atmosphere. The wind had picked up, but I didn't put on my shell mittens quick enough. My hands were getting colder and colder as we approached the summit.

We finally topped out at 6:18am with the sun still behind the true summit. The Californian group had traversed over and now stood on the Whymper summit, about 140 feet higher than us. I set about warming my hands in my armpits while we debated about going for the real summit or not. The weather was fine, but our concern was descending quick enough to get past the rock fall on the lower glacier before it warmed up too much.

Bob felt we could get to the real summit from here much quicker than his original 30-40 minute time estimate. So we went for it, moving quickly across a very crevassed snowfield and passed the Californians going back down. One crevasse in particular was very wide and deep and the snow bridge across it seemed to barely hold together as we went by.

We reached the summit well before 7am and we overjoyed at our success. Scott, Steve and I had now climbed all of our objectives for this trip and set new personal elevation records each time. If anything, Bob was even more excited than us. Of the 6 or so Ecuador trips he's run previously, no one had ever made it to the summit of Chimborazo. Some of those attempts had been fouled by bad weather, while other people just were not in shape for this climb. However, Bob had changed our schedule around this trip to give us another rest day between Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, so that could have been this difference more than anything else that helped us get here.

Scott pulled a hacky-sack from his bag, looked at me and said "Are you ready?" In crampons and plastic boots at 20,702 feet I somehow managed to make contact and kick it back his way without also knifing myself in the calf. Scott's boot made slight contact with the beanbag. Scott managed to return one of my serves just enough for my boot to touch it as well. We felt this was good enough to claim a new hacky-sack elevation record.

We didn't on top long and hurried back across the summit snowfield to the false summit. We applied more sun block and started down. The descent of the ridge went smoothly, with Bob giving us boot-axe belays on the steeper sections. While we had front-pointed up some of these pitches, we down climbed all of them facing outward.

In the daylight it was much easier to follow the route off the ridge and onto the snowfield. Reaching the point where we had strapped on our crampons we quickly shed them, and took off as fast as we could go over the loose rocks trying to get far away from the cliffs.

I heard a few rocks come off and bounce over the boulder fields, but didn't have any close calls. I was overheating but didn't stop until I was well out of range to strip off a few layers. I found Scott, who had taken a different path than me, off of the moraine and we walked back to the hut.

Travis, Renato and Charles were waiting for us again and congratulated us on our success. I had to congratulate Charles as well, since he set another personal altitude record, this time 17,900 feet.

After a hot brew we repacked our backpacks and shouldered them for the last descent. Once back at the lower hut we cleaned up a little and loaded the van. I corralled everyone for a group shot with Chimborazo in the background. Unfortunately, the clouds had finally returned and partially obscured the mountain.

I slept for much of the return trip to Quito that afternoon. Once back at the Alcala, we showered and started repacking for the last time for our flight home the next morning. Dinner was next door at the Swiss place again where we polished off a few bottles of wine.