Our night is short, but does not pass quickly for me. We turned in early and planned to leave around midnight. I couldn't fall asleep, but didn't feel a nervous anticipation keeping me up. I heard Renato, Bob and Charles get up early to leave an hour before us for their summit attempt. Steve got up early as well so he could have time to digest some food before starting out.

Finally, when I felt like I could fall asleep, I heard Scott and Travis start moving and so I crawled out of the sleeping bag and began to put on the clothes I'd laid out in order the night before next to me.

At least this morning I didn't have a headache, but that may be due to staying awake and breathing deeply all night. A light mist was coming down outside, so we had to rethink our clothing strategies, putting our on shell jackets right away and stripping off a few insulating layers.

As we left the hut and started climbing the rough trail my legs quickly began to overheat. It was warmer than expected outside, so we all stopped to remove another layer. I struggled to remove my harness, double boots and shell pants to strip off the fleece pants below and replace it all back again in as short a time as possible. At least now my legs weren't sweating.

We continued upward in the monochrome terrain lit by our headlamps, the clouds blocking our views of the stars or the giant peak above us. We kept recognizing landmarks in the rocks, and two days of familiarity with this trail led us right to the glacier, where we put on our crampons and tied in to the rope. Until we left the glacier again we would be walking in the same order, tied together but evenly spaced apart.

Travis led upwards and across this relatively flat section of the glacier while Steve, myself and Scott followed in order. The crevasses were mostly small and not very deep as we walked on the footsteps left by Bob, Charles and Renato. We caught up to the three of them as the route steepened on the rise to the ridge above. We wished them good luck and continued on.

Up above the wind increased and I began to miss the fleece pants I'd removed. I only had a thin layer of long underwear and the shell pants on. Usually my legs are plenty warm with constant work, but at this higher elevation we were moving slower and the wind cut through the side zippers of my pants.

A few clear patches in the clouds allowed me to spot the Southern Cross, but the glacier remained covered in clouds and Travis was unsure of the exact route around a few of the larger crevasses. We followed the tracks of Gram, a solo climber who'd come up to the hut last night, but the Spaniard's route had been covered by the fresh snow fall and winds.

We caught up with Gram who offered to let us route find and deal with any potential hidden crevasses as a rope team. During a break I managed to let a water bottle slide down the glacier out of our headlamp beams and bound for a crevasse burial below. Damn. At least there was only 5 ounces of water left in that bottle, so I didnŐt lose a whole quart. Travis gave us a reproving command to keep a tight grip on everything.

We continued upwards and reached a giant headwall while it was still dark. The clouds were parting somewhat, and Gram began to solo climb up the steep ice. Travis followed for a bit, then decided this was definitely not the route. We started walking around a few large crevasses, trying to find the real route again and eventually located it. Here we found the correct snow bridge across a crevasse and headed up, now with the sun coming up on the other side of the mountain.

Repeatedly, we'd climb to the top of a rise hoping we were nearing the summit (based on the reading of several altimeter watches) only to be disappointed by the appearance of yet another slope to climb. Travis protected several of these sections with running belays, pickets or ice screws we left in the snow to anchor into on the descent as well. The most dangerous section involved crossing a disintegrating snow bridge while looking down into its depths.

Finally we reached a low angled slope where we could climb to the final ramp to the summit. We stashed our packs, and slathered on sun block to protect from the intense sunshine now in our faces and headed up. Travis setup running belays again on the final snow ramp of about 50 degrees and we steeped out of the chutes to find we had only a few feet more to walk to top of the wide, rounded summit.

We were later reaching the summit than we had planned, so after a few quick photos we headed back down to our packs. I was already very tired physically; this was proving to be my hardest day ever. But we had to rush down as quickly and safely as possible before the lower glacier heated up too much and the snow became soft and dangerous.

With the clouds gone and the sun out, Travis was able to plot a much quicker route down than the one we'd taken up. Unfortunately, we were almost directly on the equator, and the sun was very intense. The snow started sticking to our crampons, requiring us to stop and bang the snow off with an ice axe every few steps to avoid slipping. And as we moved lower down the glacier's bowl shape helped reflect and amplify the snow.

I felt that I was in some sort of huge solar cooker. My legs were exhausted and my lack of sleep was catching up to me. I wanted to stop and drink more of the water in my backpack, but fighting against that desire was the need to get off the glacier as soon as possible. I heard Scott behind me complain about the conditions and ask to stop for water as well. But I also heard other things. I don't know if they came from Scott or from my slowly baking mind, but I tried to ignore them and keep moving.

Finally we reached the foot of the glacier and could free ourselves from the rope to move at our own pace. We could also remove the binding harnesses and crampons and several sweat soaked layers. I hurried down the path thinking of the chance to be finally done with physical exertion today. Bob, Renato and Charles meet us outside the hut. Our later than expected return had Bob worried. It was now 1:30pm, and we'd been on the move for over 13 hours. My greatest joy now was to just take off the heavy plastic mountaineering boots.

Charles, Bob and Renato had turned back just after gaining the ridge, but Charles had set a personal altitude record of 17,100 feet.

After some light snacks and rehydrating we loaded the van Hugo had arrived with. Thankfully, we didn't have to force ourselves into the Land Cruiser. In the back seat I caught several minutes of sleep in between jerking bumps on the ride back down to the town of Cayambe.

We stopped here for a longer lunch at the Aroma Cafe, and then resumed the drive back to Quito. Even after the cappuccino I'd had to drink, I still slept most of the way back.

There was a light rain that evening in Quito, so we just went next door to the Swiss restaurant, and crashed into bed afterwards.