Banos's collection of roosters and dogs woke us up at dawn. The large barking rottweiler that prowled the roof of the adjacent building was impossible to sleep through or even feign sleep. After rising I took a quick trip down to the banks in town to try my luck at the ATMs again. Renato, Bob and Steve were already at breakfast as I hurried out the door.

Success! And the ATM even spit out a few 10's and 5's instead of sticking me with only 20's. On my return to Posada del Arte I found the breakfast crowd had grown to include Charles and Hugo. Christian brought me more pancakes and fruit than I could possibly finish.

At 9:30 we departed Banos heading back to the highlands. Hugo stopped the van by the side of the road as we neared Chimborazo so we could stretch our legs and take some pictures of the huge mountain before us.

Driving into the park we saw a few vicunas, the wild relatives of the llama and alpaca. Once we reached the lower hut and the end of the road we headed inside for a quick lunch and left whatever gear we wouldn't need for the summit attempt in the hut keeper's room.

Chimborazo's upper reaches were covered in clouds near the snow line. Hoping the weather would clear after dark we headed up to the upper hut at 16,400 feet. With a light drizzle from the clouds keeping us inside, Scott and I found the largest space available to break our hacky-sack altitute record.

I wasn't feeling as strong as I had at Cotopaxi's hut and I guessed the cause was our sudden rise of 10,000 feet in elevation. Bob and Travis tried to take some compass bearings and make guesses about GPS positions in case our climb was socked in and we had to blindly navigate back to the hut.

Two other climbers from California and their local guide arrived at the hut along with another group that was possibly from Argentina. Still, there was plenty of room for everyone and we consumed another pre-climb pasta dinner.

We planned for our earliest departure yet, 11pm, since Chimborazo would be over 4,000 feet of climbing. Bob let us know that we'd try and reach the false summit, but the traverse over to the real (Whymper summit - named for the first person to ascend the mountain) might take a long time and be out of our reach. We'll need to be off the glacier as soon as we can, preferably by 10am so we can get by a section of rocky cliffs held together by the snow and ice. Once the sun starts warming these cliffs up, rocks and boulders will tumble down.

I had trouble falling asleep and crawled out of my sleeping bag around 7pm. Looking outside I could see that the clouds had cleared from above us and sunken into the plains below. The weak last light from the sunset was just fading away above the clouds.

I had a lot more hope for the success of our climb now that the weather seemed to have cleared. I returned to the bunk and tried to fall asleep again.