Entries By henry coppolillo

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 - 4:52 pm PT

Made it up to Condoriri basecamp today with the help of about a dozen mules. After setting up camp and having lunch we kept walking up to the toe of the glacier at around 16,000,' where we spent a few hours reviewing some more advanced mountaineering skills- steep cramponing, ice climbing and lowering and rappelling. We're getting to bed early ahead of an alpine start tomorrow, we'll check in when we're all back in camp tomorrow afternoon!

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

Tuesday, May 19, 2026 - 5:49 pm PT

We left La Paz in the wee hours of the morning, navigating the maze of city streets to the highway leading to Huayna Potosi. As we neared the base of Huayna we could see headlamps high on the summit ridge, an exciting preview of what's to come. The sun was just beginning to rise as we turned north on a road that seemed improbable at best in a passenger van, but our driver navigated with ease and precision while we took in breathtaking early morning views of the west face of Huayna. After creating a 16000+' pass the "road" dropped down towards the Condoriri valley, and we hopped out of the van to stretch our legs for the final few miles to the Rinconada trailhead. We set up camp in the meadow surrounded by grazing llamas and alpacas. After lunch the rest of the afternoon was spent napping and organizing gear into loads for the mules that will help us move up to Condoriri base camp tomorrow. It's great to be out of the hustle and bustle of the city and under the spectacular Milky Way sky.

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

Monday, May 18, 2026 - 6:13 pm PT

Yesterday took the team to several unique sights around the south end of La Paz, all while breathing the thin air and preparing our bodies for the high peaks that lie ahead. First up was Valle de la Luna, a bizarre collection of rain-eroded rock towers in the middle of the suburbs not far from our hotel. From there we drove uphill a few minutes before hiking to Muela del Diablo, a striking rock tower overlooking the city. After taking some time to enjoy the views it was on to a longer hike to a stunning viewpoint a little above 13000', where we enjoyed a picnic lunch and made a traditional Bolivian offering to honor the mountains we came here to climb. Yesterday in the Witch's Market we acquired an offering pallet of sorts, made up of various chalk and sugar pieces each inscribed with imagery asking for blessings of various parts of our travels, topped with a generous helping of coca leaves. Javier, our local liaison and logistics coordinator, explained the significance of each part of the offering before setting fire to it all on the mountain top where we found ourselves enjoying lunch, complete with great views of Huayna Potosi to the north and Illimani to the south. This important ritual complete, it was on to another short hike past more stunning columns of eroded conglomerate, these ones several hundreds of feet high!

Today we ventured a little higher with an acclimatization hike near Cerro Saturno on the northeastern edge of the city. It was a lunar-like landscape of near-black sand, loose shale and the occasional picturesque lagoon. We topped out at just over 16000', a new altitude record for some in the group! We returned to the hotel by mid-afternoon to organize and pack our gear for the coming week of climbing. After a leisurely few days of acclimatization, it is finally time to head to the big mountains! We're making an early start for Rinconada tomorrow, and will spend the next several days climbing in the Condoriri group. The team is feeling strong, psyched and ready to get up high! 

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

Saturday, May 16, 2026 - 7:26 pm PT

Greetings from La Paz!

After many hours of travel over the last few days, the whole team assembled at Hotel Mitru Sur this morning for the official start of our trip. After a gear check and a delicious steak and seafood lunch we headed out to explore the city, making use of the teleferico (cable car) system that travels all over the cities of La Paz and El Alto.  This allowed us to see some sights and reach 13,000' without having to put in too much effort as we start to acclimatize to the high altitude we start at here in Bolivia.

We plan to spend the next two days based out of La Paz, with making day hikes to progressively higher altitudes to allow our bodies to begin adjusting before we head to the big mountains. I'm so excited to be here for the second time, and to share this beautiful country and stunning mountains with a new group.

Stay tuned for more in the coming days! 

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

We did everything we could to get to the summit of Chimborazo yesterday, but the mountain had other plans. We delayed our start until 1 am to allow some lightning to pass by and made the long traverse around the Castillo rock formation above camp towards the toe of the glacier. As we rounded the corner the fresh snow that had been aiding our progress with smoother walking conditions over the rock turned into much deeper and more concerning slabs. Knowing that the hazard would only worsen as elevation and slope angle increased, we turned tail and headed back to high camp. 

While it always stings to get shut down, especially on the last and hardest objective of the trip, spirits were still high for our snowy walk down to meet the bus yesterday morning. A lazy afternoon of drying out gear, naps and packing was followed by an excellent final dinner at Hacienda Abraspungo. 

This trip was a success before we even stepped foot on any of the mountains. Each member of the team prepared diligently and showed up in Ecuador ready to climb, if the mountains would allow safe passage. In the end, we had the privilege of visiting two beautiful summits. Had we reached none of these summits, Dustin and I would be equally proud of this team for all the mental and physical training they accomplished before arriving here. A job well done team! 

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

We had a nice rest day yesterday as we made our way from La Cienega to the famous Chimborazo Lodge. Tucked in one of the valleys under the south face of Chimborazo, it’s essentially a climbing museum that happens to offer rooms for climbers- every conceivable inch of wall space is covered in photographs or memorabilia spanning the entire history of alpinism both in Ecuador and abroad. Surrounded by dozens of llamas grazing in the surrounding fields, the ambiance was perfect the last night before our final summit attempt of the trip. 

This morning we awoke to dense fog and made our way up the road into Chimborazo National Park with never more than a few feet of visibility in front of bus. The hike up to high camp was longer, snowier and steeper than the approach the Cotopaxi hut, but at least we all have a few more red blood cells at this point in the trip! The Chimborazo high camp is much more primitive than the Refugios at Cayambe or Cotopaxi, but the big white domes up here are still a big upgrade over tents, especially in a raging thunderstorm like the one that rolled through a few hours after we got up here this afternoon.

There is a lot of snow on the ground up here and more falling as I write this, so we are unsure what the upper mountain will look like tonight and tomorrow. With a high degree of uncertainty around the state of snowpack and much more consequential terrain than our previous two mountains we are going to take a cautious approach into our climb tonight and climb as high as the mountain allows us to with a reasonable margin. We’ve controlled every variable we can at this point, so it’s just a matter of seeing what the mountain allows us to do. As of right now the plan is for a midnight departure, check back tomorrow to see how we fared! 

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

The team absolutely styled Cotopaxi this morning, or more accurately, last night. Midnight departures are more or less the standard here in Ecuador, as the hut staff typically provides hot water for coffee and tea and bread rolls with butter and jam at 11 pm. We started out on a winding sandy trail above the refugio that quickly turned to firm crunchy snow, and were soon traversing the lower slopes of the glacier.

A brief but intense rain storm rolled through yesterday afternoon not long after we had arrived at the hut, so we approached the steeper upper mountain with caution due to some uncertainty around how much snow had fallen up there and how the resulting avalanche conditions might manifest. The tropical high-alpine snowpack on these peaks can behave in strange ways and is often unlike anything we'd typically encounter in the mountains back home. But this time around Dustin and I were pleasantly surprised to find an unreactive interface and minimal slab formation from the previous day's weather. The few inches that had fallen did however make for excellent climbing conditions, allowing us to move through the steep and exposed switchbacks below the summit confidently and efficiently.

Perhaps the only detracting factor of the climb was our few moments on the summit itself, which were kept rather brief due to lots of nasty smelling sulfuric gas, and lacked the iconic views of Cotopaxi's massive crater which was largely obscured by clouds. Once on the descent however the team continued to crush it, and we were back at the Refugio Jose Rivas before 8 am! This meant we've had most of the day to catch up on sleep, food and hydration at Hacienda La Cienega. Tomorrow we'll head to Chimborazo Lodge and start preparing for our last big objective! 

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

PS- I failed to take a single blog-worthy photo today, but I think Dustin has a few decent ones. I'll ask him to send them when he wakes up from his nap. 

We are settled in at the Refugio Jose Rivas on Cotopaxi. It is an exceptionally beautiful evening above the valley cloud cover with the sun setting on the mountain.

A couple of nights of good sleep have done everyone well and we are as ready to climb as we can be. The team is hopping into bed right now in anticipation of another alpine start.

RMI Guide Dustin & Team

The whole team stood on top of Cayambe today! An 11 p.m. wake up had us leaving the hut shortly after midnight, winding our way up rocky trails for a little over an hour to the base of the glacier. From there we made great time up the moderate slopes that make up the lower half of the route. Somewhere in the 17,500’ range the glacier becomes much more complex and the slope angle increases significantly. Slow and steady movement up firm and exposed terrain brought us to the seemingly endless summit plateau, but by 6:45 a.m. the entire team was on top at 18,997’! Winds were gusty throughout the night and most of us were in all our layers for the latter half of the ascent. But as we started down the temperatures soared under the equatorial sun and we were soon in base layers trudging back towards the hut. We climbed through intermittent clouds and fog all night, but by morning most of the clouds cleared out and we were treated to our first clear views of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo! After a long and tiring day we’re all looking forward to a full night’s sleep and a rest day tomorrow before heading south to Cotopaxi! 

--RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo and team

We have made our way north, through a variety of detours that have served to continue or process of acclimatization, keep us well fed and give us the opportunity to learn about the culture. Yesterday, we went for a loop hike around the beautiful Laguna Cuicocha. Over just a short distance, the fauna changes drastically as one side of the lake is far more arid than the side that sits right up against Volcan Cotacachi. It was a thoroughly enjoyable hike as we rambled through a variety of microclimates and had the chance to see condors in flight. But you know, there is always something new or interesting to see along the way. Sometimes at the end of the day it's something small, like a cheese ice cream, that stands out.

After a relaxing night at the Intiyaya residences, which in Kichwa (the native language in parts of Ecuador and slightly different than Quechua) may roughly translate to "Father Sun", we departed for the busy streets of the Otavalo market. It was a drizzly day, but Saturday is always bustling in the market. The usual bartering took place, copious espressos were consumed and then we made our way to the Yanacocha Hut, on the lower slopes of Cayambe. Everyone is tucked into bed here in the comfort of a hut we have all to ourselves. On deck for tomorrow is one last leg of travel that will take us to the main Cayambe hut (15,400') and the base of the climb.

If the weather cooperates tomorrow, then right about the time they are awarding the Super Bowl MVP we will be waking up for our alpine start on Cayambe. The climbing takes place at night here for a variety of factors, which can all be summed up by saying that the weather at night tends to be the most stable when the air is coolest. In addition to that, it is very difficult to trudge uphill during the daylight in this region as the sun's radiation is so intense, so we hope to be headed downhill by just after sunrise.

Check back on Monday afternoon to find out if the mountain allowed us passage this time around!

RMI Guide Dustin Wittmier