Joel Mills
MOSCOW -- For most college students, winter break means a trip home to spend the holidays with the folks and get some rest before another grueling semester. But not all.

Instead of relaxing with their feet up by the fire or watching football, an adventurous group of University of Idaho students decided to spend their break testing their mountaineering skills, pushing their bodies to the limit on the 20,000-foot volcanoes in the Andes of Ecuador.

"I'm all about getting out of Moscow every time they let me out of school," says Mike Elsbury, 21, a senior electrical engineering major from Orofino. And the UI Outdoor Program is a way to do that.

"It's a good way to get together with people that are similarly interested and put together a trip at a reasonable cost," says Elsbury.

The six men and two women who went on the two-week expedition paid $1,100 each, which included airfare and all lodging, transportation and food while in Ecuador.

After some initial difficulties -- a passport arrived in the nick of time and airline tickets were booked at the last minute -- the team landed in Ecuador's capital of Quito on New Year's Eve to find the streets flooded with revelers burning makeshift dummies, a tradition thought to purge any negative energy lingering from the previous year.

"The whole trip reminded me of an Indiana Jones film," says Outdoor Program director and trip organizer Mike Beiser.

The original plan was to spend three or four days in Quito, soaking up the culture and getting used to the altitude.

But the busy city of 1.3 million -- notorious for its pickpockets -- drove the group to vote for an early departure after only one night.

The snow-capped peaks of the Andes that surround Quito were calling to the climbers.

"After a couple of days in the city you're thinking 'Oh yeah, OK, let's go for the mountain,' " says Dan Worsham, 47, a UI alumnus and Moscow roofer. Worsham is a 25-year veteran of Outdoor Program expeditions, which are open to community members on a space-available basis.

Each member of the team had equal say in decisions, says Beiser, who didn't always agree with the consensus.

"I think we should have spent a day or two extra in Quito at 10,000 feet acclimating, but the group said 'Let's get out of Quito. Let's capture the opportunity and go.' "

Acclimation is a process of adjusting to the thin oxygen of high altitudes.

"It doesn't take much for the whole group to get fired up and head out that way," says Worsham. "But obviously once we got out there we were sleeping at a lot higher elevation and hiking even higher, and probably there were some of those that ended up getting hammered by the high-altitude sickness."

The main symptom of altitude sickness is a headache, which can vary from mild to splitting.

The team acclimatized for a few days climbing the dry slopes of Ruminahui, at 15,455 feet, a relatively low volcano compared to the 20,000-foot glaciated monsters the group would face later in the trip.

The warm-up climbs also were an opportunity for a crash mountaineering class for some of the less experienced climbers, like Elsbury.

"I've done a little bit of technicalized climbing, done a whole lot of rock climbing and a whole lot of other outdoors activities," he says. "I've got very little mountaineering experience."

Ruminahui is in the Paramo, a region of Ecuador noted for its scenery. The Paramo is sometimes described as a "sponge" for its abundant moisture that feeds a profusion of plants, from passion fruit and mountain papaya to sisal and dwarf Indian paintbrush. The region is also home to abundant species of birds -- giant hummingbirds, flycatchers and even the occasional Andean condor.

After a few days honing their skills on Ruminahui, the climbers broke camp at the base of the volcano, shouldered their heavy packs and headed by taxi for the next challenge -- an attempted summit of the 19,388-foot Cotopaxi volcano.

But the first night on Cotopaxi was spent in a hut at 16,000 feet in 60-mph winds surrounded by clouds so moisture-laden everything, including the climbers, was coated with ice.

Some of the Ecuadorian guides the group met said it was the worst weather they had ever seen.

"The whole hut just hummed and shook and vibrated," says Beiser. "The standard would have been to descend and wait, spend some time down low, then go back up and give it another try."

Democracy kicked in again. and the decision whether to stay or descend was put to a vote. This time the group was evenly split. Four stayed in the hut to wait for the weather to clear while the other four returned to the foot of Cotopaxi.

"Four of our group spent four nights at 16,000 feet, not fully acclimated, which I think was absolutely phenomenal," says Beiser. "Most of those four showed improvement, versus their health degrading."

After a couple of days, the weather cleared and the group reunited at the hut to attempt the summit.

The hike began at about midnight because the ice is more stable in the lower nighttime temperatures.

"We got almost the whole group within 1,000 feet of the summit" before having to turn back at sunrise, Beiser says.

After their assault on Cotopaxi, the group spent a day relaxing in the Baos hot springs before attempting the final goal: the summit of Chimborazo, a massive 20,703-foot volcano.

Here the group ran into another unforeseen snag. Running low on money, half the group couldn't afford to spend the night in a hut, an option that wasn't included in the cost of the trip. So they camped in tents outside.

This turned out to be a stroke of luck for the tent campers.

Inside the hut, the caretaker had been treating the wooden floor with kerosene. The three who could afford a bed woke to suffocating fumes and horrible headaches.

The poisoned ones had to stay behind while the others attempted the summit on their own.

The weather was beautiful and the five climbers made it to 18,000 feet before they once again were forced to turn back because of rising daytime temperatures.

Despite the successes of the trip, that left some feeling unsatisfied.

"I have to go back," says Brian Shirley, 25, a graduate student in environmental science from Waterloo, Iowa.

"You leave something behind when you don't make the summit."

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Mills may be contacted at city@lmtribune.com