New personal best!

Today we did an acclimatization hike on a volcano that overlooks Quito. It's called Pichincha and it's nearly 15,700' high -- prior to today's climb I'd never been higher than a 14er (the highest mountain in the lower 48 is Mt Whitney in CA at 14,494'). The last 1,000' of vertical had me breathing quite hard so I'm definitely going to need more red blood cells flowing through my veins to handle 19,000'!  Unfortunately there were no views to be had as we were in the clouds and mist all day. Because we're at the equator there was very little snow even at the summit. In fact the mountains were quite beautiful with trees fading to grass and wild flowers fading to moss. Only the last 500' or so was devoid of vegetation. Off to asimilar acclimatization hike tomorrow. Unfortunately I'm short some pictures as they're still on my camera. Here's what I have.