Uncharted
All the Baggage in the World

Article by Tracy Ross • Photos by Dave Morris

I have this theory about baggage...

It's that the amount of stuff you drag across the globe in your quest to find adventure is directly related to the amount of personal issues in your psychological luggage. Like the jealousy, the insecurity, the fear and attachment that keeps you from seeing the world without blinders. I have a friend whose manic depressive bi-polar sister-in-law just hauled four suitcases of brand new clothes to Germany — for the weekend — so she'd be sure to have something for "every occasion." And another friend whose cousin joined her on a trip to Mexico for a bachelorette party but refused to leave the country without her Samsonite full of bottled water and canned food. She was finally convinced to leave her Perrier behind, but only after a panic attack worth a couple of sedatives.

It took a trans-Andean bike and mountaineering extravaganza last year for me to realize that I had my own baggage, and that it was time to begin unloading it.

I'm a little person, I had big plans, and an even bigger pile of stuff: my mountain bike and repair kit, four French panniers, expedition-sized backpack filled with clothes for all conditions, four-season tent, two ice axes, plastic climbing boots, leather climbing boots, harness, two pickets, two ice screws, twelve carabiners, helmet, mosquito net, travelogue, journal, first aid kit, and pills for every ailment formed a giant pile in the belly of the plane as I headed home from Ecuador. Looking back, I wish I'd left most of it in the L.A. airport, before I ever took off. A lot of baggage can prevent even the most open-minded traveler from seeing the world as it is.

The Andes have a lot to see. Glaciated volcanoes rise out of 14,000-foot high deserts and are easily approached without a plane. People live in the mountains in much the same way that they have for centuries and their culture is homegrown. Although an Ecuadorian rainy season can be wet, on either side of it are sunny, mild months without snow or darkness. As I formed my plan of attack, one thing was missing — a partner. And while I had planned to go alone if I had to, it didn't take much to convince a virtual stranger — Dave, a climber I had met that summer in Denali — into going with me. How could he have resisted? It was going to be the adventure of a lifetime.

Our overzealous itinerary included landing in Quito, Ecuador, where we would begin our 2,000-mile ride down the Pan-American Highway en route to Santiago, Chile. Along the way, we planned "short stops" to climb a few 20,000-foot volcanoes in training for our ascent of 22,000-foot Aconcagua. Of course we also wanted to excavate Macchu Picchu, boat the Napo River, hike the Inca Trail, eat Anaconda, volunteer in a high-altitude sustainable agriculture project, and live for a while with the Huarani Indians.

Sound crazy? We didn't think so. With virtually non-existent experience in foreign expeditions, I was one hundred percent certain that we could do it all.

What I didn't realize was that ambition overpowers the subtle beauty of a country like Ecuador. While the Andean Highlands are far from subtle, with the "Avenue of Volcanoes" cracking the horizon and rich agricultural valleys spanning out in multi-hued tapestries of green, the people who live here are modest, soft spoken, and downright chameleon. Though they wear the bright colors of their ancestors, they blend into the rich dark soil, rolling pampas hillsides, and striking mountain backdrop in an otherworldly harmony. I only wish I had taken the time to communicate, in an effort to learn something about the workings of their culture and community.

The Black Hole
Touching down in Quito, the first thing I thought of was the giant mound of equipment I had brought with me to "see" South America. My backpack, a duffel bag aptly named "the black hole," and my bulging bike box formed a 300-pound massif in the middle of the tiny airport. Instead of breathing in the exotic smells of a new country, listening to the rapid flicker of Spanish on foreign tongues, and savoring the shocking first minutes of a new adventure, I focused on an imposing metal fence with a teeny opening through which I was going to have to move a mountain.

It took eight trips through the gate to move our pile of gear, and while Dave was allowed to exit and re-enter the airport from the outside I became collateral, in charge of guarding our pile against would-be thieves. The only taxi to be seen was what seemed like half a hatchback. We muscled our mound inside, hollowed out spaces for ourselves and were on to the South American Explorers Club (SAE), where we planned to quickly leaf through the itineraries of other travelers before high tailing it to the highway.

Our quick stop turned into two days of sifting through bike parts and camping equipment in an attempt to cover our backs should anything go wrong on the first leg of the trip. We were about to get our expedition feet wet for the first time south of the border, and by God, we were going to be ready. The SAE is a clearinghouse for travel information, with enough tips and tricks of the trade to destroy any inkling of surprise, so we chose to avoid reading the exploits of other travelers and focused instead on being so prepared we could meet a surprise head on and outsmart it with cool gear. We stored our extra stuff in the SAE clubhouse, and turned our attention to figuring out the safest way to mail mountaineering gear to remote post offices in scattered villages throughout the Andes. The more we told others about our plan, the more we learned about the rampant theft that rules over the Ecuadorian postal service. There was just no getting around that one. We had brought nearly all of our worldly passions and couldn't afford the loss. Dejected, but only slightly, we decided to leave climbing gear behind, and started peddling south, into the heart of the Andes.

People warned me. Without ever coming out and calling it like it was, they hinted that my plan might be insane. When I told my friend Whitney, a mountaineering guide and world climber, she listened very closely. When I stopped my excited tirade, she paused...and paused...and then said, "Huh." Whitney is never at a loss for words. I should have known by her reaction that maybe I was missing something. "Why don't you choose climbing or biking?" She asked. "Isn't it going to be hard to get shit from one place to another? And don't you think you should give yourself a little more time to get there?"

I should have listened. After all, most of my friends spend most of their waking moments either dreaming, planning, or executing adventures that would put my trip to shame. The difference is, they don't seem to have anything to prove, which is the flaw that takes up most of the space in my emotional baggage. Although I have chosen roads less traveled, have rejected a life of academic over-achievement and financial security, I still fall prey to the need to succeed. It's my mortal flaw. When I plan something, I can't stop until it's so epic that everybody falls over backward in awe.

"Why the hell did I buy a gold bike?"
The sun stretched its ultraviolet limbs over our bodies on the fifth day of our ride, as we began a four thousand-foot climb over the spine of the Andes. For hours we rode in silence, pushing our 90-pound bikes over the mountains in an endless granny gear meditation. For the first time since we'd arrived I felt the delirium of aimless freedom. This is what I had come here to do: to ride, to feel a different wind on my face, to try and forget where I had come from and where I was going. But it only lasted a short time. For when we began our descent into the town of Zumbagua, my metallic gold bike, racer-striped helmet, and over-stuffed panniers attracted so much attention I became a wayward Midas.

As we wheeled into town looking for a place to park ourselves for the night, a small crowd gathered around us while others watched suspiciously from the shadows. I had felt the same self-conscious jitters arriving in other villages, but this time something was different. Though I had been in the saddle for eight hours, I suddenly felt amped, and my heart was pounding. "Why the hell did I buy a gold bike?" I muttered under my breath. However, as the crowd around us grew, I soon noticed that nobody was looking at me at all. Instead they were fixated on my things.

A group of little boys gathered around my legs, rattling off conversation so quickly I couldn't pick up a word. As their excitement grew, so did their confidence and soon they were jostling for a chance to touch my headlight, toe clips, and bar ends. They were beside themselves; too impatient to listen to my pathetic Spanish attempted explanation of how the parts worked. Overwhelmed at all the commotion, I began to get claustrophobic and felt threatened for reasons I couldn't explain. For the first time in my life, I felt the gluttony of having too much. I felt obese. I motioned for Dave to push on ahead of me and I gently broke through the crowd.

We spent the night in a whitewashed Austrian hostel that seemed as out of place in the village as we did. The streets of Zumbagua were littered with rotten food and trash, and dilapidated buildings crumbled around. But the hostel was sparkling clean, sturdy, and newly built. It was fancy and garish. Never had I better understood the slogan "less is more." Subconsciously, it hit harder that I thought.

The next morning, as the villagers were setting up for the weekend market, I gave in to the urge to keep moving, motivated by an uneasiness from the evening before. I didn't want to be the center of any attention. That's not why I went to South America. Instead of finding a common ground upon which I could communicate and learn something, I had isolated myself in a mobile world of possessions. If I had entered town on foot, or in the back of a rattling pick-up like other visitors had, at least I would have entered on more equal terms, and perhaps I would have made a connection with one of those staring, beautiful highland faces. Instead, Dave and I packed our bikes, ate some sweet bread and orange juice, and peddled down the dusty road.

Six weeks and countless miles later, we completed a long loop through the Andes that took us as far south as Cuenca and back to the bustling city of Quito. We had thwarted attacking mongrel dogs with fists full of stones, climbed high into the misty mountains in search of a Swiss-run cheese factory, and worked for our board at the Black Sheep B&B, where we harvested the food we cooked for fellow travelers from a massive garden guarded by irritable goats. We had ground the gears of our bikes over the massive Andean spinal column too many times to count. Some days our circuitous route wound down roads made entirely of river stones. Often we climbed for hours, crossing the sides of mountains in an endless zigzag of switchbacks. The more times we rolled in and out of villages like Zumbagua, the more I vowed to return to this quiet, unassuming country with nothing but a day pack, a change of clothes, and a willingness to meet these people again, on more equal footing.

But there was no time for reflection. After two days in Quito, our maddening schedule was pressing us on to another adventure. With barely enough time to shift gears from bike mode to climbing mode, it was time to exchange one load of stuff for another. As we packed for our next objective -- 19,347-foot ghostly sentinel of the Andean Paramo, Cotopaxi -- a tension that had been building between Dave and me began to escalate.

Between us a tightly woven, high-pitched chord had appeared and it could have snapped at any time. It wasn't that we were getting sick of each other, or that any one thing had happened to strain our relationship. Instead, it was the overwhelming sense that we were crashing through our journey at break neck speed, unable to relax.

Conquering Cotopaxi
Climbing Cotopaxi was no remedy for our agitation. At 15,000 feet, the climbers' refuge is located at the base of a glacier field. A long trench to the top of the mountain runs through it. The trench is actually a trail and more nights than not it becomes a winding parade of headlamp lights as parties make their bid for the summit en masse. Most people leave the refuge at around midnight and climb through the early hours of the morning. Due to the nightly chaos in the hut, sleep becomes an impossibility. The night we spent there, hordes of rambunctious would-be climbers were packed into the refuge like sardines in a pressure cooker.

Like us, most of them had come from Quito and the six thousand-foot rise in elevation by car allowed them no time to acclimate. At that elevation, my heart was beating about a hundred times per minute, and breathing was difficult. Squeezing into a corner underneath a long picnic table, I tried to block out the mayhem and rest my bones. A half an hour and a final gear check later, we were inching our way up the mountain in a long line of half sleeping strangers. I couldn't help thinking about Alaska, and the remarkable absence of people there.

Our climb ended at 19,000 feet in the middle of a hollow slab that sounded like it could rip loose at any second. Other climbers had the same feeling about snow conditions and a huge debate ensued about whether to continue or not. Dave and I weren't taking any chances and decided it was high time to get away from the crowd that had formed. With all that weight on an unsturdy snowpack, it was just too risky to linger. We turned around and started heading down the highway we'd just ascended. But not before I fell into the grip of altitude sickness. As my head began to hammer and nausea washed over me, I focused my eyes on the refuge, some four thousand feet below. Once again, my nasty ambition had stolen away a precious, once in a lifetime moment. As I watched the sun spread over Chimborazo, I knew I was witnessing one the most incredible sunrises of my life. But I had climbed too fast, and my splitting headache was blinding. It was a turning point in my adventure.

In the parking lot at the base of the mountain, I slumped over my pile of equipment and waited for someone to notice and hopefully offer a ride. I was wracked from lack of sleep, altitude sickness, and dehydration. And I was also flogged, beaten, and battered by the harrying pace I had set for myself. As I lay there, I made the decision to cut my trip short. I decided to go home. But I wasn't defeated. Instead, I vowed to return without all my crap. I was finally ready to see South America.

In the end, the trans-Andean extravaganza became a six-week dig in the luggage of my ambition. I had climbed Cotopaxi and tromped barefoot through a cloud forest where beetles the size of birds sported horns in the middle of their heads. I had jumped off waterfalls into a clear, cold jungle river. I had danced salsa and tangoed with strangers. I had slipped in and out of some places, but more often than not, I had called unwanted attention to the stuff I dragged along with me, obscuring my own identity. The weight of my ambition prevented me from truly seeing Ecuador. When I go back, I will go back to experience South America. I will let it reveal itself to me.