Do you feel like Frodo and Sam?

Our professor, Esteban, asked us this about half way through our hike. And yes, we were all like Frodo and Sam because not only were we on a long, hard journey but we were also in these hills that looked like they came right out of Middle Earth. (Ha that’s funny because we are basically at the middle of the earth). We were in the páramo ecosystem in Papallacta. [Fun Fact: 5% of Ecuador is made up of these páramo ecosystems which only exist in the northern Andes. Most of the water used in Quito comes from the páramo] Just last week, there was a snow storm that brought 6 cm of snow and closed down some roads. Thankfully that didn’t happen to us, but what we did deal with wasn’t much better.

We started hiking at about 8:30am from a point of elevation of about 4100m (13,450ft). Thankfully the bus drove us up there so we only had to pile on layers in the bus and hop out. As soon as we left the warmth of the bus we all knew it was gonna be an interesting hike. It was raining, not like a hard rain but enough to make you cold and uncomfortable fast. This rain didn’t stop. During our entire 8 kilometer (about 5 miles) hike, the rain stopped for maybe a collective 20 minutes. And this hike took us about 5 hours. (I felt like I was back on the top of Grays Peak with Worth, Lydia, and Uncle Sam with how cold and windy it was, and thank goodness we didn’t have rain then!) We were all quite miserable and shivering by the end of it. We started out okay because the main cause of cold was the wind that was not constant but would come in bursts. There was one gust that was so strong it blew me back a step. But that was manageable since it died down along the way.  It also caused the rain to change directions, it would be falling straight down then from the left then right in a matter of minutes. That caused us to all be completely soaked, not immediately but slowly over time we all were frozen and wet from head to toe.

Second to the rain, the hardest thing to deal with was the mud. We were having to go up and down these hills, that had been created by a huge volcano that used to be there, where it was basically like stepping up slippery muddy shelves. The number of times I fell is way too high. At one point, I couldn’t get my footing and the Tussock grass (which is 80% dead biomass) did nothing to save me. I slid down about 2 feet and was able to recover but not without getting cold mud down my side. My pants were completely soaked through to where you could see my knee cap moving. I also got water all in my boots, probably from the two times where I stepped into a puddle that looked shallow and ended up going to my knee.

During the hike, we were all too cold to talk or take pictures so most of the videos/pictures I have are from the first hour before I decided keeping my hands from getting frostbite was more important than getting good GoPro footage (Sorry Dad). Also, since no one was talking except for during the occasional quick stops at an interesting plant or for some coca tea, I had a random track of pieces of songs running through my head the whole time. I went from U2 songs (of course), to Say It Aint So by Weezer (that really fast part in the middle just kept looping over and over), and then the main song from Moana popped up a few times as I was pushing my way through patches of grass. [I feel like it would be interesting to try to track why my brain picked those songs and what triggered the different changes!] It was nice having a slight distraction to keep my brain from being flooded by thoughts of how my hands and feet might fall off at the end of the hike.

When we made it to the bus pick up, we were all dumping out water from our boots and contemplating if it was worth it to take off our wet clothes before we got on the bus or press our luck by keeping the extra layer on. The bus arrived and we threw our muddy boots in. While driving down the mountain, wet jackets, gloves, hats, pants and everything were being hung up along the bars as we all attempted to regain warmth by changing into dry clothes. It only helped slightly but our next destination helped immensely.

Before heading back to Quito, we stopped at the local hot spring that is a result of the same volcano that created the area where we were hiking. We enjoyed hot soup, tea, and lunch before changing into swimsuits to jump in the pools. It was amazing how great it felt to be that warm again. We all sat next to where the water was being pumped in and just soaked in the heat. It was really hard to want to go back into the cold air after that.

So all of that was just for today (Wednesday) but on Monday and Tuesday we just had class. On Monday, we learned about the páramo ecosystem. Some of the top things that I found interesting were

1. There can be a huge range of temperature in one day. On Tuesday, there was snow and then today it was raining. Esteban said that drastic of a change can happen where there is snow everywhere in the morning and then its hot and sunny in the afternoon.
2. ^^ this causes the organisms that live there to develop mechanisms to deal with such a harsh environment. There are some plants (Sclerophylous Shrub and ground Rosettes) that have a waxy coating to protect the leaves from the harsh UV rays at the equator.
3. The Tussock grasses also have adapted by keeping dead biomass attached to the plant. About 80% of the plant is dead biomass which keeps the alive part of the plant insulated and shielded from the wind.
4. The páramo is also considered a carbon sink. There are many pit lands that are formed when water starts to accumulate and create anaerobic conditions for decomposition. That means decomposition takes place very slowly leading to thick layers of organic matter (as well as a sort of “sponge” for water).
5. There are some threats to the páramo. The most surprising one to me was forestation. Normally you think of deforestation as bad so planting trees shouldn’t be a bad thing but in the páramo there never was a forest. However, people plant forests of hardwoods such as oak that are not native and have a high demand for water. This leads to the soil becoming dry and losing organic matter.

On Tuesday, we started talking about the amazon and I learned some really nerdy cool things but we have are field trip there next week so I will talk about those things when I have pictures to go along. However, my favorite quote from Esteban’s lecture that day was that “Biodiversity should not determine the value of an area.” I loved that because if you compare the biodiversity of a tropical rainforest to that of a páramo, there would be no reason to conserve the páramo because it comes no where close to the biodiversity of a rainforest. Conservation tends to be thought of as preserving biodiversity but the amount of biodiversity should not determine the worth of an ecosystem.