Climbing Volcan Villarrica

"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."
~J.R.R. Tolkien

Wednesday, December 17th 2008

An adventure sometimes puts you in unexpected situations. I never thought that an ice axe will be my most precious possession, but for a few hours, it was, mainly because as the guide put it- if you lose your balance only the ice axe can stop your fall into certain death hundreds of meters below. The above seem even more unusual as when you climb an active volcano, the last thing you expect is ice... But things does not always go the way you expect as I discovered the day before when I woke up at 4:30am only to get the volcano base to find a cloudy sky. After hearing the guide estimation that the climb has only 50% chance to make it to the top, I returned back to Pucon to try another day (As it will turned out later, the group did made it to the summit, but could not look into the crater due volcanic activity). The day after I got lucky twice, once for the clear blue sky and second for the chance to start the climb at 7:00 instead of 5:00 earning 2 extra hours of sleep. The climb itself was a straight forward business, a tight switchback climb on the steep snowy mountainside from the parking lot to the summit and all you need is equipment, guide and reasonable physical shape. The equipment consisted of warm water proof clothes, good snow shows, crampons and the aforementioned ice axe.

The guide started us walking in one group from the base of the volcano to the cable car station which marked the snow line and where we were divided into sub groups according to our walking speed. Surprisingly, I found myself in the strongest group directly behind the guide. As we started to climb, the snow was still a little frozen and slippery but it will get softer and easier to climb as we progress. The climb was also amazingly easy with the guide walking in moderate pace and stopping for 5-10 minutes breaks at more or less regular intervals. We followed the route carved into the ice by hundred before us and made our own trail only in one place where our guide preferred to walked around a covered crevice rather than to risk walking on top of it. Although I walked on snow and ice most of the way, it was hot enough to climb only with thin thermal shirt, putting on a warmer jacket only before the final summit accent. As I gained altitude, the entire region started to unravel below me with green mountains,blue lakes, and white volcanoes on the horizon. Finally I made it to the summit after 4 hours and the sky were blue and clear. Luckily the volcano was also dormant allowing me the rare experience to walk all around the crater peering deep into the sulphurous gases spawning hole that someone called the asshole of hell - to which we all agreed. Every few minutes the volcano made a deep gurgling sound followed by a stream of sulphuric gases that stung my eyes and lungs, but the experience was so cultivating that I could not walk away. As it turned out I didn´t need to walk away either as the way down was not by walking but by sliding on my ass down the entire mountain side using the ice axe as brakes! . Due to the conical shape of the volcano the ride started very fast with snow and ice shreds covering me as I sped down the slope and ended with a crawl down near the cable station where I stopped to exchange my clothes and clean out the frozen snow that somehow made it into every possible place on my body... Short walk later I was safely in the van feeling the fatigue of the climb overtake me on the way back to Pucon.

After seeing the volcano from so many angles in the last few days it felt good to finally climb it and make it to the top. Until my last day in Pucon I looked up and told myself that I was there, on the summit of this amazing snow capped volcano one of the few who peered into the bowls of the earth and lived to tell about it...