Monday, February 21, 2011

Climbing Villarica Volcano..Ouch!

Today we awoke at 6am, packed the sandwiches and water and headed to the pickup point, we arrived at the base and picked up our gear and then it was an hour drive to the base of the Villarica volcano - South Americas most active volcano!

We arrived at the volcano and of course the chairlift that cuts the first hour off the journey was closed, so we went on our way hiking through the fine gravel.

About half way up, Tina had enough and threw in the towel (which was an effort in itself), I persisted on even with my feet bleeding and blistered, the climb got steeper and steeper and then we reached the ice and things got even harder! I must have fallen a dozen times, and as I was waiting behind with Tina for a few minutes I fell behind and got knackered trying to catch up and not getting a long enough rest.

The guide pushed me and I continued even through I felt so tired, I was tempted to throw in the towel a number of times but mind over matter kicked in and told myself I had to do this!

At one stage I thought I saw the top and was told by the guide that was the middle, apart of me cried inside :) ,but as I'd gotten this far I knew I had to climb to the top.

Once we got through the snow of the next ascent we had to climb up through gravel and magma, my legs were giving in and then I was up the top VICTORY! The adrenaline must of kicked in because I was straight over to the volcano to look inside and then walked to the other side to take some pictures of the landscape and glacier. All I was missing was a tricolour to pin on the top!

Once we finished taking in the beauty of the top of the volcano we descended to the snow part, this itself was tough as the rocks were pretty slippery and at one stage a huge piece of magma dislodged by another climber rolled down the hill and hit me in the leg!

We got to the snow part of the hill and now the fun part begins, the snow that took us over 3 hours to climb..only took about 30 minutes to go down thanks to some dug trenches and a piece of plastic we sat on! It was pretty good fun but obviously not the safest descend , especially considering a group of condors were circling the area we were sliding down...dinner??

After changing lanes in the snow a couple of times, we got out of our wet gear and began to head down the gravel hill, it was pretty dusty heading down, and I'm surprised I still have 2 ankles intact, then we were at the bottom 8 hours later.

This is without doubt the toughest thing I have ever done..both the best and worst experience of my life! At 2840 metres, Villarica is nearly 3 times taller then Irelands highest mountain (Carrauntoohil - 1038 metres)..."basic level of fitness required!" I don't bloody think so! Lots of people threw in the towel along the way so I'm very proud that I stucj it through and finished the climb.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt, it has to be one of my biggest accomplishments of my life so far, but I don't think I'd climb it again!

Later we headed to the thermal springs, this has to be the most tired I've ever been, lets hope it helps!








































0 comments: