The Reward

We are now in a town of southern Chile, in the lake district, called Pucon. It is somewhat a tourist town - but the reasons are obvious. Pucon is surrounded by lakes, national parks, mountains, volcanos, hot springs, and many other forms of adventure lovers' dreams. We spent our first two days here in Parque Nacional Huerquehue. We hiked “Los Lagos”, an 18km hike winding through many different lakes, waterfalls, and a tropical forest. It was beautiful - the forest looked like it could be from a different planet. The huge trees were covered with thin, stringy light green moss which very closely resembles silly string. Other trees have pine cones, but they all grow together, connected, pine cone after pine cone, forming a big crosses as the branches. They were very interesting. We also noticed all of the Chilco flora which look like red upside down firework flowers. Along our walk we were never far from the sound of water rummaging through the forest. We also stumbled across some beautiful, untouched lakes amid the mountain scenery and also some waterfalls. If only the weather would have been better we could have seen some really incredible views of the volcanoes as well. However it had been raining for the past two weeks straight, so the trails were muddy and the clouds were out. We camped in the park for one night, but woke up to rain and cold weather, so decided one night camping would be enough. Our next adventure was to climb the Villarrica volcano. It's known to be a "must do" when visiting Pucon. The volcano is an active volcano, reaching 2,847m high. We went with an excursion group which consisted of our new friends, Jeff and Maggie, a father/son team from France, our lead guide Mauricio, and an assistant guide. Our alarm went off at 5:40 am, and we all got dressed as recommended (warm pants, three layers on top – long-sleeve shirt, fleece, and jacket, long socks, and sunscreen), ate breakfast, made some sandwiches for lunch, and we were off. We arrived at the base of the mountain around 7:15 and began preparing for the hike. The guide provided us with snow pants, a windbreaker, head fleece, gators, waterproof mittens, gloves, boots, cramp-ons, a helmet, ice pick, and backpack. We got all of our gear on and then took a ski-lift up to where the snow on the mountain began. The morning was beautiful - cool, crisp, and a gorgeous view of the lake, other volcanos, and of town. We looked up and saw the vapors rising from the top of the volcano. It didn’t look so far away; we thought that it would be an easy hike up. However, this ended up being a lesson in depth perception and how something that looks so close can actually be very far away. Our main guide, Mauricio was in front, leading the way, and the rest of us followed in a single file line. We got started and immediately I thought to myself – “Wow, this is much harder than I expected.” It did prove to be a very difficult challenge. The mountain is covered in snow and ice. Therefore, you must learn to trust your cramp-ons. Those are the things you put over your boots that have 14 prongs and dig into the snow and ice in order to get a good grip. We were also taught how to use the ice pick as an extra weight-bearing limb. The mountain’s slope averaged between a 25 and 45 degree angle. It was especially scary when we were near the top, a very steep area, and the snow was icy. Two people from our group had already experienced some problems so they were behind with the assistant guide. I was directly behind the guide and he was paving his own trail of switchback after switchback in order to get us to the summit. It was especially scary because it’s hard to feel like you have a good grip with your feet when you are on a 45 degree angle, on ice, and thousands of feet up. I probably had half of the prongs dug into the snow and the other half hanging in the air due to the angle. In addition, I developed huge blisters on the back of each of my ankles. Each step I took involved a lot of pain, but there was no room to think of the pain. The only thing I could do was concentrate on putting on foot in front of the other – that’s it! It was overwhelming to look down and know that one misstep would lead to your death, and then to look up and see a tremendous amount left to conquer. It made me feel overwhelmingly helpless because I had no other option except to not think about any of my fears or pains, and only to focus on one foot in front of the next. Eventually, after trekking up the mountain for about 4.5 hours, we made it to the top. Ah, it felt so good to have conquered the mountain. I was looking forward to sitting and resting and eating some food at the top. That proved very short lived due to the freezing cold, gusty winds at the top of the mountain, and the vapors released by the volcano. The vapors include sulfur and chlorine gases which stung our eyes and irritated our lungs, making it difficult to breathe. So we had to hold our breath, run out for a picture near the crater, and then run back to the fresh air. I was hoping to peek down into the crater and see a hot magma pool, but unfortunately that was not possible. Villarrica is an active volcano, but you can only see the lava from a plane. I was already dreading the descent. I asked Mauricio how much time it would take to get down and he said 3 hours. My feet hurt, I was tired, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend another 3 hours or so getting down. However, I was also freezing cold and ready to get moving again. We went down a slightly different way, where the snow was very soft and not icy at all. We took huge, big steps and it was going very quickly. Cool, I thought, this is going to be easy. Then, I look over and see people sliding down the mountain on their butts! It looked like so much fun. I glanced ahead at our guide wondering if he knew about this way to descend, secretly hoping that he would let us try. We walk down about half an hour and then finally he tells us the surprise - we get to slide the rest of the way down the mountain! Yay!!! I wanted to plant a huge kiss on his cheek at that point. We strapped on these special butt protection/sledding aids and off we went. We used the ice pick as our brake and there were grooves in the snow already created from all the people sledding down. I have to say that I can't remember a time I've had as much fun as I did sledding down the mountain on my butt. It was sooo cool!!! It made all the torture and pain of going up worth it. In fact, I'd love to do it all again tomorrow just to get to sled again. It was exhilarating! I felt free and carefree and reckless. It was awesome. The way down only ended up being an hour, the guide had tricked me! The trip itself was just great and now we sit here sun-burnt and completely exhausted, reliving the experiences of the day. Check out this video of us at the top of the volcano.


And check out this video from the Pucon beach. Notice the black sand due to the volcano.