Conquering Volcán Villarrica
23 September 2006
(Villarrica Photos)

The sky was a brilliant blue as I looked up towards Volcán Villarrica from outside the hostel. We were seven in all: a German pair, a French pair, our guides Frankie and Juan and me. The climb starts from the Villarrica ski centre which is at about 1400m. From downtown Pucón the ski centre is a 30 minute drive. Then you take a chair lift from the car park to the ski complex. The ride, which felt like it took 20 minutes, was incredibly peaceful. Silently gliding above snow covered woods, I had time to contemplate this highly uncharacteristic (for me) activity I was about to undertake. My eyes were fixed straight ahead, sizing up the volcano. "Oh bugger," I thought, "Too late to turn back now!"


We set off from the ski centre at about 9:15am. We were all told that the climb could take at least 6 hours. The French pair were also carrying snowboards. "Craziness," I thought to myself. Frankie had a pair of skis on his back. The plan was that they would snowboard and ski down, while Juan, the German couple and I would walk.


1400m does not sound like it is very far. But, it certainly looked far enough every time I gazed up at the summit. Hour after hour it never seemed to get any closer, but it gradually got steeper. With a warm sun, I only had on my thermal shirt for much of the climb. We stopped every roughly hour and a half for food and water. It was very slow going. I focused only on putting one foot in front of the other, trying to step in the foot holes made by those in front of me. I was mindful the entire time of loosing my footing and sliding down the mountain. We had our ice axes and were shown how to use them in case we did slip. This probably was my second fear. The first being not making it to the crater. "I have to make it," I kept telling myself.


At one point I was ready to push the overly enthusiastic German guy in front of me off the mountain. "Look at the view!...Isn't it an amazing view...It's so beautiful...This is our last day before going home...What a way to spend it!...Look at the view!" "Aaaghhh, please shut up," I almost said. Every time I tried looking up and around at the view behind (which admittedly was spectacular) I would almost loose my balance. And so I did not look up very often.


At about 500m from the summit it looked as if the weather might turn bad. The wind was blowing a little more than I would have liked, picking up a lot of snow with it. I had all my layers on now and even put on the balaclava. We kept on going.

At about 2:15pm, after five and half hours, we arrived at the edge of the crater. I had made it! It took me a moment to catch my breath and realise what I had accomplished. I have climbed my first mountain. I know this is pretty trivial for all you serious mountaineers out there, but for me it was significant. Fortunately that sun had come back out when we arrived. However, the smoke emanating from lava pit below was unpleasant. Some people started to cough with the mildly sulfurous smelling smoke. At one point there was so much of it that visibility was almost zero. I was always very concussions of not stepping too near to the edge of the crater. We chose not to hang around long, and after a few happy snaps we began our descent.


The descent - something that I had not given much thought until now. "What? We have to climb down too!" It was a long way down. Those with skis and snowboards headed on down and we followed, I very gingerly. As you would expect, coming down did not take long, only about 2 hours. To hasten the descent we decided to improvise. We used a method some of you might be familiar with. We sat down and "assboarded" (Juan's term not mine) much of the way down Villarrica. Well, without a snowboard it was the next best thing.


By the time we made it back to the ski centre, about 4:30pm, my legs felt like jelly - ready to collapse at any moment. I was looking forward to my solitary chair lift ride back down to the car park, some time to reflect and relax. That was quite a day that 24 hours earlier I had no intention of going through with. I had conquered a couple of fears and could now tick off "climb an active volcano in the snow" on my to do list - one of the most active in South America!