The day dawned early. On very little sleep from the noisy and extremely hot hostel, I dragged myself out of bed and got ready for a gruelling day of drudgery. Volcan Lanin is 3,776 meters high and I think the starting point is somewhere around 1,100 meters. For us Americans, that´s over 8,000´of elevation gain!
My guide, Rodrigo picked me up, as arranged, at 4:00 a.m. for the 1.25 hour drive. We put in at 5:35 a.m. When I looked up at the nasty pile of volcanic rubble and scree, I thought what the hell did I sign myself up for?
But then I turned around and saw the view across the valley. In this photo, you can see a peak that´s called something like tooth of the devil on the left and Las Panetas (rock climbing) on the left in the early mourning light.
It took us nearly 4 hours and 4000´or so of elevation gain to reach the first small snow finger. This was followed by more crappy rock. Though my guide didn´t speak much English, I think he understood my expletives when we would round over another rise and I would see more crappy rock. Nonetheless, I plodded on in a slow, even pace. The last 600 plus meters were actually interesting. It was a mix of rotten snow, crappy rock, ice, and water. There wasn´t anything technical, butdefinitely attention getting. One wouldn´t want to make a mistake. I felt really tired and down in the last hour. I guess the guide sensed thisand he asked if I wanted to turn around. This was all I needed to hear because I summoned up all my strength and in my best spanish responded with ¨F@#% no!¨ Then I put on crampons and plodded up to the top.
We topped out after 8:20 hours. And I was happy with the time. The views were tremendous! Villarica and Quetripillan (sp?) are in the distance!
This view was on the Argentine side. The best use of the guide was that he knew where every patch of snow and every scree gully was located, though I am guessing that his GPS was the real hero. We skied down on our heels and dropped over 8000´ in 4 hours. Not bad! Rodrigo has the head for the barn door syndrome worse than I do. Though I will say, the last hour down was as bad as the last hour on the way up. I was over heating big time. It was much hotter at the lower elevation around 90 degrees and I was getting a headache from the heat combined with the exertion. I recieved encouragement from an unikely place...tabanos. These are horseflies. They swarm and bite. Even worse, I hear they are attracted to the color blue, which of course, I was wearing. I moved as fast as I could to the truck, but the damn things kept pace with me. I have never had any flies follow me that far!
Surprisingly, I was not that tired or hungry really afterwards. I actually felt pretty good when I joined Tracy for dinner at Latitude 39 and even had a glass of wine back at the hostel.
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