Pico Humboldt Trek

Packing, without the right amount of food.
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As soon as I arrived in Merida I started looking for a group, or tour company offering a trip to Pico Bolivar(5007m), Venezuela's highest peak.  The only way to do the trip is with a guide and a tour company, who provide all of the gear included.

I ended up luckily meeting Peder, a Danish guy, because there weren't any free tables at a place I was eating lunch.  Blah blah blah, we both wanted to do the hike and he knew a few other people interested as well.  2 Days later, we all met as a group met with the tour operator to hear about the tour and of course PAY!!!  600,000 bolivares, about $300 for 5 days and 4 nights all inclusive.  The plan was to hike the first 2 days to get the the base of Pico Humbolt(4982m), the third day to climb Pico Humbolt, 4th day traverse to the Pico Bolivar base camp, then on the 5th day climb the Pico Bolivar, and return to Merida by a cable car.

Where's the beef?

The truck with all of our gear on top
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Day 1:  2006_01_28, Saturday

The plan was to meet at 7:30, have breakfast, pack group gear and leave.  Of course this meant hours of waiting!  Anyway, we finally left around 11 and entered Los Sierra Nevada National park in La Mucuy.

From here we hiked for around 4.5-hours in at first some dense jungle, then bamboo forest.  The day started off nice and sunny, but the rain started slowly after about an hour and then much harder after that.  To add to the discomfort it kept getting colder because we were climbing from 2130m to 3200m.  When we finally arrived at Laguna la Coromoto, our first campsite, we were completely soaked.  The group had split up, so we had to wait in the rain a little while for the people with the tent poles before we could set up the camp, and get into dry clothes.  I only had one pair of shoes, so I got to walk around the very cold campsite at night in wet shoes.

Peder hiking in the rain.
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Day 2:  2006_01_29, Sunday

The next morning it was raining a bit, but it cleared up by the time we arrived at the next campsite at Laguna Verde.  We climbed for 4 hours, from 3200m to 4000m, the air started to get thin and cold.  As soon as the sun went down it got extremely cold and my shoes were still wet.  We ate dinner and immediately went to the tent.  And also at this point we started to realize that we weren't being fed very much food.  I was happy because I wanted to lose a few pounds, but this was just the beginning.  The guides realized that we were running out of food but, of course, they didn't really mention anything to us, they just slowly started feeding us less.  They themselves did, I think, stop eating and were only drinking tea.

The 2 Danes, Peder and Siv.
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Day 3:  2006_01_30, Monday

The next morning was climb up to Pico Humboldt (4942m).  We were supposed to start at 4am, but didn't start until 6 because the guides' alarm didn't work or something.  I slept about 3 hours the whole night, so I saw 4am come and go, but I thought that maybe they decided not to go because the weather was bad or something.  Anyway at the beginning of the hike the weather wasn't looking too good, the clouds kept rolling in and out.  And the path was getting more and more sketchy.  I have never really done a hike which was mostly just scree field for so long and when it wasn't scree fields, it was just rocks which were slowly falling apart.  Finally when we reached the glacier, the weather started to get better.  The sky was blue around our mountain, and the view was great.  We crossed the small shrinking glacier, and then went up another piece of rock that was falling apart to finally the peak!!!  Our reward at the top was a small piece of chocolate, which was on top of our warm milk and cornflakes for breakfast.  They had already ran out of coffee.

4 guides squeezed into 1 tent.
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Coming down was much easier, even the section where we just had to slide on our asses for 10m.  When we got back we had to request some sandwiches, which ran out fast.

Day 4:  2006_01_31, Tuesday

The next day after a breakfast of some bread with jam, we proceeded to climb from from the laguna over a pass to get to the base camp for Pico Bolivar.  This is where the real problems started due to the lack of food.  I think I was lucky because I wasn't feeling too bad without food, the extra weight I was carrying on my stomach finally came in handy.  We proceeded climbing up another total scree field for an hour or more.  When we reached the pass Kurt, the Belgian guy, dropped on the ground and said that he wasn't going any further until he got some food.  He definitely had some problems, due to the combination of the lack of food and the elevation.  Over the next hour we got to see a lot of scary stuff, that I guess I won't go into the details of.  The guides made him some tee, and I gave him some Snickers, and Peder had some Oreos for him.  The correct decision was made, that he had to go back to a lower elevation, the way we came, and that the whole group had to go with him... meaning no Pico Bolivar. Luckily he improved enough to walk on his own, and we all returned back to the camp we had been in the night before.  Crisis averted.

Crossing the glacier on the way to the peak.
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Day 5:  2006_02_01, Wednesday

The next day, we walked down the 2000m back to the park entrance.  A tough day on the knees.  There, luckily, they had some food, and everybody filled up on coffee, snacks and sandwiches.

Back at the posada, the party started.  We were pretty pissed, that there was not enough food.  We decided that this is why Curt got sick and ultimately is why we couldn't climb Venezuela's highest peak.  I will say that the manager handled the whole deal pretty well, and agreed to give us each back 250,000bs for the trip.

View from the top.
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It was a big learning experience for me.  I have never been that high first off... and I have never seen anyone get sick from exhaustion/altitude.  I have never ran out of food in the mountains.  Hmm... I don't know if these means that I need to check the food each time, or what.  The guides did not actually buy the food, it was another guy, and I assume that he has been fired since.