Volcan Acatenango

Me in the Lunar Zone
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Its amazing how 3,976m's really doesn’t sound that high, but my god it is.

Just to put it in perspective.

3,976m or 13,044 feet!

It’s 77 times the height of Nelson's Column

Finally at the top
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30 times the height of the London Eye

And 3 times the height of Ben Nevis's rather wussy 1,344m

Despite the fact that it was one hell of a climb, and that there were definite moments that I thought Hazel was going to kill me, climbing Acatenango was another one of those experiences that just has to be done before you die.

The hike involved walking through four different zones, all of which were totally different.

Fuego just after an eruption
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Farmland. There isn’t any terracing in Guatemala and deforestation is a big problem, so the hiking was pretty much just straight up with no switchbacks and very little cover from the baking sun.

Cloud Forest. By far the coolest of the different zones. A stunningly thick and luxuriant rainforest with copses of bamboo. Hard going, but I was starting to get into my stride.

Alpine Forest. Ugh, things were starting to get harder. The number of switchbacks reduced and the path got a hell of a lot steeper. We started to get breaks in the trees though and we could finally begin to see just how high we had climbed. I can honestly say that I don’t think I have ever been above the cloud cover before – breathtaking.

View from Antigua - Fuego on the left, Actenango on the right (check out the two summits)
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Gorged ourselves on massive club sandwiches (not the usual hiking food, but exactly what I was craving) for lunch. But just as we were starting to relax the ground began to shake. We were half way up a volcano and in the middle of an earthquake! You have to laugh though, at first none of us could tell if it was an earthquake or if it was just our tired legs shaking.

Lunar Zone. The only word I can use to describe the last leg of the climb is desolate. It really was like being on the surface of the moon – no trees, no life, just dark rock. It was bloody hard work as well. For every three steps you took up the scree you sank down another two – it was like climbing a giant black sand dune. To make matters worse Acatenango has two peaks. You climb the first and you feel like your on the top of the world… then you realize you have to descend 150m and then climb another 300m to get to the summit. Really depressing.

The Acatengo challenge - the blob on the left is me running like hell
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Nearly collapsed when I got to the top, but boy did it feel good! Havn’t had such a sense of achievement in ages.

Rather rashly decided to accept the Acatenango challenge. Basically in return for a T-shirt I agreed to run the diameter of the volcano, about 800m. Sounds easy eh? Ah well running is definitely not fun at 4000m and the course was like a mini version of the climb with horrible scree slopes to scramble up and down. It took me 5 mins and 33 seconds but I finished it… but never again!

Sat and watched the sunset over Acatenango and nearby Volcan Fuego with a glass of wine, all very sophisticated. But it was when the sun went down that the show really began. Fuego is an incredibly active volcano and with the earlier earthquake she was pissed as hell. She’s an explosive rather than an effusive volcano; see all that time studying Geology was actually useful! Basically it meant that every 40 mins or so we were treated to a massive explosion with lava and volcanic rock thrown high into the sky accompanied with an absolutely deafening boom. Words just can’t explain how cool it was.

Had a terrible nights sleep. Luckily I wasn’t suffering from altitude sickness but my body wasn’t used to the lack of oxygen and so wouldn’t let me sleep. Not that I would have been able to sleep anyway. A massive windstorm blew up and I ended up spending pretty much the whole night supporting the tent and rebanging in tent pegs. Grrhh.

Sunrise from the top of the volcano as spectacular as you would think.

Descent absolutely insane, when we got to the bottom I couldn’t believe we had survived. We basically skied our way down the scree. The technique just seemed to be keep your knees bent, your centre of balance forward and then run like hell. It only took us 8 minutes to get down the last mini summit, something that had taken us an hour and a half to climb.

What a blast!