November 16: Rest day in Pucón
There's a volcano quite close to Pucón, and there's guided tours to the top! Who could say no? Probably me, but I didn't try very hard.
Pickup at 0600, which is a necessary evil: the whole excursion will be about ten hours. At 0700 we're at the mountain where the road ends, which is about 1000m above sea level at a ski resort. It's closed for summer: the ski lifts have even had their chairs taken off, there's just the cable.
There's three of us on the walk plus the guide. Hiking boots are provided, plus we get backpacks which have helmets inside, trousers and jacket, extra gloves, and a plastic thing the shape of a dinner plate. For my lunch I brought empanadas: we can pretend that I'm ironing out my trust issues with them, but also there wasn't anything else available when I went looking yesterday afternoon.
We're already close to the snowline and the environment is near-frozen. The ground underfoot sometimes breaks like it's brittle. There's a bit of unappetizing grey snow hiding in shadowed spots. We're on the ski resort now, passing the stationary skilifts, and from the shape of the ground you can guess where the ski runs are.
The sun is up but very low, and casts very long shadows from us as we walk up the ridgeline which is pretty cool. We're not the only people here; I can see two other people on another ridge. They're a long way away but seem to be carrying ... skis?
But this is all informed by the wisdom of hindsight, which is basically cheating and I feel bad. At the time my guess was that they'd be workers for the skifield carrying boards for some off-season maintenance, because who would get up at 6am and carry skis up a mountain to go skiing? The answer is: I saw about ten people doing it this morning. Having gone the same route and distance up the hill that they did, I'm not really tempted to join them, but I definitely understand the effort involved.
This is skiing the hard way. And if you're doing it, you've earned my respect.
From left to right: setting out, below the snowline. Long shadows. This was the highest skilift. Crampons. The view when we put them on. Taking a break a bit further up.
We're now beyond the top skilift, the ground is steep, and almost completely covered in bad ice. We stop to put crampons on. Plus gaiters for leg protection; crampon spikes are basically offensive weapons. We're given ice axes, which are definitely offensive weapons, but we're only supposed to use the handle-spike, the various other blades, rasps and spikes are not for us today.
The ground is mostly smooth ice, and it's getting quite steep now. Mandarin-sized pieces of ice occasionally slide down from above, the cause is out of sight beyond the ridge. We can see a long way up: that ice has been sliding for a while, with plenty of opportunity to lose speed, but it's been gaining it instead. They're going fast.
Which means that almost anything that hits the ice is probably not going to be seen again. Cellphone. Walking pole. Water bottle. Sunscreen. If you start sliding, the advice is to use the axe to slow down. Also keep the crampons up: you pick up speed real fast, and if they catch the ice you can pull leg muscles, twist knees and break bones. When we stop for a break the advice is to sit on your backpack. (Sorry empanadas.)
The slope is a 50% gradient so we're not going directly up, but on a diagonal. It's mostly rock-solid, slick ice which would be impossible without crampons. Sometimes also thin ice structures that breaks when you stand on it. And sometimes snow: packed snow, loose snow, crusty snow. But with the crampons it's just a steep and careful walk with some really excellent views.
We're going at a pretty good pace - the guide remarks how it's a nice change. I've been doing all-day leg workouts with headwinds and hills for the last six weeks so I'm ready for a bit more climbing; the other two guys may have just finished army training. We can see another tour group far below, we'll finish up before they get to the top. The only person above us is another mountain guide, who climbed with us for a while, but found the pace so relaxed he chatted continuously with our guide the whole time. He then went on ahead to the crater lake, to get photos and videos for the vulcanologists.
And we got left standing by an assistant instructor, training for the test to qualify as a full mountain guide. One part of the test is getting from the carpark (1000m up) to the near-summit (2400m up?) in one hour. We took a respectable three hours to make that distance. He was going up like it was flat - no careful steps, no diagonals, just a powerful lope straight up the ice sheet. Whenever I see a Stairmaster advert, I'm going to remember him.
From left to right: most of the climb was like this. Warm enough to only need my cycling top. Selfie when ready for the slide down. The view mid-slide. All the way to the ski slopes. Final view of the mountain afterwards.
Volcán Villarrica not dead: it's genuinely active. It erupts from time to time, the last time it did so properly was 2015. Pucón has practice evacuations twice a year to prepare. Right now things are settling down after a bit of activity. The alert level went from yellow to green last week, in a few days all restrictions are getting lifted. But it meant we couldn't go all the way to the crater lake.
So the climb ends below the summit on an anonymous piece of relative flat snow. It's a very nice day - there's no wind, and it's not too hot or cold. We're slightly above the cloud layer, looks like Pucón's slightly overcast today, but there's enough clear air to see the lake and other nearby mountains. The peak is not far above; I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get to look at the crater. The sky is completely cloudless, and a noticeably deeper blue due to the height. The sun is ferociously bright. It's so bright the screen on my phone is overwhelmed and I can barely see the preview. I take my sunglasses off for selfies (as you do) and don't want to open my eyes more than a crack. Hence the squinty look… and the dubious framing in most of the pictures I took today.
After about an hour it’s time to leave. We put on the extra layer of trousers and jacket - and the plastic thing in the backpack is actually to sit on! We slide down the mountain: it's sheer chaos. The ice-axe helps slow down a bit, and keep you pointing the right way, and you can angle your feet a bit, but there's basically no steering: if you go off-track all you can do is dig in the ice-axe, try to stop before you've gone too wide, then crab-walk back on line. Also the boots catch the snow making it spray up everywhere, like all over your sunglasses, so just seeing what's coming up is optional.
So we got down to the snowline in about half an hour, walked back to the carpark and were back in town about four hours earlier than usual. A very good day out! Time for a coffee, and maybe a second lunch.
