“This is what it takes.” I thought, slipping backwards as I struggled into the slope of San Cristóbal Volcano. It was my mantra for the day, one that kept coming back at every challenge, every step.
I can get frustrated when things are not the way that they should be. But I didn’t know how they should be while I was on that volcano, so there was nothing to get frustrated about. As far as I knew, it could have been even harder still.
The volcanic soil was loose and spilling into my shoes as I stepped forward. It had no hold to it. With every step, I was sliding backwards. I tried walking flat-footed, with the entire sole of my shoe touching the ground at the same time like I was wearing skis. I some luck doing it that way.
In the drier stretches, I kicked my toes into the dirt and leaned forward into the grade, the way I’ve seen ice climbers do in videos. I didn’t have any equipment attached to my shoes but the soil was so rotten that they would jut into the side easily. That too gave my weight a little purchase.
Where the soil was damp, I walked on the outside edges of my feet. I called this walking goofy-footed, because I had to bow my legs out to roll the outsides of my feet from heel to toe. I imagine I looked goofy doing it. It didn’t work that well but nothing I was doing was giving me any substantial advantage. I had to just step and grind, backsliding the whole way.
It was a long process to get to that volcano, and took a lot of figuring out once on its path. The way leading to the climb was a two track dusty road, with a single strand of rusty barbed wire strung on the left side. Jess and I got there at dusk and walked away from the highway a ways before I stashed the extra gear up a tree.
We would be coming back out the same way, so it didn’t make sense to take more than we needed to the summit. I stepped into the crotch of a tree and climbed the trunk to the canopy. I went out on a limb and buckled the hip and shoulders of the backpack to the tree just like I would to a torso. It held, and Jess put a pin in the map so we could find it later.
At that point we were following the course of the road without much company besides two dogs. One had its testicles knotted around the tail of the other and they were stuck there. I tried to separate the two but they were nasty, snarling and barking at me as I approached. They were hobbling away as an unwilling pair into the woods. The two didn’t know I wanted to set them free so they kept barking and showing their teeth. I left them attached.
We followed the road through the dark until it came to a barrier. There was a side track beside the road where people before us had gone around the barrier and we followed it. I found a flat piece of ground and cleared the sticks to make room for my tent. The mosquitoes bit me and gnats went for my eyes as I built the tent.
We would only be in it for a couple hours before resuming the climb and it was so hot out that the tent was really just for the bugs. I slept on my mat only, didn’t need a blanket or anything.
We got up at an hour that can’t even be called morning it was so early. I broke down the tent and stashed it behind a tree deep in the bush. With that done, we walked out the other end of the track, continuing our progress past the barrier. There was a finca1 and a turnout beyond a gate, this one just a single log over two saw horses. I picked up the log as quietly as I could and Jess slipped through. I went after her, quiet so I wouldn’t wake up anyone in the finca or house just a few steps away.
I was using my red light, one that is dimmer and less detectable than the standard white flashlight. From any distance, the red is harder to see. We were a few hundred meters into the jungle when I saw a flashlight come out of the house and sweep the dooryard. Quiet as I thought we were, someone inside the house heard us and knew we were on their mountain. They were on the porch with the white beam of light, looking for who tiptoed through the gate. I turned off my red light.
We walked through the woods, a dry jungle trail for most of the trek. It opened onto a withered grassy landscape above tree line. Narrow strips of bare dirt between the grasses got wider and turned to trenches the higher we went. That’s when the trail disappeared, in the trenches.
It didn’t matter which trench we followed. They were all the result of water eroding the walls of the volcano and all the water came from the top. As long as we went uphill, we were going in the right direction.
On the uphill end of the trenches I stepped onto the bare volcanic sand that would give me so much trouble. Dawn was breaking in bare yellow and light grey. I was on the shadow’s side of the volcano, the west slope. I looked back to see the shadow, a perfect triangle with its pinnacle nearly touching the Pacific.
The terrain had changed. The footing was nonexistent. The only small help I found was to avoid the feeder stream beds, slight depressions with the loosest of gravel in them. There was no water running through them but the erosion damage was obvious. The footing was best outside of these washes.
Not by much though, the more creative I got with the way I walked, the less optimistic I was about a solution, a hack. We came to a boneyard of trees, likely killed in 2021 when San Cristóbal last erupted.2 I chose two curved sticks from the scatterings. They really did look like bones, tanned under the sun instead of bleached. I selected each for the curve that would fit my hand.
I used them as picks, adding my hands in the fight to get up the volcano. With everything, the picks, digging my toes into the side, and leaning forward, it was still a slog. Imagine trying to roller skate on the beach and then start doing it uphill. It was a treadmill of black sand and gravel. Pump your legs all you want, you’re not going up the hill.
It was so slow-going that Jess called it quits. She wasn’t getting any higher. The fallen tree she took her last break at, an hour ago, was still so close within sight that she was completely discouraged at the idea of repeating that same distance over several times. The view would be about the same from the top and it wasn’t worth the frustration, she figured, so she sat down.
I had my two trusty sticks and although it would take another hour or more to get there, the peak was so close. I had to climb it. The highest volcano in Nicaragua? I couldn’t stop that close to the top. Just a little more slogging it out and I would be there.
If I had been operating under the assumption that there would be a trail, or the ground would be solid, or anything like that, I may well have been overcome with frustration. But, I will only experience frustration when there is a disconnection between my expectation and my experience. I had, though, no expectation in mind before the climb.
This is what it takes. I kept telling myself, to keep from getting discouraged.
I was learning how to do it as I was doing it. I was learning what it takes to climb Nicaragua’s highest as I was going up its crumbling flank. One of my picks broke and I had to really lean into the slope and the wind as I got higher but finally breaking over that top barrier was tremendous.
The sun had been up and over the peak for a long time. It was bright and lively up there. Just me and the wind, it was blowing all the steam from the volcano back in my face. I found myself leaning into it. It carried the rotten sulfur smell from lava in its depths. It was hot, more like smoke, but it didn’t sting my eyes the way that smoke does. It got my nose.
I was at the top, finally. I found the little cairn that marked the highest ground and added my busted pick to the pile. I took pictures and a video of the view from up there. Even as powerful as the wind was up there, it didn’t seem like a terribly dangerous place. It was sunny, clouds were jetting past and I was standing still as I went through them.
But, it was an active volcano and I’m not faster than lava and fire so my time tagging the summit was brief. Even if it didn’t seem dangerous, I needed to leave. I had done what I came to do.
Going down was more of a ride than a hike. Instead of avoiding the little streams of gravel like I did on the way up, I was jumping into them. I was riding the mini landslides under my every step and rocking side to side to keep my momentum going for longer.
Each jump was taking me several meters down the slope. In front of me the rocks were falling down in a cascade and I was riding on them. It was the best part of the hike, no competition.
I got Jess off the log she was sitting on and we came off that volcano in what was then late morning. We slid down the cascades of gravel, stumbled the little patchy grass areas and slowed to a walk in the trenches that led to the dry jungle.
By that time, everyone at the finca would be up and the one with the flashlight would be waiting for us to come down. As we were nearing the property, we diverted onto a cow path that slipped into the jungle away from the house and the log gate.
We followed the path to the cows eating leaves in the jungle and split off to the right, following a very faint drainage that narrowed down to nothing and left us pushing through sticks and vines to get out.
I came to a little chunk of dirt wall and once I hopped off of it, I was back on the road. It was near the barrier where there was a side track and where we had spent the brief night. I went and grabbed my pack and tent from the bushes where I had hid them. As I was buckling it all on, there was a lady walking towards the barrier.
She hadn’t caught us on the finca’s side of the barrier so we were good, time to go. She was saying something about paying her if we wanted her to lift the barrier but I said no thank you and started on the dirt road back to the highway. Once I found the tree I had stashed the extra gear in, I would climb it and we would leave.
It was my last day in Nicaragua, that morning on San Cristóbal. The van that would take me out of Nicaragua came so early that I was at the Honduras border around first light.
The last thing I saw in Nicaragua, last thing worth mentioning anyways, was the view of its highest Volcano. It looked different. It was more significant and formidable now that, riding away from it, I knew what it took to get to its peak.
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Finca: Spanish for rural farm property or real estate
Smithsonian, Institute. “Global Volcanism Program: Report on San Cristobal (Nicaragua) - July 2021.” Global Volcanism Program: Worldwide Holocene Volcano and Eruption Information, Smithsonian Institution, volcano.si.edu/showreport.cfm?doi=10.5479%2Fsi.GVP.BGVN202107-344020. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024.
Every time I see the notification retro made a post a smile spread across my face because I know for the next 10 minutes I will be engulfed in a story that easily captivates my attention and hold it while teaching me lessons about persistence, survival or mental fortitude. Yet another 10 out of 10 story.
We have missed your stories but glad u r back! My feet hurt as I read of your journey both up and down the mountain, because your description placed me in the volcanic ash and molten rocks left behind by the cooling lava which eventually broke into jagged pieces assaulting you from both the decent and ascent . Jessie missed the opportunity to claim victory over her fears and frustration. Your determination to “finish what you start” gives a man a more enduring constitution to face the challenges in life which will surface on the horizon of the future.
Never quit what you wish to pursue regardless of the temporary blockade which may appear , for it is only a temporary fence which will decay quickly by the winds of resolute determination. Nice job Retro, we are so proud of you!!!!