Volcano de Acatenango.
Over 3,000ft Elevation
5,000ft elevation gain
11ish miles round trip
It’s a funny story. I didn’t even plan on hiking this thing, but there I was putting one foot in front of the other up a slippery incline. No switchbacks. Just straight up.
A week prior my teammates and I hiked up Volcano Pacaya. It was much harder than I expected. I don’t know if it was the elevation or the fact that I worked out once in the past month that made me want to hop on the horse following behind. Despite it being hard I made it up and forgot about the difficulty as soon as I saw the view.
|| most of team F2F in front of Pacaya ||
But, on the way up Pacaya I was seriously second guessing my decision to hike Acatenango the next weekend. Aca is a beast compared to Pacaya and although I wanted to hike it, I wasn’t sure I could. My friend that hiked it last year said she trained for it! Yeah. I know I’ve hiked difficult things is the past with no training (Hello, 100 Mile Wilderness) but with Aca being a high elevation I decided I would swallow my pride and ride a horse up.
|| June 2015 in the 100 mile wilderness ||
Summit day came and I was so ready! Two of my teammates and I left our ministry site at 6am, rode a packed chicken bus to Antigua, walked 20 minutes to our hostel, sat there for an hour, drove an hour, then finally made it to the trail head at 11:30am. I was hyped all day and honestly relieved that I chose to take a horse. I could ride all the way up to our campsite taking in the views and thanking God that I get to appreciate His creating without all the work.
So there I was, with two of my teammates, Elyssa and Hannah, two guides, and 18ish other people in our group. Next thing I know, I see the guides start hiking up the trail. Ummm, hold up a minute. Where was my horse? I starting to get a little worried since there was no horse in sight, so I asked my guides (who only spoke Spanish).
Me: Caballo?
Guide: Um, sì. Primero *points to the start of a trail and said it’s 20 minutes till I can get a horse
|| the view from the farmland section of the hike ||
Okay, I got this! I thought to myself, only 20 minutes then I’m done. You would think this section would be a nice ease into the “real hike” but it’s not. It had a decent incline and a slippery gravel/dirt path. I was so relieved when we made it to the patch of grass and BARN! The guides called me over and we discussed the price of a horse. It turned out that it would cost 3X what I planned. I didn’t have the money with me and I wasn’t about to spend 90 USD on a horse. I ended up deciding that I could hike it if I hired a porter to carry my 25lb backpack. I handed the guides my money and happily left my backpack for the porter. They got on the phone to call a porter and a couple minutes later waived me over and told me all the porters had left. I honestly wasn’t sure what I was going to do, until one of the guides said he would carry my pack! Praise God! I couldn’t thank him enough.
5 minutes later we started climbing again and it was better without the weight of a bag, but still a challenge. Over the next 5 hours we hiked through farmlands, the cloud forrest, and an alpine zone until we made it to camp in the volcanic zone. In every zone I felt like I was on an entirely different volcano. The farmlands were hot and dusty, the cloud forrest was grey and damp with a cool breeze, the alpine zone was cold with pine trees, and camp was above the clouds on volcanic ash.
|| hiking into the cloud covering ||
|| in the alpine zone ||
That evening we all sat around the fire bundled up in layers to stay warm and break the wind.
|| trying to keep warm at camp ||
After sunset the show began. A mile away from camp is active volcano, Fuego. All the way up I prayed for clear skies and for Fuego to erupt many times! The clouds parted soon after we got to camp and we were able to see the huge clouds of smoke and lava pour down the side of Fuego. We watched late into the night, which is about 9pm for us, until 6 of us girls from the group squeezed into a tent to get rest.
|| my tent with Fuego in the background ||
|| clouds covering Fuego during golden hour ||
|| Fuego erupting in the night ||
I hardly slept that night. It was really cold, but more than that, I could hear and feel Fuego erupt late into the night. During the big explosions my heart would race, not from fear, but because I’ve never in my life felt the power of God’s creation in that way. It was incredible.
The next morning we woke up at 4am so we could hike up higher to the top of Acatenango. I ended up staying back with 4 others, but I brought my sleeping bag outside and laid on the volcanic rock as I watched Fuego put on a show and then the sunrise over Guatemala. Once everyone made it back to camp around 7, we made our decent. I loved every minute of going down. I was usually the first person behind the guide as I followed him running down the volcano. Sometime we went so fast that everything but the path ahead looked like a blur. I felt like I was falling but my feet would catch me almost every time. I fell at least 3 times on the loose gravel. One of those times I instinctively reached out to catch myself and slightly cut my wrist on the barbed wire. Who lines a slippery strain with barbed wire? It don’t understand.
|| shades of blue ||
|| the sunsetting on top of Acatenango ||
|| hot chocolate in the morning ||
|| running down Aca ||
On the drive back to the hostel I reflected on the experience. I know it didn’t go like I thought it would but I loved it better this way. I really did want to hike that volcano with my own two feet, but I doubted I could. Yeah, it was hard, but the challenge made it rewarding. So many times we underestimate what we can really do. We sell ourselves short and try to take an easier path. But growth doesn’t come that way. It comes when you look up to the mountain (or volcano) in front of you and realize it’s going to be hard and you’re probably going to second guess your decision after falling down for the 10th time. But, you decide to take on the challenge anyway because it’s going to grow you and make the next mountain a bit easier. God not only wants you to climb that mountain, but he wants to do it with you and he wants to show you the reward at the top.
