This is a rough impression of our route today. If you follow this link, you can click to satellite view, and then you can roughly see the terrain — also interesting, I’d say.
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The Italians in our room woke up at 5. AM. There should be a law against that. The first two or three tried to be quiet, and I could’ve slept through that. Then more woke, and more, till they were all awake and any pretense at silence was a distant memory. There should be a law against that, really!
Naturally, at 5.30 in the morning, it takes you a while to admit defeat. The bed is warm, you are still half-snoozing, so no, you have no intention of getting up. In the end, common sense prevails, and a not-so-sleepy part of you is aware of this, but your sleeping self just pushes this notion away. Anyway, after fighting this losing battle for a while, I figured to take a bathroom break. Perhaps it’d be better afterwards? I washed a bit, brushed teeth and came back. It was better! A lot! almost all the Italians had left the room. Except for one old guy, who was lying there sick and … yes, he just threw up. K-bye-thx!
So, by 6ish, we were getting dressed. There was a bit of confusing and milling about, the usual indecisiveness when there’s a large group. Or maybe people were just reluctant to leave the warmth of the shelter for the harsh coldness of El Teide at 3200m up in the night. I got bored waiting inside (you know my attention span? Exactly), so I went outside. The reluctant people had the right idea, I decided, but it was too late. We were leaving. Aga bravely turned on her headlight and told me to follow her, while she followed the bombaderos.
I did. For the first 100m. And then reality bit us in the … – going uphill at these heights, I was faster than Aga. So I took the lead, following a bombadero. It was dark, it was cold, there was more snow than before on the path, and I didn’t have a light. Heck, I didn’t even have mountain shoes! Nor gloves! So, I kept close to the guy I was following. When I looked back after 3 minutes, I noticed Aga was a little over 50m behind. Crap.
Reality sometimes slaps you hard in the face. Reality came looking for me then and there, and smugly pointed out the following:
- It was very, very cold,
- I didn’t have anywhere near the proper equipment,
- Aga is a big girl, with more appropriate equipment.
Basically, the way I was going worked: keeping up with the firemen was (relatively) simple, and being in a group of about 6 people made the whole thing seem a lot less scary. I could just tag on, concentrate on stepping, and get there. Ditching the group and waiting for Aga… hmmms. We already knew we were accustomed to hiking up at vastly different speeds. Moreover, we didn’t know the route. Neither did the firemen, but somehow, in a group it’s okay.
So yeah. I looked back once, blew a kiss, let out a heavy sigh and marched on. Not a happy moment, but I saw no way I’d get to the top unless it was exactly as I was doing now.
The views on the way were great. The lights from a village in the distance (Puerto de la Cruz?) were beautifully visible in the serene vista. There was this pre-dawn calm to the world… you could see the hills surrounding Teide in the moon/starlight, the observation post far off on top of a hill, clouds over the sea… It was gorgeous. Too bad I missed most of it.
You see, I was climbing. Climbing my ass off, actually. Oh, the slope wasn’t too steep — physically I kept up splendidly. But there was this tiny thing: the absence of light. I didn’t have a headlight. I had no light. So I kept real close to whoever was in front of me — usually stepping directly in the place he vacated. I was rather focused with that. Not that it was completely dark, far from it. But we were on a mountain. There were rocks all over the place. This was not nice asphalt. In daylight, you’d keep your attention to the ground while walking here. And this wasn’t daytime. So I kept my eyes on the ground, instead of the wonderful views.
Soon, we encountered vast patches of ice and snow – far larger than any we’d seen on the way to the shelter. Too large to go around, and moreover, the firemen were all plodding along straight over them. At first, it pissed me off. I really didn’t have the proper equipment (shoes) for this. My shoes were fine for hiking up rocks if there was a path, but this was brutal. Ice all over, and next to no profile on the soles. Somehow, the shoes managed fine. Might’ve had something to do with the extra weight of the backpack. Plus, I was very, very committed. No clue where I was, no clue how to get down, not really a clue how to get up except to walk straight up to the highest point… yep, I was definitely committed to this group.
And that worked out nicely! In the beginning, we didn’t chat so much, but my three words of incorrect Spanish broke the ice and they happily rattled off something back to me. Well, when we stopped, that is. Which was infrequent — only twice for a break, and a few times to guess the direction. Once or twice, I overtook someone who was taking a break. A “Todo Bueno, Amigo” I could easily manage — I had energy to spare! Just not really grip with my feet. Or a headlight.
But I could see sufficiently well. I did, at one point, suddenly saw my right leg vanish rapidly into what seemed a solid surface. Snow covering a gap between rocks. I was a bit startled, but less so even then the firemen. After all, nothing bad happened. I don’t even think I was bruised.
All in all, I even began to feel a bit cocky. Look at all them macho men here! Wearing gloves, wearing real shoes, walking with hiking sticks… Pfffft!
Naturally, at that point we encountered the steepest plane of ice yet. Going up wouldn’t be easy. But we weren’t going up. We were crossing it horizontally.
Now to make this perfectly clear: this was at an angle. A rather steep angle. My sneakers had hardly any grip. There was no path on the ice whatsoever. And the men before me didn’t create one either. I was walking, and every step I feared I’d slide down. Which was not a dead drop, thankfully, but it would most assuredly not make it to my list of “happy moments”. Again, after 40 meters of slip-free, careful hiking, I became cocky. This time, I actually became overconfident. There is only one punishment for that: pain.
So my foot slipped, and I caught myself with my bare hands. On the ice. The words “not pleasant” might be a trifle understated. I was angry with myself (for becoming overconfident). Stupid. Smart would’ve been to focus fully on my steps. In other words: soon my hands had a rendez-vous with the ice for a second time. This time, I could feel them throb afterwards. Nevertheless, no skin broke, so I was still good. I kept closer attention, made it across, and eventually, we found something akin to a path again.
That was such a relief at this juncture. It meant we weren’t hopelessly lost. Of course we’d get to the top, and it would be magnificent, but I was already dreading the way back. Up on ice is a lot easier than down. However, the path was quite a bit simpler. We continued the climb up, and finally we found ourselves on the top roughly an hour after we started! Hooray!
There were the obligatory cheers, celebratory hugs and group- and individual photos (as you can see). Moreover, I did what any self-conscious Dutchman with a slight familiarity with Dutch music would do: I danced. After all, El Teide is a volcano! :)
That made me happy for a bit. But then the battery of my camera ran out, and I felt the cold. And it was cold! So far, we had been steadily climbing. Moreover, I had been carrying a backpack of a good 10kg. I really wasn’t cold before. Sure I felt it, but as long as we were out of the wind it was okay. Wind, that was the main problem here. The funny thing is, that El Teide is really quite a bit like a pyramid. There is one top, and everything around it just drops away further and further. So if you’re standing on the top, you’re exposed. And there’s wind. Because there is nothing stopping the wind, no matter where it is coming from.
I realise it’s a straightforward observation – it’s obvious! Trust me, being confronted with it at 7.45 and getting colder and colder is different than an armchair observation in a warm house. Luckily, slightly below the very top, the path turned behind some boulders. There was some relief from the cold wind there. I went there, rubbed my hands and waited a bit to warm up. Then I switched my simcards (necessary since my phone had been accidentally on, and an incorrect pin had apparently been accidentally entered three times…), and send a text to my girl. Darn, now that the exhilaration of making this insane climb had worn off, I realised how worried I was. I just hoped she had hooked up with another group – there were plenty of people leaving. I huddled together with Warren and the Polish guy (and the Polish guy’s girlfriend), and while they were enjoying the sight of the sun rising over the horizon, I was fretting and playing with my phone. Oh I did glimpse eastward, don’t worry, but still.
/preview/176-small.jpg "Hugo, the highest man in all of Spain! (flash)")
10-15 agonising minutes later, Aga showed up. She seemed cold and tired (or was that just in the eye of the beholder? Probably a mix of both :), but I was happy to see her there, and proud of her to have made it up. I know it must’ve been hard for her, but she made it. She even posed for a picture in the cold winds on top, as you can see. Afterwards, we went back down. The firemen were going back to the shelter, but there was no way I was going to go down over all that ice!!
We went down to the top station of the cable car, to warm up a bit and find a route onwards. There, we learned that the path to Picco Vecchio was still closed due to snow. They would check it later today, and perhaps open it today, perhaps later this week.
We politely declined, and decided to take the cable cart down and have a rest and breakfast in the restaurant. By the time we got down, it wasn’t even 10 in the morning!
What happened afterwards you can (eventually) read in the next entry.
And I can add that the secondary effects (that is, the burning sensation) was present too. Admittedly, it was all doable, but it wasn’t a stroll in the park. I was very happy that we had a hotel room with bath tub, foot bath, mini bar, restaurant and (the best part) decent beds! I also think it helped us a lot, we were both more or less done for.
So, this morning, we took things relatively slowly. Moreover, we diligently prepared for the sun, me by applying copious amounts of the wrong stuff — foot cream on my face :). We checked out by 12, and skipped breakfast. The idea was to have a brunch at the base station of the cable car (“Teleferique”). It was only about 2km away, and there was a asphalt road running there, so we should be there in half an hour. Right?
Bingo. Since we started off easy, and figured we had sufficient time today, we took the nice route and not the asphalt road. Our reasoning was that it would be prettier, nicer to walk, and much less cars to dodge. We were right on all accounts. Hooray! In addition, it was also more sandy – more beachy, if you will. You know, the dense stuff, which saps your energy. You can almost feel the ground siphoning off energy from your legs. Before the start of this day’s hike, I think both of us silently envisioned the first part as the relaxed 30 minutes before waking up. Not quite, apparently. It took a while (about an hour and a half, as a matter of fact), but we finally made it back to asphalt. By then, a solid ground was a blessing.
We were also right below the base station of the Teleferique. Nice! Not so nice part: it was quite a bit higher up, and we needed to take the long way round to get there. Luckily, this time we were on asphalt, so we made good time and in about 25 minutes, we finally found us at the restaurant. Yup, somewhat behind schedule, but okay: breakfast time! By then it was actually lunch time, which was extra nice, seeing as the restaurant provided a nice, hot lunch buffet. We dipped in, sat down, took off shoes and socks (and earned ourselves some funny looks at that), and took it easy for about an hour and a half. Well, we earned it, no?
After that break, we treated ourselves to an ice cream and walked back down to the main road (around 14:00). We followed the main road until we hit the start of the track up El Teide. It was “light”, as in “doable by a car”. The road was also wide enough for a car, as you can see from the pictures. Immediately at the start, we were confronted with our current elevation: even though it was 25 degrees and we were hiking in shorts, the shadows still held snow! A short while later, we had elevated enough for the landscape to open up,
and wide vistas became available. It was truly gorgeous. I have to admit, that I was beginning to worry a bit about our schedule. We started upon this wide track at roughly 16:00, and the information sign at the beginning warned that it was a 4.5 hours hike to the refuge. That would mean we’d be hiking up the mountain in the dark – something I was definitely not looking forward to, even though with this road it’d be okay.
Of course, to compound my worries, Aga started showing signs of height-induced fatigue. She was having a hard time breathing. That’s at least what she said it felt like – I couldn’t (and can’t) relate to it, as I didn’t have any problems at all. It was weird to see the sporty girl slowing down to the point where I was actually making better progress than her. I took the opportunity to deprive her of her camera, and kept myself behind her by starting to take pictures whenever I threatened to overtake her. It was fun, and it led to quite a number of pictures (you can do the 
While hiking up along the road, we were at one point overtaken by a pair of runners. They were wearing running-only gear, with a bottle at the back. Apparently, they were doing some serious training… the road constantly went up. Hard stuff! At any rate, we kept up, and didn’t see them again while the road kept going up. By now, we both had changed into something warmer, as the wind was too cool for comfort, and at this road, we were just too exposed. There was no shelter – I diligently applied sun cream (not foot cream – once was enough ;) at every rest stop. The snow was becoming more annoying. Where first it was an interesting phenomena on the side, at times it now was running over the road to such an extent that the only way onwards was over the snow. As I was wearing sneakers, and as we still had to get to the hard part, I really didn’t want to get my feet wet. Luckily enough, the snow wasn’t melting, and my feet stayed dry.
Then we came upon the steep uphill part. There was a clear break: the car-passable part of the road ended, and a footpath began. As you can see from the height profiles below, the slope of the first part was ± 500m per ± 11km, while the slope of part deux was roughly ± 450m per ± 2.4km(!). Le ouch. Oh, and there was a new information sign. The sign gave no duration, only a severe warning: only do this if you’re in top-notch condition! I felt up to it, but by now Aga was clearly not having an easy time… and it was about six o’clock. Ah well, nothing for it now, we were committed. So, up we went.
After about half an hour, we encountered the runners again, on the way down. They had actually ran up this steep ascent?! Holy cow, that’s some training! They gave us an estimate of how long we still had to go. Actually, they gave two: 25 minutes and 40 minutes. In the end, both estimates were off by about more or less one hour. It got colder, Aga got grumpier and more quiet, it got darker, and there was little I could do. The road was, incidentally, a lot more adventurous now: far steeper, less wide, and more snow. All in all, a lot more interesting.
There was a group of about 10 Italians, with whom we were sharing the room. Moreover, there was a large contingent of “Bombaderos” – firemen from one of the other Canarian Islands. About 30 of them. All in all, the refuge was about full! Luckily we called ahead – something I hadn’t thought necessary, but this time, I was happy we had done so.
Despite our lateness, we weren’t the last to show up. When we were having dinner, we joined a table where a Polish guy and a Brit, who had come in after us, were sitting. The Brit was shivering. He introduced himself as Warren, and didn’t have a bite to eat. He expected that there’d be something here. Naturally, we couldn’t leave him like that. Aga had prepared a wonderful insta-cream soup, which genuinely filled. On top of that, we had our emergency sandwiches from Hotel Parador, in case we went crazy with hiking (to the top of Teide and down again in one day). Despite Warren’s adamant refusal, we supplied him, and you could see the life flowing in him as the soup warmed him from the inside.
After dinner, we took a few photos of the incredible views (see also below, click for the big link), including the mighty shadow of El Teide him(her?)self. In the setting sun, this shadow extended all the way to the next island (Las Palmas). Mind you, that’s a few hours by boat from the coast, and we were nowhere near the coast. Later, I tried to take some pics of the fantastically clear night sky. It 
And we do. After freshening up for a while, and changing into more appropriate attire, we head out for dinner, picking our ids up on the way. After a short confusion, it turns out Aga had a specific restaurant at Playa de las Americas in mind. If you 
Aga surprises the waiter by offering the 2 euros she was short last time she ate here. The waiter surprises us by speaking Dutch with me. I surprise Aga by being