Hiking El Misti Volcano

By Michael Davies

On February 20, 2005, I was picked up from my hostel in Arequipa, Peru at 5 a.m., along with three other tourists, and taken to the base of the El Misti Volcano. The drive up to the base offered some of the best views of El Misti in all its glory, standing tall in the light of dawn, all 18,000 feet (6,000 meters).

The steady, steep grade of the volcano made the hike up incredibly difficult from the start. The snow line was still low on the slope from the previous winter, and the coming spring had only just begun to warm the air in the valley below. We were to stay at base camp that night, so each of our backpacks was stuffed with food and supplies.

Over ridges and through gullies, we hiked for six straight hours in the driving rain and sleet. The altitude and weather sucked the wind right from my lungs and I was sure that I was about to pass out when we finally reached base camp.

The views of Arequipa and the rest of the valley were clouded and the reality of being on the side of a volcano became all too apparent. Only the peaks of neighboring mountains rose from the clouds and shone in the dying late of the afternoon. Isolated and chilled to the bone, we set up camp. Our guides woke us just after 5:00 a.m.; with tents ill-equipped for the grim weather we faced, and a little tight for our group of tall Canadians, we were soaked to the bone and still exhausted from the previous day’s hike. The tents had clearly been designed for smaller people and better weather!

Three and a half hours of hard hiking later, we found ourselves scrambling over and around a patch of enormous boulders. The trail to the summit had been so obscured by snow that our guide had accidentally taken us to an area strewn with large rocks; the hike battered our already-spent bodies. The altitude was getting to me, and the view of the ground in front of my feet was intermittently blurred, making foot placement very difficult. I was succumbing to the perils of altitude sickness. “Only a few more minutes and we’ll be there,” I said to myself over and over, but the headaches were rocking me from the inside out.

Only 500 meters (1600 feet) or so from the top, I began to feel really nauseous, and no amount of coca leaves could stop the ravages of the altitude from breaking my will to continue. Together, the weather and a poor night’s sleep had sapped my usual athleticism and energy and turned me into nothing more than a shivering, green-faced young man on the side of a volcano.

Our guide recognized the urgency of getting me back closer to sea level, and decided our best route down to base camp was by leaping down the fall lines and sliding on our heels on the finely crushed pebbles remaining from avalanches and previous eruptions. The four-hour hike up turned into a 30-minute stroll downhill to base camp. Another two hours of descending by trail through the rain, and we were back at the jeep and on our way back home to Arequipa, watching out the back window the elusive summit of El Misti grow further from our reaches.