Climbing a volcano

Seems easy enough right? I mean I’m no UFC fighter or World Strong Man, but I fancy myself as in semi-decent shape. Well, all self-esteem that was had prior to this climb was shot to the ground about a fourth into it

Goma, which is where I am staying, is famous for being a modern day Pompeii. There is a volcano about 5 km outside of the town and in early ’02 it gave the city of Goma a rude awaking. Walking around the city you can see all of the harden lava that flowed through the city. There are parts of the city that turned the lava flow into their current roads. Many of the building in the city are a wee bit shorter than other buildings in town--why might you ask? Well, the first story of many building are filled in with lava; you can actually see just the tops of the first stories, so people just moved up to the second story and made that their new first story. There are still places in the city where cars are half buried by lava. It is pretty neat to see a city rebuild much of itself on top of the former. So here is the kicker, the volcano is still very much active. Why would you rebuild a city that is surely to be buried again? Question that I cannot answer…I guess home is home, right? (Hasn’t Southern California been predicted to fall into the Pacific for the longest time now? Yet, it is still one of the most sought after places to live.)

Still in the lava!

About half way through the week last week we decided to climb that beast. The hike looks intimidating but I’ve hiked a lot in Bishop, which is Mammoth basically, and not really gotten tired. Plus, like I mentioned before, I fancied myself as a fit human being. So, we pack up: a few sleeping bags, socks, sweater, tent, and anything else that is necessary for an overnight stay outdoors.

We get to the base of the beast and I find out that the hike has absolutely no switch backs (meaning there is no zig-zap climbing to the top that would make the hike much easier); instead it is one straight hike up the volcano. I’m thinking, “cool, I’m starting to get a little tired, I want to get up there quick-style so I can get in my sleeping bag and call it a night.” At the base we a warmly welcomed by volcano sign and try not to let it phase us. We ask someone hanging out the base what happened to the sign.

His response, “ahh, someone was trying to nail the sign to the post.” Riiiiiight, really bad aim with that hammer and nail of his. We also find out that we are not allowed up the volcano without a guard. Interesting, why would we ever need a guard, and why would there be unfriendly at the top of the volcano? Ok, so we have some guy with an AK-47 leading us up this gnarly hike…I guess that is kind of cool; problem though, he didn’t speak English--well, not enough to communicate effectively.

The only thing that I could really understand well was how long he told us the hike was going to be (probably trained to say that one sentence in English) which was going to be four hours. I look around at Adam and give the guard a, “pssssh, we’ll be up there in three.” Well, the hike took roughly 5 and a half to 6 hours and near the top my legs felt like a 90 year old lady’s.

We started off with a brisk pace without much an incline in the hike. About one hour into the hike I was sweating like Niagara Falls. This was when we took our first break, I plopped myself down looking for the near water bottle to suck down. It felt like we’d be hiking for a few hours, so thinking, “man, we’ve been hiking for awhile, we have to be pretty far into it.” Then looking ahead and seeing the top of the mountain peering out of the top of the jungle trees…a good three miles from us horizontally, and vertically, we didn’t make as much as a dent. What the heck had we been doing for the last hour? Walking in circles? Each hour got progressively worse because each hour I’d reckon the angle of the hike increased by 10 degrees until the last hour where you easily could have climbed on all fours without bending down. It was right about hour five when I realized just how weak I was. At this time I was taking ten steps and resting for two minutes. I could see the guard looking down at us and I could only assume he was thinking, “if this is how all Americans are, we should invade…we’d have the country under our thumb in a matter of days.” I said to Adam, “Holy cow, this guy (guard) is straight hardcore, he is just marching up this mountain without so much as raising his heart beat by 5 per minute.” With Adam bending over catching his breath (he was hurting just as much as I was) said, “Scott, this guy climbs mountains for a living.” Point well made.

The top at last! I swear, another 30 feet and I wouldn’t have been able to make it. So the question comes, was it worth it? Well the view was pretty badass I must admit, but what about the view in the volcano? Nope, didn’t see anything because there was too much smoke. When you look over the edge of the volcano you get blasted with a sulfur smell. The sound coming from the volcano sounded like the crashing of waves when you’re lying down on the beach.

Thirty minutes later when we were setting up our tent at the top when all the smoke inside the volcano blew out and left us with a view of the lava lake that was mind blowing. I was mesmerized. This was by far the coolest thing I’ve ever seen that was straight Mother Nature. I was watching the lava lake for hours, watching it bubble, crack, cool and reform, the melt away the top layer again. Now this site was totally worth the hike.

So here are a few pictures of the millions that I took at the volcano. Quite cool

Cheers,

Scott

View from the top

Straight awesomeness with this picture