At the Top…

Sometimes in our lives we have “mountaintop experiences”, occasions and events that stand out as triumphs in overcoming life’s difficulties. Often, we don’t recognize these moments when they occur, but time burnishes our memories and we come to realize the full measure of the heights we ascended and the storms we weathered. The following is a story of an actual mountaintop experience I shared with a group of strangers in Central America many years ago.

Last Friday, I joined a group of strangers to embark on a short bus trip and then a four hour hike to the rim of an active volcano in southern Guatemala. Waiting for the bus on a street corner in the city of Antigua, first there were two of us. Then three. Then six, seven and eight. And still others arrived. Some of us nodded to each other. Some chatted. I struck up a conversation with a young German lawyer named Jurgen. A well traveled fellow, he told me stories about his journeys in China and Tibet. I spoke of my pilgrimage, long ago, to the ruins of Babylon. 

More people collected, forming groups of twos and threes. A local tourist office had arranged for the transportation and finally a large school bus arrived. When we all piled in there were 44 of us… Europeans, Israelis, Americans, even two Japanese. It was about an hour’s ride to the base of Volcan Pacaya. 

During the ride, most people spoke with the person next to them, if they had a common language. I happened to sit next to a young Swiss woman named Dagmar who was a pharmacist from Zurich on a holiday. She spoke very good English. She also made it clear that she didn’t want to talk about things pharmaceutical. A mild case of burnout. We had a good time trading stories about our respective travels. There was an atmosphere of youthful abandon on the bus, I being the old man of the group. Most were in their twenties. 

We arrived at the base of the mountain and were introduced to the three Guatemalan guides who would squire us up to the top. The trek began tamely enough. A well-trod footpath took us on a pleasant ascent through a Mediterranean-like shrub and tree forest. As it was a narrow, single file path, people conversed lightly with those in front and behind them. 

The path grew steeper and conversation diminished as people began to conserve their breath. After about a half hour, the guides led us to a promontory where we all took a break and enjoyed a far view across the lush, green mountains of the surrounding countryside. There was banter, people kidding each other about being in shape. A couple of young American fellows ragged me about already having a jacket on. It was cool at this altitude but not cold. I smiled and said, “I’m old.” They laughed.

We continued on to the next level. Within another half hour there was a distinct change of biomes. The trail was less steep now as we passed through a series of meadows. Here the ground turned from brown to black and all the vegetation was a short, yellow-green scrub growth. 

As we continued through the meadows, I shared a conversation with a young Israeli biologist who spoke poetically about the scrub growth around us, saying that life compacts itself in harsh environments; that given less toxic conditions, the surrounding scrub growth would evolve into high forest. Good biology and good metaphor, I thought. A bank of clouds began to move over us. 

We reached the third biome. Now we were standing at the base of the volcanic cone which was composed entirely of black volcanic ash. There was no vegetation here. The cone was roughly 4,000 feet in diameter at its base, and 2,000 feet high. The very top was now obscured by a cloud bank. 

The head guide, Francisco, gathered the group around and spoke (in Spanish) for about five minutes. I didn’t really listen as I was distracted by the “surface of the moon” environment we were now in. Then Francisco called for us to continue on. 

The group proceeded to cross a long, narrow ridge to the actual base of the cone. At this point we were walking in black volcanic sand. The wind was picking up and descending clouds were gathering around us. People began to exchange “..what have we done?” glances. I found myself in a brief conversation with an Australian fellow named Tom who informed me that the guides were carrying sidearms. Apparently there had been bandits plaguing this mountain for years. Hikers had been robbed, assaulted, even murdered. About a year ago, a group of local vigilantes captured 12 of the bandits and summarily lynched them. There’d been no robberies since that time but the guides were ready, just in case. 

Then we were on the cone itself, on a narrow footpath of extremely loose ash and sharp-edged stones, climbing steeply into a grey shroud of wind driven fog. Now the whole enterprise took on an otherworldly character. For the next thousand yards it became an individual test of strength, breath and will. Conversation ended. The hikers spread out as the cloud bank turned human forms into surreal, dreamlike figures, disappearing in the mist. The wind picked up to a gale force. 

It all became an intensely solitary enterprise. I felt like I was no longer on the earth. An understanding came over me of what true mountain climbers must experience. I remembered something Jim Whitaker wrote regarding his ascent on Mt. Everest: “You reach a point where all you can do is put your left foot in front of your right foot and recover from that, then the right foot in front of the left foot and recover from that,…and that’s all there is.” 

I was one of the last to make the 8,000-foot summit but it didn’t matter. We all made it. Through exhaustion and fatigue there was triumph written all over the faces of our “society.” We had gone to the top. All of us. 

The wind-driven fog obscured the view into the crater. The heat and sulphuric steam from the core both invited and repelled one from the edge of the crucible. The hissing and pulsing of the volcano sounded like a great living dragon. 

All of us congratulated each other. We took each other’s pictures at the edge of the abyss. We all shared in a delicate accord during those moments at the top.

The weather was getting worse and now it was almost sunset. The guides said it was time to descend. We retraced our steps about a third of the way down the cone. The wind blew hard, it was getting still foggier and now it was rapidly getting darker. 

At this point the guides directed us down a long, steep field of loose volcanic sand and shale. We all proceeded to slalom and snowplow through the black sand and gravel, in the thick darkening fog, seeing only yards ahead at any moment. Once in a lifetime.

We regrouped at a point in the scrub meadows where the guides passed out flashlights. It was about a 45 minute descent down a now-more-appreciated “solid” trail, to the bottom. During the last leg, everybody seemed to talk to everybody for a minute or two. We had formed a mystic bond. We were reveling in our time. 

Back on the bus, the conversations were very animated. Spirits were high. It was the winning team coming home from the game. We were the champions of the world. A woman across the aisle from me spoke of the eruption that occurred on this volcano two years ago. The mountain blew its top and shot molten lava a thousand feet into the air. On that day, there was also a group of hikers at the top. One can only imagine what passed through their hearts and minds as they slalomed and snowplowed down the black field of ash and sand, with red lava in hot pursuit. They all survived. 

As the bus drove through the Central American night, exhaustion settled in and everyone became very quiet. Many fell asleep.  When we finally returned to Antigua, we all got off the bus, said our farewells and went our separate ways.