Volcan de Fuego

I’m getting behind on this blog already! I wanted to get a post about my hike up to Volcan de Fuego while the details are still fresh, though, so time to get all out of order.

I don’t know when I became so obsessed with volcanoes, but for as long as I can remember, I have been absolutely fascinated and drawn to them.

Last year I had the opportunity to do an overnight hike with the fam up to Volcan de Pacaya and got my first taste of seeing lava. I’ve been addicted ever since. I had heard from our guide, Romeo, on the Pacaya hike that Volcan de Fuego was roughly 10 trillion times more amazing than Pacaya, so at that point I knew hiking it was a must.

Fast forward a year later and the day started bright and early. We headed over to OX expeditions where Nathan and the kids dropped me off and I got packed up for the trip. We drove up to the trailhead, which was only about an hour, and right off the bat the trail starts going up. Up up and up we went through farmlands, cloud forest, and all kinds of breathtaking scenery. The incline does not relent for several hours.

I was actually surprised at how exhausted I was because I consider myself in fairly decent shape and had been working out pretty hard every day all the way up until the hike. This hike KICKED my butt, though.

We finally made it to basecamp, high on the side of Acatenango, and had a quick rest before we began making our way up to Fuego, where the actual hard part started. The first 45 minutes or so weren’t too bad. We didn’t have packs this time around and it was mostly downhill since Fuego is actually lower than Acatenango.

Then all of a sudden, the hike goes from a solid downhill slope to straight up. At several points, the grade is around 25%. We slowlllly made our way up the side of the volcano. Everyone was dragging by now as we had already been hiking for 7+ hours. Our young guide, Carlos, and I became good friends at this point trying to chit chat with one another to keep our minds off of how tired we were. We climbed and climbed for about 1.5km and suddenly emerged on what felt like the top of the world.

Fog surrounded us at the top, and the stark contrast from the white fog against the black volcanic ash and sand covering the ground was unearthly feeling. We stood for several minutes in the windy and wet cold waiting for the fog to clear so we could take the next steps closer to the highest point of Fuego.

Our guides, Romeo and Carlos, decided to take a jog over to see if we could safely pass through the fog to watch the volcano more closely. After what seemed like forever, we saw them running back waving their arms at us. We weren’t quite sure at first if they signaling us to come closer or run for dear life, but we finally figured it out and headed towards the volcano. Everyone took off running, which I was only able to do for a solid 20 seconds of before I figured I was fine letting the fumes just kill me rather than try and run another step. Note, I would not survive a zombie apocalypse.

As soon as we got up to the volcano, the fog quickly, and eerily started to clear. For a second, it looked as if the sky was falling towards us. My heart stopped for a second watching the weird sensation. Then all at once, the heavens cleared and Fuego erupted, shooting lava high into the sky! We all screamed and cheered. The clouds quickly moved back in, but we were still so happy from the quick show Fuego performed. After waiting a while longer, we decided it was time to turn back.

By now it was pitch black and we had only headlamps to guide us back down the mountain. I didn’t mention earlier, but the width of the path on the knife ridge is not wide at all and if you fall, the drop is around 500m straight down! So, falling equals imminent death. As we started our decent, for the first time, I was legitimately scared. It was so dark and so steep that I had no idea how I was going to get down. I took the tiniest steps and just prayed I wouldn’t lose my balance and plummet to my death. At one point, I sat down and did some weird sliding maneuver to work my way down. After about 10 minutes, we made it past the really scary stuff, though, and then the way down just became incredibly tedious. I fell over and over. It took us longer to get down the mountain than it took to make our way up. I thought it would never end.

We finally made it down, and I’m just beat to death at this point, only to look up and see that we now have to climb all the way back up to basecamp. My knee and shoulder are killing at this point from my fall. Somehow I mustered up the motivation to start climbing again. One insanely slow step at a time, I started making my way up the mountain. Just when I thought I was ready to sit down and die, I heard a loud BOOM and looked over. The night sky was as clear as can be and Fuego was going crazy. Just like that, I had all the energy in the world again! I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was hands down the most incredible thing I have ever seen. The sound of the boom, watching the lava fly high into the sky, and then the entire mountain light up in red molten lava was beyond amazing.

We watched explosion after explosion and jumped and cheered with each one. Taking pictures of the eruptions was complicated here. My hands were freezing but I couldn’t hit the buttons and adjust my settings correctly with them on. So, I would take my gloves off, wait for an explosion, but get too cold, so stick my gloves on, then grab my iPhone instead thinking I wanted a video but then changing my mind and grabbing my wet cold camera and trying to get a shot on that.

Somehow, we were able to take our eyes away from the eruptions long enough to finish climbing back up to camp.

We made it to our tents and sat around the camp fire for dinner while continuing to watch Fuego erupt.

I finally crawled into bed and slowly fell asleep. Now, I will say that sleeping next to a very active volcano is not exactly conducive to a good nights sleep. There were so many times that night I nearly jumped out of the tent from the explosion. Imagine being dead asleep and then KABOOM!

The next morning we woke up bright and early and enjoyed the incredible views of Guatemala from camp. We quickly took camp down and then headed back down the mountain. Note, this downhill portion destroyed my knees. Two days later and I’m still feeling the pain, and I don’t have bad knees. I guess sacrificing my knees to the volcano gods was the price I had to pay to get the amazing opportunity of seeing Fuego erupt! I would happily do it all over again, too! Who wants to destroy their knees and hike Fuego with me again next year?