No 'Concepcion' Climbing: How not to climb a Volcano (or
anything!)
by Allen Rouse
I grew up within sight of Concepcion and Madera and the Santa Rosa
Peninsula which is part of Costa Rica. In '92 I made
not-so-well-thought-out attempt to climb Concepcion. I had 'prepared' by
photocopying a USGS-style map of the island that I
obtained from the Benson Latin American Library of the U. of Texas. The
map was made in the sixties. It had the 'Alliance for Progress' logo on
it and was quite detailed (and 20+ years out of date). It was a 'quad'
(??) map. Each 1"x1" square of the grid corresponded to one square kilometer.
A friend and I started at 5am, by ourselves. We planned to climb to the
caldera, take pictures, and come back for a very late lunch.
The climb was unexpectedly difficult. I thought that climbing one little
mile up would be easy. An additional hindrance was the cloud cover which
was closer to being fog. Our glasses collected the water droplets and
became useless. But we persevered in spite of being 3/4 up the volcano
instead of the caldera as our schedule had it. And, being blind as two
nearsighted geeks who did not bring enough water, we started to lick the
dew off of the rocks. We rationalized that there were no sources of
infection *up* the volcano that would pollute the water coming *down*.
Dirt eventually gave way to very hard, solid rock which I assume was old
lava. Pitted and uneven, but it collected dew quite well. We had started
to see that the mountain had started to visibly curve along the
horizontal (left-right) even given our limited range of sight. We decided
that, since at this point the way was so steep that we had to use our
hands to assist us, to circle around to find the fabled easy way. What
we found was a sudden drop off the bottom of which was lost in fog. I
have nightmares about this.
Anyway, we retreated and more less followed our previous course. The
wind started to become very strong. The higher we climbed the stronger
the wind. Soon we were using our hands to stay on the rock as well as
to climb. The curve was now more pronounced and it was 3PM. We were
drenched and hungry. We were unhappy.
We decided to return in defeat. On the way down we, yes...it's true, got
lost even having had a panoramic view. The little rain gulleys that
began just inside the cloud cover become deeper and wider as they travel
down the sides. If you choose a path down you are eventually 'locked' into
it by being hemmed in by huge, deep trenches with vertical walls on either
side. It is a different mountain on the way down.
We had reached the grassy, lower parts of the volcano and had put out of
our minds the trenches on either side. The panorama in front of had
started to look more expansive, less cluttered. The reason was a land
slide had sheared off the land on our course. We felt like ants on the
edge of a table. The end of it was almost perfectly square. We
staggered about uselessly...then we rested.
We had come so close to level ground we could have distinguished a
person among the trees. To cross the gulley we had to climb back up
nearly to the edges of the cloud cover. We did so. Now we were
unhappier and extremely grouchy.
As we turned back down we saw something that one should not like seeing.
The sun was reflected on the Pacific and one could tell with a glance how
narrow the strip of land that separated the lake from the sea really was.
It was easy to see why engineers had thought that location perfect
for a canal between the seas. It was very beautiful. It meant that night
could fall on our way down. If it had been dark we might have tried to
walk on that ground of our first course down that had slid away. So we
started to run.
It was completely dark by the time we were among the trees. We had one
penlight. We took turns carrying it because we were tired. The one that
did not carry the light was led like a blind man. It's amazing how dark
it gets at night.
The story of the trip back to town is a long one. It includes how I
mistook stars for light bulbs so I'll skip it. We went through
places that, if we could have seen our way, would not have crossed. We were
almost dead with exhaustion.
When we finally got to a town we did not know which town it was. It was
11PM and the whole town was asleep except for some men drinking at a bar.
I thought that simply asking them what town I was in at that time of
night would not be wise. So I bought a beer.
Some time later, we were shocked to discover we were where we had started
out from. So we set out to our hotel...the location and appearance
of which we had forgotten. All of the hotels were family run affairs that
closed at night. It was a very different town at night.
We solved the problem though. We picked the best candidate from
all the places that had signs that had the word hotel or posada on them
and started screaming the name of a friend who had stayed behind. We
were lucky, it worked on the first try.
That was our trip up Concepcion. After this we went to Costa Rica to
climb Chirripo. It is 12,000 feet or so tall. They said it would be
cold up there. I found out that hallucinations often accompany
hypothermia. I also found that I am susceptible to altitude
sickness. I also swallowed a lot of bugs in the cloud forest.
Much later I reviewed the map of Concepcion and I discovered one detail
that had escaped us. On the western side of the caldera there is a cliff
that, according to my map, stands above the caldera. We had climbed
higher than the caldera itself! Had we persevered we would have been
rewarded with a great non-view of fog from a great place from which to jump
into the volcano.
To VolcanoWorld