Third time’s the charm

Finally! A decent pic from the top. Shadow of Papa Teide on the morning mist and anticrepuscular rays

I know it probably sounds ridiculous, but I went up to the top of Teide twice this year. And my stupid persistence finally paid off. Although I am still to see all the other islands from the top, we had a beautiful and not very common view during our ascent at down — anticrepuscular rays. On the first ascent we saw very little because of the calima, on the second the wind was so strong that all we cared about was not to be blown away, and now, finally, a few good pictures, yay.

Honestly, I feel so ridiculously proud of the pic above, as if I have gone and painted the rays in the sky myself.

It pains me even to look at it. Ascent by Pico Viejo, route 23, “Los Regatones Negros”, to be precise.

All that said, things didn’t quite go according to plan again. This time, our group was there for a slightly longer stretch — three days, two nights. On the day of the arrival we had a nice, relatively easy altitude-adaptation walk. The second day we were supposed to go up to the top by the cable car. And what do you know, the blasted thing wasn’t working again. It was very windy it hadn’t been working for a few days in a row, and it was clear it won’t be on the day of the supposed ascent either. Our guides had to improvise, and they came up with a plan B. It involved splitting the group in two. One subgroup was to go up by the Montana Blanca route, the same I’ve already did twice. The other part, which included only the “strong and somewhat crazy” ones, were to go by the path that starts at Roques de Garcia and passes by Pico Viejo — i.e. the same extremely hard path I descended by on my first visit. Somewhat inexplicably perhaps, I wanted to be, and was, in the second subgroup, that of the crazies.

A thousand pesetas view. Literally

It involves a lot more than a kilometre altitude gain — the upper station of the cable car is at 3555 m, Roques de Garcia at 2000 m above sea level. The original idea was to go continue up to the top, but only a couple of people from our subgroup made it, so let’s say one and a half kilometre altitude gain.

We started well — this time everybody was nice and fresh when we were around spectacular rock formations Roques de Garcia, so we got our “mil pesetas” view of crooked Roque Cinchado with Teide in the background. Pesetas were replaced by euros, but the view is still there.

Off we go

Once we walked around the Roques de Garcia, we found an information display relating to the hike on which we were about to embark. It said, quite unequivocally, that the difficulty of the route was “extreme”. Of course, by then it was a bit too late to stop and turn back, not that anybody wanted to at this stage.

If going down had been hard, going up was harder still. Or to be precise, the first part was sort of ok. It was going up of course, but it undulated a bit, going down and flat now and then. In this fashion, we came to Degollada de Pico Viejo, where a few routes cross. This path has its number in the path network — 23, and you can see green markers with this number along the way.

A view towards Teide from where the route 23 ends and route 9 (seen to the left) begins.
See all the black stuff in between? Gotta walk all of it.

Unlike most of my companions, I knew that the hard bit was still to come. And it came, of course. The black rocky badlands of the route number 9 didn’t get any easier to walk on. The distance between Degollada de Pico Viejo and the viewpoint Mirador de Pico Viejo is just over two km and the altitude gain only about 400 metres, but they are hard kilometres and metres. Most of it is over rocks that are irregular, sharp, and not big enough to step on with confidence and not small enough to walk as if on gravel. Hard, hard, hard. And the truly killing feature — a few times you see the green path marker at what appears to be the top, the end, the final stretch, because there is nothing but the blue sky behind it. And when you come to it you discover that no, that was just a very small levelling in the path and it still goes on and on.

A view towards Pico Viejo, Old Peak, crater from about half way along the malpais. La Gomera can be seen, if only just, above it.

It was this last two kilometres that got most of us. Up t a certain point I wasn’t aware of the problem developing, till I asked a question to a guy behind me and the voice that answered was nothing at all like his. He was having a sharp drop of blood sugar, his lips weren’t moving properly, neither were his legs. He was unwilling to stop and rest though, maybe because he saw me trudging on in front of him or maybe because of his own tenacious nature. He is an extremely fit guy who normally walks about twice as fast carrying about twice as much as me.

Although I myself felt sort of ok*, I got anxious at this point and started walking with many stops, waiting for him to catch up every few metres. Behind us, there was another pair of people going even slower, so that our poor guide ended up walking up and down the path, distributing chocolate and juice and cheering everybody on. He also ended up taking a backpack** off one of us and walking up with two.

One of the “no probs” people :)

We all got to the end of malpais path, of course, to the viewpont, and very grateful we were to finally get there. From the viewpoint, there is an easy, relatively level, well-paved, less than a kilometre walk to the cable car station, and from there you can either go down to the refuge, as most of us did, or can ascend the peak.

Having said all that, there were three people — two guys, one gal — who walked up the malpais path just fine. Three of them were waiting for us to catch up in the wind shade of cable car station. Two guys went on to ascend the peak, while the rest of us went to relax in the refuge.

Fumarole close to the cable car station

Once in the refuge and rested a bit, things started to look up. In fact, when our guide cautiously suggested that maybe, just maybe some people would like to go up to the summit at dawn, many, including me, got suddenly enthusiastic about the idea.

The sun-up moment. The sun is raising from behind of Gran Canaria, it is just about visible on full res, but you have to take my word on it.
Cable car station to the right.

So, once again, we got up at some ungodly hour, and we were at the top to catch the splendid view of shadow of Teide and anticrepuscular rays.

Let’s finish on the same high note

And we even got to go down by cable car, also a new experience, and quite fun too, on the way down at least. As you pass each tower, there is a brief moment of almost free-fall, as the cabin speeds down the steepest stretch of cable.

Lucky, lucky, lucky me :)

Teide and Tenerife photos on Shutterstock — here

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* I think I was ok, but I did develop a headache when already in the refuge, plus I felt quite cold, disproportionately so. Our guide was so concerned he didn’t want me to go to the top next morning. Happily, a few hours of sleep sorted me out.

** Another factor that contributed to the problem was the size of the backpacks some people were carrying. The plan was to go up by cable car you see, so they brought some nice food and even a bottle of wine. Add that to the normal “at least three liters of water and all the clothes you need in the morning” and you got yourself a bloody heavy backpack.