Chirripó

The highest point in Costa Rica is quite cold. This may not be surprising to many people, but before I climbed up Chirripó I had no idea that cold and humid was a climatic possibility, and a miserably tropical one at that. Chirripó is a 3,800 meter peak that lies in the southern half of Costa Rica, near the city of Perez Zeledon, also known as San Isidro del General. I prefer calling it San Isidro, not just because it sounds more traditional, but because San Isidro was the patron saint of Madrid and one of his miracles stemmed from showing up late for work because he had been praying. Everything turned out alright though, because angels were plowing his field for him while he prayed.
There were about 15 people from Peace Corps who showed up to climb together, and we spent the first night right near the trailhead, nestled alongside a stream in a hostel owned by a man from Ojai. I mention this because I walked into the hostel and said 'It feels like Ojai in here', there were large boulders and wood floors and oak leaves covering a rocky stairway down to a swimming hole. The next morning we woke up at 4 and ate breakfast at a nearby restaurant who kindly prepared gallo pinto and scrambled eggs and several fruit platters for us, so that we could leave before 5. My friends Ken and Andrew and I were always non-plussed by the time everyone chose to head out, so we left a little after 5 and quickly enough caught up to the main group. This is not because we were opposed to waking up early, but because hiking in the dark when it is not strictly necessary seems foolhardy.

The trail is generally done in two stages, the first day one hikes 14 kilometers to a dormitory, and the next morning the 5 remaining kilometers to the peak. The 14 kilometer climb on the first day climb about 2,200 meters, seemingly all in the last two kilometers. The trail does start switchbacks while still in the heavily forested lower elevations, but the hardest parts are where it seems to give up on switchbacks, especially in the sandy, slippery sort of places where they would be most helpful. The first part of the hike was gorgeous, a calm steady climb through an autumnal/spring-time forest (brown and orange leaves dying next to new budding flowers). The dappled sunlight and delicate whistles of birdsong were a joy to my ears, which, excepting the grating snatches of music blaring from a fellow hiker's cellphone, were probably the only happy part of my body by the time I reached the dormitory at Crestones. The rest of the trail steepens gradually and just when one is about to give up, flattens out through a burned forest (giving the illusion of breaking through the treeline about three kilometers too early), This part is a pleasant stroll with a beautiful vista, but it ends abruptly at the Cuesta de los Arrepentidos (the Hill of the Repentants) so named because everyone regrets having gone so far only to struggle up an impossibly steep sandy path. We set our teeth and started up, and it was not awful, just a very tiring end to a long hike. After the steep climb the trail rolls smoothly down to the dormitory below.
I was amongst the first group of people to reach the dormitory (we made it in about 6 hours), and after checking in and taking unrefreshingly frigid showers a small group decided to climb up the Crestones, large crenellations of rock jutting out of a low peak above the dormitory. I am still not certain why we thought it would be a good idea to climb a peak between two arduous hikes, but climb we did (Ken and I much more slowly than our two companions). From the top looking down onto the valley with the dormitory the flora was quite different from the alpine growth I have come to expect in the United States. Rather than long meadows of gradually shortening grass growing into rubble and snowy rocks, the Costa Rican Páramo is a burst of low bushes, brambles, flowers and coarse grass, growing all the way up and through massive slabs of granite.

The next morning the we left at 3 am to hike the last 5 kilometers to the top before sunrise, then watch the sun come up over the Caribbean and see our shadows extend out over the Pacific. The moon blocked out all hint of the Milky Way, but it did light our way, so were able to hike for a long time through the freezing dark without flashlights. This was deemed unwise after we lost our way several times. Crunching through ice crystals that would melt into dew with the sun was delightful, although I felt the insides of my ears start to freeze before I was smart enough to put my hood up under my hat. When we rose through the last saddle a massive dark pyramid jutted up into the night sky ahead of us, and from the flashlights glimmering all over it like lightning bugs we realized that it was Chirripó at last. The last part is an easy scramble up one rocky side of the pyramid, and we watched the night sky grow purple in the east as we finally put our flashlights away and pulled ourselves to the top. We had to wait another half-hour for the sun to come up. As it finally rose over a wrinkled sheet of clouds I had the inspiration to sing the Costa Rican national anthem, and was joined by a couple of other volunteers, just as the last strains were fading out over the country the first group of Costa Rican hikers reached the top. I imagine that for them it was magical.