Volcan Villarrica

  After spending a few days staring at the Villarrica volcano, I (Matt) decided it was time to climb it. The volcano is technically open for anyone to climb, but most people do it with a tour which includes all the necessary equipment. The tour begins with a 6AM meet-up in central Pucon, so right from the start it was rough. You pack a backpack with food, water, and gear, and head out to the volcano about an hour away. In the winter a full ski resort operates on the volcano, so from the foot you can choose to take a ski lift up and save yourself about an hour of climbing. I chose to take the ski lift and it is 100% worth it. Even with the lift, it was still 5 hours of continuous uphill climbing.

The view from the bottom of the ski lift- hardly a view at all!

  Once off the lift, everyone put on crampons and started trekking in a zigzag pattern up the first big incline. Like Hamilton, I thought, we faced an endless uphill climb. With the crampons on, walking on the packed, crisp snow was easy! I though to myself, I could do this all day. Well, I basically did do it all day and I was pretty tired by the end. Every hour or so I looked around and thought to myself, we must be nearly there. We weren't.

Trying the crampons on just after the ski lift. Total walking time so far: about 20 minutes

  The view got progressively better and better. I took a photo after getting off the ski lift and when I looked at it later it was laughable that I had thought that it was a good view. As we climbed, another volcano appeared on the horizon. As we climbed further, another volcano appeared beyond that one. Eventually I realized I could look to the east and see the Andes, and to the west I could see the Pacific Ocean- the entire width of Chile. 

Our first rest stop. Total walking time: probably an hour. It felt like we were nearly there (we weren't).

From here you could see the entire Villarrica Lake

In the distance 2 other volcanoes began to appear

  As we got higher, the wind grew stronger, and wind-shaped ice shapes began to cover the face of the volcano, like small horizontal icicles. We had been given ice picks and taught to use them to arrest our fall. At the bottom, it seemed unlikely they would be necessary. But as we climbed the small ice sheets became more and more ubiquitous until the entire face of the volcano was an ice sheet, and I began to think I really could slide down the mountain if I fell the wrong way. The little icicles became big icicles.

As it got windier and colder, I stopped pausing to take photos. Here's the view from the second rest stop. Total walk time: a drop in the bucket.

Distances are hard to judge on the featureless snowy volcano.

  Finally the black rocky top of the volcano came into view. We left out packs and made the final climb to the top. The rim is about 30 feet wide before it plunges down into the interior. On some days you can see magma at the bottom of the crater, but there was too much smoke to see it that day. It billowed out and blew away to the east. In a moment, the wind shifted and blew the smoke to the west, and everyone ran over to the previously smoky edge to peer inside (more volcanic rock). I asked if it was time to put on out gas masks to block the toxic fumes, and my guide said no. Then the wind snapped back and blew the gas cloud right over us. "Masks now!" yelled the guide. Even with the mask on, I was in a hurry to get out of the gas cloud, which smelled and made me cough.

The last stretch was still probably 30-40 minutes of climbing, but it was nice when the change from white snow to black rock made it feel like we were making progress.

The open volcanic crater

Distances in these photos can be misleading. This kind of shows how big the top of the crater was.

A glimpse into the crater. This is the top of the inner wall. To the right I could only see smoke.

  We hiked back down to our packs and took out small plastic boards which we used to sled down the volcano in paths worn down into the 3-foot-deep snow. What took us 5 hours to climb took about 30 minutes to sled down. My group was the last one off the mountain, and I was the last in line. I paused periodically to let the rest get ahead of me so I could build up some speed, and in those moments I was practically alone on the side of the volcano, looking out at a lake and two more volcanoes, in probably the best sledding experience I'll ever know. 

  The two other people in my tour were a Brazilian couple who arrived the day before and were leaving the day after. They came to Chile just to climb this volcano, and, amazingly, had never seen snow before. What an introduction to snow! They told me it was like "walking in soap".

  Meanwhile, Karen was having a very different kind of day...