From the coast, we struck inland, heading to San Gerardo to make a base for hiking the tallest mountain in Costa Rica, Cerro Chirripó. They recommend doing it as an overnight hike, first getting to the base camp some 14km up the mountain and staying there the night to hike the peak and descend the next day. There were no beds left available in the base camp the day we wanted so we opted against the two night option in favour of tackling the whole thing in a day.
40km return, about 2,300m elevation gain to the summit from the trailhead and the peak resting at a not insubstantial 3,820m. We started out in the dark at 3am, Megan having a headlamp and me using the light from my phone. The first half-dozen kilometres went by relatively easy, with a sense of adventure, stars and the distant town lights keeping us company when we weren’t studiously watching the ground for secure footing among the slippery mud. We put the lights away upon a misty sunrise in the dripping rainforest, just in time to tackle the next few brutal kilometres. We trudged past the base camp around 7:45am with another 5km to reach the summit.
They have a yearly race from the town to the base camp and back, so have markers at each kilometre of the trail for the 14 it takes to reach base camp. Just as a reference, the race is won in 3hrs and change, while it took us 4.5hrs to hike solely to the base camp (less than half their return distance). We were making some pretty amazing time, with everyone we’d spoken to having gotten to the base camp in anywhere between 6 and 12hrs, with the average somewhere around 7hrs. This wasn’t without pain though, the altitude had been slowly working its way into a dull headache for the last few kilometres and was even more telling on my breathing and energy levels. But against that inner voice telling me that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to turn around now and not make it all the way, we continued on.
We finally reached the summit after another agonising two hours, a total of 6hrs 41min. The clouds had already rolled in a couple of hours ago and it had just started to drizzle so we sat exhausted and ate a quick breakfast of peanut butter and banana sandwiches (yummm) and drank down some water before beginning the descent 15 minutes after our arriving at the peak.
We started back down at a great pace, thinking we would shave off a couple of hours from the ascent time. We did the first 5km down half an hour quicker than the ascent and it looked to only get better until the sky opened up and decided to dump everything it had on us. Our pace slowed proportionally to the increasing rain as we negotiated the muddy river that had become our downward trail. Slowly stepping and slipping bit by excruciatingly slow bit down the mountain. The kilometers crawled by and what we thought was going to be a 4hr descent crept to the 5hr mark and then another hour as we made it home in just over 6hrs.
It’s not often that the way down is more draining than the climb but this was definitely the case. Multiple times the rain and slow pace made us want to stop and give up, but sadly the only way to get the ordeal over with was to keep going, watching the kilometer markers slowly count back down to our original starting point. There was no relief from the drenching water, not even our jackets could hold it out and the mud covering and filling our shoes just a mere annoyance compared to the treacherous footing that caused us to slip multiple times, landing then sliding on our backs and bums in the slick clay. And so at almost 13hrs to the minute we hobbled back into our hostel. A quick wash off at the hose out the front (wet and dirty clothes and shoes to be dealt with later) and a hot bath helped rest some extremely battered bodies and exhausted minds and an early nights sleep.
