Reventador: All the Rumble Without the (Potential of) a Very Large Tumble

I am no mountain climber. I have never used crampons, am scared of ice picks, and quite frankly get a little panicky when I think about dangling from ropes for any reason. This is very unfortunate because these tools are very necessary to scale almost any mountain – and I like the idea of climbing mountains very much.

When I was living in Ecuador, I decided that I had to find a way to climb a mountain or two without actually climbing them in the sense that most people climb mountains. I had to find a special sort of mountain that would accommodate my aversion to mountaineering apparatus, so I made a list that went something like this:

Will

• Hike up steep slopes all day
• Wield a machete
• Hike down steep slopes all day
• Scale large boulders for hours on end
• Tolerate mud and reasonably slippery surfaces
• Sleep in a creaky battered refugio and eat nothing but oatmeal for three days
• Wear a backpack with a reasonable amount of weight in it

Will Not

• Jump or otherwise navigate across ravines, large crevices, or chasms
• Hang from ropes under any circumstances
• Use an ice pick or any other sort of pick
• Be attached to a harness
• Be able to navigate without some sort of distinguishable trail or path (or light a fire, for that matter)
• Walk for extended periods of time on snowy or icy surfaces (I do not consider ice to be reasonably slippery-I find it to be a quite unreasonable substance)

After making the list, I didn’t really know what to do with it. And so I did what any person with the seeds of an adventure planted in their brain does when they live in Quito – I went to the South American Explorers Club.

I gave my list of Wills and Will Nots to the wise people at the South American Explorer’s Club, and asked them to please find me a mountain to climb according to the specifications on the list.
I was quite a hit. (Actually I suspect that my list was more of a hit than I was.) I think I gave them something to laugh about for weeks. After they stopped laughing, one of the Explorers contacted me and said, “We have gone over your list of Wills and Will Nots and have determined that Reventador is the perfect mountain to climb for a person like you who yearns to hike in a glorified fashion.”

This story is for all of you out there who, like me, are looking to climb something that makes you feel like you are at the top of the world without feeling scared shitless in the process.

Reventador literally means something like the exploder. It is both a fitting and somewhat unsettling name for a volcano that one is about to crawl all over. The last time it exploded was in 2002, and it burps ash and steam quite regularly. It also happens to be the most perfect peak to climb for the trekker who prefers to get from the bottom to the top using only his or her two feet as scaling devices. To get to Reventador, you must take a bus towards Lago Agrio and get off very near the gigantic and amazing San Rafael waterfalls and ask the bus driver to let you off at Revantador. There is a tiny little sign off the side of the road somewhere that marks the trail. Once you see this, all you do is go up.

The climb takes about two (long) days. There is a little wooden refugio about half the way up where tired hikers can sleep after scrambling up about five hours of jungle mud and streambeds. The exciting thing about the first part of the climb is that you feel as if you are in the middle of a jungle (a steep jungle). Wellies are advisable, as well as a nice, big, sharp machete to do away with all the annoying excess tree branches and such. The foothills (if you can call them that) of Reventador lie in a region that is almost officially the oriente or jungle. As you climb, the vegetation gets more and more sparse (although sparse in Reventadorian terms might be deemed a cornucopia of plenty in Syria) and the temperature slightly cooler.

All the exciting things that the trekker can possibly experience from jungle hiking are a very real possibility on the first leg of the Reventador adventure. Its very hot and steamy and you sweat like a pig, but there is no danger of getting a sunburn because the vegetation is so thick and green and leafy. There are large dainty blue butterflies fluttering about (sharing airspace with an unfortunately large amount of other sinister-looking insects), pretty streams and pools, and an endless number and variety of fauna.

After slogging through the jungle, there is a strategically placed wooden refugio to spend the night in. It is not advisable to continue up, unless you happen to be a tri-athlete, or plan on spending the night on the top of Reventador snuggled inside it’s quite active crater. The refugio is the perfect place to swat mosquitos, play cards, eat oatmeal, and yearn for a cool shower.

The second day of the climb is the most rewarding and the most tiring. You have to get up at the crack of dawn, and go up all day. The jungle gives away quickly to a sort of high cloud-forest environment, and then to endless fields of huge, rocky, volcanic boulders. The trick is to keep going and concentrate on your feet instead of on the increasingly gorgeous view, which can be very distracting. After about two or three solid hours of boulder-hopping, the top of The Exploder suddenly is underfoot, and the world becomes your oyster.

Being top of Reventador is like heaven and hell all at once. The view, the breeze, the sense of triumph, and the lush green jungle below are all amazing. The peak is around 4000 meters (approximately…OK, more like 3,600), which by Ecuadorian standards is a little puny. 3,600 meters doesn’t feel puny, though, when you’ve just gone up about 2000 of them and all you can see as far as you can squint is jungle and cloud forest and waterfalls and rivers.

And how, do you say, is being at the top of Reventador possibly like hell? Two reasons: 1.) You have to be very careful where you sit down or walk, because there are little vents from which steam so hot it can burn your pants right off and 2.) You have to go all the way back down again.