This is a guest post by Mr. Snacks.
Yes, I climbed an active volcano (without turning into a charcoal briquette).
Since there are about a million excellent blog posts out there where people have given details about climbing Acatanago (for example, here), I am going to keep this post shorter and give only an overview of my experience with a few suggestions and lessons learned.
To say that Mrs. Snacks and I were enamored with seeing the volcanos that surround Antigua would be a major understatement. Our first few days in town were cloudy and we never caught sight of them, but a few days in, the clouds parted and we were immediately in love – as evidenced by the 800 or so pictures we took of them over the course of the month. At one point, I asked Mrs. Snacks if she thought seeing them would ever get old, and I can say that it never did.
Antigua is surrounded by three volcanos: Aqua (12,335ft), the closest and most commonly to photographed from town; Acatanago (13,044ft); and Fuego (12,345ft). Of the three, two are long extinct but Fuego is still active and as recently as 2018 had a major eruption that killed 200 people in a nearby village. Currently, Fuego is experiencing smaller eruptions every 5-20 minutes which are far less dangerous than when it goes long periods between eruptions, where pressure can build-up dangerously.
When Mrs. Snacks told me what she had planned for my birthday, I was pretty excited, but also a bit nervous — I was going to climb Acatanago and Fuego. While I have a lot of experience with long endurance events and high elevation after living in Colorado for over 20 years, we’d been at sea level for over 6 months and I likely had no more red blood cells than any other tourist. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty of the climb, Mrs. Snacks decided that her ankle was not be up to the climb and sent me alone.
The trip began at 6AM and after a quick briefing and equipment check, our group of 18 people were taken to an excellent breakfast at a nearby restaurant to power-up for the day ahead. After breakfast, we were driven around an hour to the trailhead and the drive gave me a chance to get acquainted with my very fun international group of companions, representing the US, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Iran, and other places.
Acatanago is known to be very difficult and therefore tends to attract younger participants (Pacaya volcano is much less steep and tends to be the volcano that attracts “more experienced” travelers), so I was pretty much the sole representative of Gen X in a group filled with Millennials and Gen Z’ers — which is either a great way to feel younger on one’s birthday, or a good way to feel like “the weird old guy on Spring Break”. Fortunately, it turned out to be the former.
As promised, the climb starts right out of the parking lot and is pretty much a constant 7-12% grade carrying a 20-30lbs backpack with food and warm clothes. The hike to the top travels through 4 separate climate zones: Farmland (7,870-9,000ft), Cloud Forest (9,000-9,840ft), Alpine (9,840-11,800ft), and Volcanic (11,800-13,046ft).
The Farmland zone is probably the most tedious with steep, narrow and slippery trails, very little shade and not much to look at except rows of crops on the hillsides, but it does give you an appreciation for how difficult the farming is here and how hard a living it is. By far the most interesting section for me was the Cloud Forest zone, where climbing up through the dense moss-covered forest is totally different from anything I’d experienced in the arid Western US. It is here that we were able to take a break for a cup of coffee at a coffee stand by the side of the trail – entrepreneurship is definitely alive and well in Guatemala.
After about 4 ½ miles and 4 ½ hours of hiking, we arrived at base camp and had about an hour to get organized for the next part of the journey. A smaller group of us were off to see Fuego up close by hiking along the ridge between our camp on Acatanago to a safe location to watch the sunset and (hopefully) the eruptions after dark. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t promising and we couldn’t see half a mile, much less across the valley to Fuego and our only proof that we were in fact only a mile or so from an active volcano was the occasional sound of the eruptions. We were told the weather often cleared around sunset, so away we went.
The hike across the ridge to Fuego was very treacherous in a few places, including a very sketchy log crossing over a deep crevasse. We were down to day packs, but it was still not an easy hike, especially since we’d already been hiking all day. Unfortunately, the weather never improved and outside of a few moments where the clouds cleared a little, we returned to camp feeling fairly demoralized at around 8:30PM – having hiked for 10 hours that day, to barely catch a glimpse of Fuego — for a hot fire, a quick dinner of pasta, and then straight to bed.
I knew from past experience that sleeping in a tent at 11,400 feet can be difficult, but when there are 30 mph wind gusts and an active volcano erupting every few minutes a mile or two away, it was next to impossible. We got up at 4AM the following morning to make the summit of Acatanago in time for sunrise. The wind had died down, but we were still solidly socked in by clouds. Despite the weather, off we went again with the hope that the second time would be the charm.
And it was. After another couple of hours of difficult hiking through the Alpine and Volcanic zones, we found ourselves at the 13,044 ft summit standing about 500 feet above a sea of clouds watching the sunrise with an erupting Fuego emerging through the clouds in the distance.
At the urging of the guide, I dragged myself away from the stunning view to be the first guest all year to attempt the Ox Challenge: run around the rim of the ~1/2 mile Acatanago crater without stopping (or passing out from lack of oxygen). I was the only person on our trip to try – take that Millennials! The last 1/8 of a mile or so were like breathing through a cocktail straw, but I made it in just over 4 minutes (the record is 2:15). The things I will do for bragging rights, oh, and a T-Shirt.
As we were leaving the summit, the mountain had one more surprise for us. We witnessed an extremely rare phenomenon called a Brocken Spectre that is caused by light refraction, similar to a rainbow, but creates an eerie bow of white light and a reflection of the person seeing it in the center.
All in all, while I was disappointed to not get to see Fuego erupt up close due to bad luck with the weather (to be fair, if weather wasn’t part of the adventure, it would be called “Disney World”) and could see doing the hike again on a future trip, the trip overall was amazing and we were treated to views that I will not soon forget and met an amazing group of travelers who I hope to stay in touch with in the future.
Things to consider…
There are (not exaggerating) probably 100 places in Antigua leading trips up Acatanago. After talking to several of them, it became extremely obvious to us that Ox Expeditions was by far the best operation in town (and yes, it’s a bit more expensive than the others too).
My choice was supported when a friend of ours who climbed using a different company told us they had “accidentally” overbooked his trip by 8 people and, lacking sufficient tent space, stacked everyone into a too-small tent like a cord of wood. And I thought I slept badly. While I will always support locally run businesses when I can, in this case, their professional experience, attention to safety, guest comfort and minimizing their environmental impact (aka “leave no trace”) made the decision to support an American owned business the right one for me.
The organizers will tell you to be prepared for cold weather – believe them. I’ve spent a lot of time at high elevations but the wind and moisture at the higher elevations in Guatemala were very easy to underestimate when we were looking up from sunny and warm Antigua. Ox does have a limited supply of warm clothes to lend out, but if you are coming from home you’ll want to pack accordingly.