JOEL GRIFFETT

NOTE: this article is unrelated to the Trail and therefore I have full license to get a bit sweary. If you get ‘offended’ by innocuous words look away now.

Pre-order ‘Long Road to Nowhere: The Lost Years of Richard Trevithick (Part One)’ now, HERE.

After at least three weeks spent in a series of cities – London, Madrid, Santiago and Valparaiso I was bored. The Cornish boy who’s spent most of his life by the beach came back to the surface and said no, go somewhere quiet, with actual things to do and see.
As soon as I stepped off the 13 hour bus from Valparaiso sweaty but very awake I knew I’d made the right decision. I’d somehow arrived in Switzerland. Pucón is a beautiful little town at the very beginning of the Chilean lake district and it’s simply futile to try and describe the scenery around here. Just go. I implore you. It’s fucking lovely. Lakes, volcanoes, waterfalls, smooth and open highways that lead into tricky tight corners snaking into the hills. Mountains so close together they create vast, striking valleys were rapid rivers run riot. Every 10 minutes there’s a rest stop/viewpoint where you can pull over take in another dose of scenery and have a nice spot of lunch.
As I walked through the town at 9am the place was dead, not just because it’s a laid back town but because in Chile the day doesn’t really start until after 10 or 11. The landscapes that tower over the town are ominous, no more so than Volcán Villarrica or Rucapillán, the original name in the Mapuche language which means ‘House of the Great Spirit.’ From the town on my first day it seemed so small.
That was, until I found myself right at the base of the thing one icy October morning. It was 7am; I’d  been awake since 4:30 stumbling around trying to make porridge in my head when in reality I was lying in bed debating why I should leave the warmth for the bitter cold and whipping winds of Rucapillan but what else was I gonna do all day? Marcus Aurelius appeared in my mind, repeating the mantra that I’d tried and failed to lure me out of bed before

is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

When I was handed a pack complete with a helmet, crampons, ice pick and two sets of gloves I decided wisely that ‘hike’ was not an adequate description for the day ahead of me. The word climb sprang to mind.

The breeze at dawn does indeed have a secret to tell: I am ice cold fire. I was the last one in, 6 other people had signed up for this, plus 3 guides (I’m not Shackleton just yet) and I was of course the last one in just before 6am. As I bounded up the steps in my trackies everyone else began to shuffle out, wrapped head to toe in waterproofs, gaiters and hefty boots, which left me alone to hurriedly put the gear on and run down to the van outside. The driver glared at me as I was getting in.

The breeze at dawn had another secret to tell me: go back to bed mate, you’re not an explorer. I stood at the ‘base’ – a carpark at around 1000m up and stared up at the magnificence before me. The sky was clear, my breath was icy and I had a whole day to trudge up the to the summit, which stands at 2800m/9100ft or just under 10,000ft if you’re an optimist.

After we blessed the mountain with offerings of crusty old tobacco, one of the group vanished. I kept asking what had happened, all the guides merely shrugging. Halfway up, another two disappeared. The slow pace of the walk made me complacent. This would be easy. I almost asked if we could speed up and that I was bored, but luckily I hit a rare wave of self-control that saved me from stupidity. Hello my dear friend, I shall embrace you much later on.  

Gentle slopes became sheer drops and near vertical inclines that felt impenetrable. The higher we got the worse it became. Looking up became an act of pure shame; how small I was, how far I had to climb and to grow to reach the top, but nevertheless the 7-person camel train trundled on slowly, staring down at our feet because the wind whipped our faces dare we look up to the summit. 4 hours in I was certain once we spotted the crater spewing fumes up into the sky that we were nearly close. For the next three, it stayed in the exact same position, taunting us until we reached the top. The relatively tranquil breeze turned into evil winds rolling up from Patagonia once we passed the cloudline. Right the top the wind was lethal, enough to knock me off my feet, protected and saved multiple times from certain death by the crampons. The only spiky accessory that is completely asexual, not kinky in the slightest.

I couldn’t appreciate the summit properly due to a mix of toxic fumes and the genuine fear that the wind would suck me into the sky for a brief, glorious moment, until physical reality pulled the plug and sent me hurtling down the slope to an early death. We managed to get a photo; when the guide insisted we stand near the edge, I told him to fuck off and crawled over, making a face that was either a tortured smile or a cry for help. Apparently I saw a mountain that was in Argentina. I didn’t give a shit. In hindsight it was amazing, but at the time I was overcome by anger. For 7 hours I had toiled uphill and when I reached this potential paradise, the flat ground I’d been dreaming of since 7am, it was even worse than the treacherous hill I’d just ascended. All I wanted to do was burrow into the slope and hibernate.

The fun really began on the way down…

The best bit, so everyone insists, is that you get to slide down. Everyone I’d met and spoken to about Pucon with in Chile mentioned the slide. How we slid, I was unsure of.
It turns out the sled was in fact was a flimsy bin lid, or a warped plastic plate but this hi-tech device was not to be deployed just yet. First we had to walk back down until we reached an angle remotely favourable for an uneventful descent. The walk back down was full ACL rupture flashback territory for me. Rugby studs replaced by crampons, the sandy Cornish mud replaced with untouched snow covering glaciers. But eventually, after forcing down the starter and the main course, we came to the long awaited dessert.

Now, I don’t know how I feel about sharing this story of near death that my Mum will almost certainly read in due course and fret over. So let’s just say the normal way down, completely in control, bin lid wedged firmly beneath buttocks was not the technique I chose to employ that afternoon. Instead, I went for a more avant-garde, loss of control, slide straight into the light of the beyond approach. Not once. Twice. The first time I put down to naivety, but when I did the exact same thing again after we stopped and waited for the rest to catch up, I remembered once more than I’m never far away from doing or saying something stupid. On the third go, the slope was slowly beginning to level out and I managed to not die and to actually enjoy the enjoyable part of the adventure. I say this, but the complete loss of control was in a way very freeing, like a giant freezing demon drop for adults.

When I woke up the next morning, everything hurt, but the rage that had infected me just before the summit had subsided, unlike my sunburnt nose, which was just beginning to fall off. Would I do it again? Maybe.

I thought back to the blessing just before we set off and whether I took it seriously or not. The offering of old tobacco seemed inadequate and maybe my dramatic descent was the magic of the mountain, punishing me for my lack of respect…