High Points - A Climber's Guide to Central America

Taylor)

INTRODUCTION

In 2009, the author successfully climbed the highest peak in each country in Central America. These climbs are part of a larger goal of being the first to climb the highest peaks/points in every one of the 23 countries of the Americas (North America, Central America, and South America). High Points: A Climber’s Guide to Central America provides quick and easy access to everything you need to know to climb the highest peak in each of the seven countries in Central America, without having to buy a guidebook for each country.

High Points: A Climber’s Guide to Central America includes the essential information for climbing the standard (and typically easiest) route on each country high point: Doyle's Delight – 3,853’ (Belize), Mogotón – 6,909’ (Nicaragua), Volcán Tajumulco – 13,845’(Guatemala), Volcán Barú – 11,401’ (Panama), Cerro el Pital 8,957’ (El Salvador), Cerro Las Minas – 9,347’ (Honduras), Chirripó – 12,530’ (Costa Rica).

Reaching these high points is a scenic day hike in some cases that does not require much more than a day of hiking, a sack lunch and some comfortable walking shoes. However, in other cases, the climb requires a level of commitment and determination that rivals many peaks around the world that are much higher in elevation.

In addition, given the obscurity of some of these country high points (Doyle’s Delight in Belize, and Mogotón in Nicaragua for example), there are route descriptions in this guidebook that can not be found in any other books or websites on or off the market. The information is primarily from the author’s first hand experience of climbing each of the mountains/routes described, and secondarily from hundreds of hours of pre-climb research conducted by the author in preparation for each climb.

There is one chapter for each country in Central America. Each chapter highlights all of the information one will need to climb the highest peak in that country including:

Basic mountain beta and a difficulty scale relative to the other Central American country high points;

Mountain overview – A brief overview of the peak and the climb itself without having to read all of the detail;

Jumping off point – Information on how to reach the start of the climb, once you’ve arrived in the country;

Description of the Standard Route;

Essential items and equipment that you shouldn’t forget;

Local guides - While many of these mountains do not require a guide, a few do, and for these, some advice is offered;

Estimated cost to climb – It helps to have a ball-park idea of how much money it will take to climb each peak once you’ve arrived in the country;

Each chapter also includes interesting and quirky information about each country in Central America. High Points: A Climber’s Guide to Central America offers lots of interesting information that gives you something to read and mull over while you’re riding a chicken bus through rural Honduras on your way to climb Cerro de las Minas, or while laying in your hammock on the route to Doyle’s Delight in Belize. When climbing or adventuring in any country, it is important to both respect local culture and customs, and to remember at all times, that you are a guest and visitor to the country. Climbing in other countries expands our view of the world, and helps us to experience the values and traits that we all share as fellow world citizens. Here are some of the interesting tidbits that can be found in each chapter:

An Interest and Intrigue Scale – This scale includes some of the things that make each climb interesting;

Local foods that you have to try – Every climber spends a lot of time thinking about food, before, during and after a climb. This section identifies the local specialties of each country;

Brief Country Overview and Indigenous Languages;

Recreation and Tourist Attractions – Options for places to visit before or after your climb;

Interesting facts and claims to fame – a bit of trivia will give every climber something to think or laugh about while grunting to the summit;

The author’s journal entries are also included exactly as they were written during each climb.

Finally, the idea for climbing the highest peak in every country in the Americas came to my climbing buddy Anthony Melov and me while we were sitting in a hotel in Kashgar, Eastern Turkistan (western China) in March, 2008. We were in Kashgar, licking our wounds after a foiled attempt to climb Mustagh Ata (24,757’). We had hired a Uyghur climbing company to provide base camp support for our climb, as well as mule transportation to the base of the mountain. After years of planning, thousands of dollars in trip expenses, and then traveling to the other side of the world and to Mustagh Ata base camp, we were met by a group of thugs from the Chinese Mountaineering Association and eventually by armed Chinese police, who informed us that we were not allowed to climb Mustagh Ata, despite the permits we had obtained, because we had not hired the Chinese Mountaineering Association to provide our base camp support.

After several days of negotiations and another stand-off with the Chinese police when we tried again to get to the mountain to begin our climb, we ended our attempt and returned to Kashgar. Back in Kashgar we began talking with every-day Uyghurs about the religious, social, and economic persecution that they are facing at the hands of the Chinese government. This event began our education about the fact that an ethnic group known as the Uyghur people living in what was formerly an independent nation known as Eastern Turkistan, have been facing mass arrests, religious persecution, restricted movement, accusations of terrorism, the shutting down of Uyghur schools and mosques, and significant employment barriers at the hands of the Chinese government.

Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International regularly express concern over the deteriorating human rights situation in East Turkistan. However, due to the Chinese authorities' tight controls on information, accurate and timely analysis of developments in East Turkistan is extremely difficult.

Following our moving experience listening to the stories of Uyghur people in Kashgar and Urumqi, we decided to dedicate all of our future climbs in support of the Uyghur people and their plight. For more up-to-date information about the Uyghur situation, check out: the Uyghur Human Rights Project at www.uhrp.org and the Uyghur American Association at www.uyghuramerican.org.

I often wonder to myself why, at the age of 50, I continue to subject myself to the brutal sub-zero conditions of climbing above 20,000 feet, or the mental and physical exhaustion of traveling day after day through dense and uncharted jungles, all in the pursuit of reaching the highest points in countries throughout the Americas. Some days the answers seem clear, and other days, I can’t remember for the life of me. Many other climbers throughout the centuries, and maybe all of them at one time or another, have struggled with the same questions, and many of their answers resonate with me. But one thing I have learned, as I’ve grown older, is that I don’t need a grand rationale, or even a good reason. I simply like to climb to the top of things.

For if you can’t understand that there is something in a man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself, upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

George Leigh Mallory

Maybe Himalayan climbing is just a bad habit, like smoking, of which one says with cavalier abandon, must give this up some day before it kills me.

Greg Child

I have been constantly asked, with a covert sneer, Did it repay you? – a question which involves the assumption that one wants to be repaid, as though the labor were not itself part of the pleasure.

Sir Leslie Stephen

What’s the difference between a fairy tale and a mountain story? A fairy tale begins, Once upon a time….. A mountain story begins, No Shit! There I was….

Julie (River Guide)

Because I’m grumpy when I’m not climbing. Doug Scott

Because we’re insane. Warren Harding

We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I.

Li Po 762A.D.

This is the fucking life! No?

Jean Afanassieff (French Alpinist)

If you are a brave man, you will do nothing. If you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard (Antarctic Explorer)

CHAPTER ONE: CHIRRIPÓ - COSTA RICA

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. Albert Einstein

Basic Mountain Beta

The highest point in Costa Rica is Chirripó Grande at 12,530 ft. (3,819m) above sea level.

Lat/Lon: N 9° 29'; and W 83° 29'

Ranking of Country High Points in the Western Hemisphere: Chirripó Grande is ranked 12 of the 55 country high points in the Americas.

Ranking of Country High Points in Central America: Chirripó Grande is the 2nd highest of the seven Central American country high points.

Summit of Cerro Chirripó, Costa Rica

Difficulty Scale (0-10): 7

To climb Chirripó in two days, means 9 miles straight up 9,000’ with a backpack on day #1. And then a summit day that includes another 3 miles up to the summit, then 12 miles back to trailhead. Both are very long hard days for a total of 25 miles over two days, straight up and down, with a backpack and some altitude thrown in. Climbing Chirripó over three days is a much better plan.

Interest and Intrigue Scale (0-10): 8

Chirripó gets an 8 on the interest and intrigue scale for a combination of three reasons, two of which have nothing to do with the mountain. First, when I first arrived in Costa Rica, I stayed at Casa Ridgeway, a guesthouse in San Jose that is operated by a Friends Quaker group. The guesthouse is comfortable and inexpensive, has lots of little nooks to read and relax, a kitchen to prepare your own meals, and a wonderful library with overstuffed worn out chairs and hundreds of books focusing on peace and justice issues. Breakfast was included. Casa Ridgeway is a hub for peace and social justice travelers and events, and consequently attracts some very interesting guests. For the two nights that I stayed at Casa Ridgeway, I felt at home.

The second interesting part of this climb is the village of San Gerardo de Rivas, located at the base of Chirripó Grande. The quaint little village has a few small guesthouses scattered across the mountainside, with a beautiful river roaring right through the middle of the village, and a great public hot springs. Peaceful, beautiful and relaxing, San Gerardo de Rivas is a great place to start and finish your climb.

And third, the climb itself is very interesting because it ascends over 9,000’ beginning in a rain forest, passing through a bamboo forest at 10,000’ up into the clouds and mist, and finally entering a rocky arid alpine area, all within 12 miles of trail.

Local Food that you Have to Try:

Typical Costa Rican meals rely heavily on rice and beans, particularly in rural areas. Gallo Pinto, the national dish of fried rice and black beans is particularly served as a breakfast. Travelers should watch/ask for the casado on lunchtime menus, or 'plato del dia' which is a close cousin of the casado. Both have the common denominators of low price and similar ingredients: rice and beans supplemented with cabbage and tomato salad, fried plantains, and some type of meat. Lunch is considered the main meal of the day. Generally speaking, food staples include beef, chicken, or fish. However, despite the 600 miles of coastline, seafood like shrimp or lobster is expensive because Costa Rica exports most of its seafood. Costa Ricans as a rule do not like spicy hot food.

Costa Rican soups are typically hearty and healthy. Olla de Carne is a delicious stew made with beef, potatoes, carrots, chayote (vegetable pear), plantains and yucca. Sopa Negra is a simple soup made with black beans. Guiso de Maíz is a thick corn stew.

Fresh vegetables are a primary ingredient in most main dishes, and are utilized mostly in soups and stews, or as a side dish of a casado meal. Corn is one of the most favored vegetables, and it is usually prepared in the form of tortillas and corn pancakes. Corn on the cob (elote esado) is sometimes roasted, and can be bought from street vendors. It’s very chewy and not very tastyc ompared to the sweet corn found in the U.S.

In addition to what one would imagine as typical fruits, Costa Rica offers several types of fruit that are worth a try if you find yourself wandering through a street market. Marañon is a curious fruit whose seed is the cashew. The skin of the fruit is bitter, but the flesh is delicious. Zapotes are a brown fruit resembling an oversized avocado in appearance and texture. Unlike the avocado their pulp is very sweet and bright red-orange in color. Guanábanas (soursop) are textured, green football-sized fruits with white fibrous flesh. Some eat the fruit plain, but most prefer it as a juice or with milk. The pejibaye, a relative of the coconut, is a bizarre fruit. It's flesh is thick and fibrous, and resembles the taste of chestnut or pumpkin. The manzana de agua is a dark red, pear-shaped fruit that is full of juice and quite refreshing.

The traditional breakfast drink, besides coffee, is called agua dulce (sweet water) and is made from tapa de dulce, an ingredient very similar to the American brown sugar. Tapa de Dulce is made with sugar cane juice that is boiled down and poured into conical molds to solidify. Then, some of this tapa is scraped off and dissolved into boiling water or milk to make the agua dulce. Coffee is usually served at breakfast and during traditional coffee breaks in the afternoon, usually around 3:00pm. It has traditionally been brewed in a native Costa Rican drip brew device called a chorreador.

Chorreador – A Costa Rican drip-brew contraption for making coffee.

The national liquor of Costa Rica, guaro, is made from sugarcane. Locals often drink guaro as a shot or mixed with juice or soda. The cost of guaro is very cheap compared to beer (cerveza) in Costa Rica, which has only one producer. Imperial is the most popular beer and is an American style lager that is also available in Light.

Brief Country Overview

Costa Rica is the third smallest country in Central America with an area of 19,730 sq. miles (including some small islands), about the size of the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. Its length is 288 miles, north to south, and its width is 170 miles, east to west. Costa Rica is bordered on the North by Nicaragua, on the East by the Caribbean Sea, on the Southeast by Panama, and on Southwest and West by the Pacific Ocean.

Population

Costa Rica is the fourth most populous country in Central America with a population of 4.7 million people. At 90 people per square km, Costa Rica has more then twice the population density of Nicaragua and Panama. The largest city is the capital San Jose with a population of 1.7 million people, which is over one-third of the country’s overall population.

The population of Costa Rica is probably the most homogeneous of all Central American countries. Together, whites and mestizos make up 94% of the population, three percent are of black African descent who are referred to as Afro-Costa Ricans or West Indians (English-speaking descendants of 19th century black Jamaican immigrant workers). Another one percent is composed of ethnic Chinese, one percent indigenous people, and less than 1% are Middle Easterners, mainly of Lebanese descent. The indigenous population in Costa Rica numbers only about 60,000 with some Miskito and Garifuna (mixed African and West Indian with indigenous Arawak/Carib/Taino) peoples living in the coastal regions.

An estimated 10% of the Costa Rican population is made up of Nicaraguans. There is also a number of Colombian refugees. Moreover, Costa Rica took in lots of refugees from a range of other Latin American countries fleeing civil wars and dictatorships during the 1970s and 80s - notably from Chile and Argentina.

Economy

The major exports of Costa