Hiking Acatenango

We got up at 7:00 Saturday morning (the 23rd), and finished all of our last minute packing in a flurry of activity. Everyone prepared a big breakfast to eat, following yesterday’s pattern, when everyone was carb loading and hydrating in preparation.

At 7:30, our guides showed up in vans and by 8:00 we were all loaded up and ready to go. When we arrived at the start of the hike, we were split into 2 groups and given our food and rented equipment for the day.

Then, by 9:30, my group was hiking up Acatenango. I was not expecting it to be so difficult from the start. Immediately, the ground is steep, the trail is curvy, and the ground is shifting beneath every step. It’s not gravel or sand, but a mixture of packed dirt with loose dirt on top of it.

Naturally, this had me wondering if I could really do 8 hours of this (the amount of time we’d been told it’d take to get to base camp, where we’d stay the night). I was forced to really cling to the fact that God had called me to do this, and He wouldn’t call me to do this if He wasn’t going to provide the strength (remember, I was pretty weak from spending the past week fighting the infection in my ear).

We took plenty of unofficial breaks before our first official rest, which lasted 5-10 minutes. We took this opportunity to rehydrate and eat some snacks, now that we knew what we were in for. Then we were off again.

Again and again, we followed this pattern, but slowly, we started to get into the rhythm of it, and the climb slowly became easier. While still steep, it was no longer ridiculously so, and in some areas the ground was a lot firmer.

Our longest break was for lunch, and that seemed to last both forever and for only a few minutes. We rested until we became cold, then we had use our tired, sore, and stiffening muscles once more to continue the climb.

3 hours in, something wonderful happened. It flattened out! While there were still parts that went up and down, it was significantly flatter, and our pace quickened.

The last 20 minutes of the hike was rough. The trail narrowed, there was a strange mixture of dust and gravel, and it started to go down pretty steeply. I fell, and while it wasn’t bad, my leg did get a little scraped up. Sadly, I wasn’t the only one to go down.

After 4 hours of hiking (that 8 hours had really been exaggerated), we made it to base camp. Sweet, sweet base camp, with a stunning view of Fuego (which erupts every 15 minutes) and a cozy cabin (where all 12 of us slept in bunks beds pushed together).

Confession: Sitting around at base camp was almost harder for me than hiking the mountain. The air was thin (we were literally above the clouds), and my brain was a little freaking out that I was stationary but my heart was still racing.

A group left after a few hours to hike Fuego, but since I didn’t feel God calling me to do it, I was more than happy to relax, take a little nap, and wake up in time for a dinner of pasta, around a fire, with hot chocolate warming your insides while several layers of clothing warmed your outsides!

I went to bed early, because the group summiting Acatenango had to leave at 4:00, and I wanted to get as much sleep as possible before then. It was so comfortable in my sleeping bag! I only wish my ear hadn’t started hurting while I tried to sleep.

I was up and ready to go by 3:30, and while the hike up was difficult and lasted for probably 2 hours, it was so good! The view was incredible, my hearing was starting to get much better, and the way down, which I’d be dreading, was actually so fun and easy!

We headed back to base camp, where we packed up all out stuff, took one last look at the view, then headed down the mountain.

It quickly became apparent that while the risk of falling was much higher, we could also move much faster, and it wasn’t nearly as exhausting! I fell again, but since there were no injuries, I just laughed and kept going!

Then, after about 3 hours, we were at the bottom. We felt so accomplished, and it was so cool to look back on what we’d done!