Devil's Path

THE DEVIL’S PATH

One morning of October 2008, I started to feel how the sunshine passed through my window imploring me to wake up and start a wonderful day that I would never forget. I can smell from my room the famous scrambled eggs that Grandmother Romaine used to make. I got up from bed and went to eat that delicious breakfast. Now I started to get ready, picked up my check list and wentthrough it: BAGS checked, FOOD checked, CLOTHES checked, TENT checked, WATER checked, READY FOR GREAT ADVENTURE checked. I was ready to go, so I got in the car with my three best friends. We rode to the amazing, full of adventure Volcan Fuego (Volcano Fire). This is a highly active volcano and the 4th highest of Guatemala with 3763 meters above sea level.
The ride would be about 2 hours to alittle town in the borders of the city called Antigua, Guatemala. There we stopped for a while to purchase gas and continue our journey to another town called Alotenango. The day was going by so fast thanks to the jokes we were telling each other. We finally reach Alotenango at nine in the morning and stopped at a big coffee plantation where we could leave our car and begin our ascent. We broughteverything down from the car and said a “see you soon” to the owner in which he replied with a joke: “take care because it is very hard to go and rescue the hapless”. Our journey started with a perfect day all prepared, bags in the back, and everyone excited. The ascent as always was exhausting mainly was from the inclination, but also you reach a point in which the path disappears and it changes to adeep and narrow ditch with sand that makes walking very hard. If that was not much for us there was also thick and nuisance vegetation in which each step caused our backpacks to get tangled making the journey even more difficult. You can imagine how interesting this is and the patience that it requires.

At East Volcan de Agua (Volcano Water), was a point of reference where we could consultthe elevation we were going. Of many things that I can point out that were very beautiful I cannot leave out the forest’s singing: a peculiar but beautiful sound produced by the rustle of the trees’ branches dancing with the wind. Before reaching the clouds, the visibility was perfect. There was almost no fog. We were able to distinguish the beach on the horizon and a good part of the Escuintla’scoastline (Famous Pacific Beach). Continuing our journey towards the summit, the layer of clouds was reached. The wind started to blow harder and harder and it was evident that the harder it blew the colder it was getting. We had to wrap up warm with everything we had. Visibility was almost gone and we could only see 10 meters in front of us. Vegetation was no longer in our surroundings; we thoughtwe had just reached another planet because there was only sand and no living beings in sight. The sudden change in the weather, visibility, and vegetation made us stop there, not taking any further steps. We stared at each other and with just the look in the eyes of everyone we knew we had reached the most feared path of every climber in Guatemala, “El Camellon” (The Camel), most known to thelocals as “El Sendero del Diablo” (The Devil’s Path). This is the most dangerous 600-meter path and we had to go through it to reach the summit. We took a deep breath, prepared ourselves mentally, and started to walk. The wind blew harder after each step we made and without exaggeration I can say that if it were not for a wooden stick I had for support, the wind would have thrown me to the ground andmade me spin in the sand as hard as a 10-foot wave. Of course, it would not be a problem, sure, if it were not for the huge cliffs that were on both sides of the narrow path, which is about 30 centimeters wide.

No words came out of anyone’s mouth. The wind blew stronger, visibility was almost zero, and it was getting colder and colder. The whistling of the wind became a roar. My gloves were...