Join the Journey

Joining Him Atop San Cristobal

Journeying to the top of a volcano, challenging but rewarding for the view and His presence

• Walking with God // On His Journey
• Adam Cole // June 17, 2010

Climbing San Cristobal - fighting through the elements to get to the top. ©  

One of the enchanting views as seen from the volcano. © Adam Cole 2010

We woke up pre-dawn, the red hue of a sun rising just beginning to spill its colors on a dark earth.

Our mission on this day—to ascend the volcano San Cristobal—lay before us in the horizon. Its silhouette in the distance appeared like any other mountain…though we knew that climbing it would be much more than your average hike.

Eleven others and myself, members of the high-speed vessel HSV2 SWIFT (though one was an Army soldier temporarily assigned to the ship), wanted to make the most of our free day in Nicaragua. Our vessel was docked in the port of Corinto, on the northeastern edge of the country; we were there to work together with the Nicaraguan forces to exchange info on a number of pertinent topics. The thought of climbing an active volcano was a perfect pick for exploration and adventure.

A local tour guide who specialized in volcano hikes met us at a gas station in the town of Chinandega, the commercial seat of an area with several volcanoes and bountiful sugar fields. We sped off in the tour guide’s 4x4; the urban world soon faded to a primitive back country, one where horses were the primary means of travel and the smell of wood-fired stoves was in the air.

We survived the extremely bumpy ride to arrive at the foot of the volcano close to 7:30 a.m. The sun was up but not penetrating with extreme heat just yet.

San Cristobal is northernmost of Nicaragua’s active volcanoes and also the country’s tallest at 5,725 feet; there are about seven active volcanoes in the country, amid 50 total volcanic cones. San Cristobal has had a series of eruptions over the last 40 years with the last decade seeing about 4-5; the explosions have not been too hefty, just gas and some ash. San Cristobal is not shy about showing its visitors that it is alive and well. As part of the volcano’s morning wakeup, so it seems, the volcano is usually emanating a light sulfurous gas, one that is thankfully not too toxic to hikers.

At the foot of the trail, our tour guide handed out walking sticks and we started up the path. The initial leg was all woodland, like we were on a comfortable hike (yet with a mildly steep incline) through a typical forest.

Soon the green faded to grassland, which allowed us to catch our first glimpse of the remarkable view to be found below.

A few hundred feet more upward and that grassland faded as well to a gravely volcano ash/rock sand type terrain. The terrain was unrelenting, never allowing your feet to have a solid grip, both because of the gravely-nature and the steepness of the slope we were traversing.

The higher we went, the more the clouds took hold of the ascent. You couldn’t see much past a few hundred feet, making it impossible to know how high up you really were. While it seemed like we were making incredible progress, our tour guide continued to inform us that we had more to go.

One step at a time…we continued to climb. We took breaks on big rocks or just sat in the gravely earth, the clouds swirling around us. Peace. The view of farms and long sweeping open space could be seen in the distance. As we caught our breath, we would look down on the path we had just come from…a surreal part to any climb, that even while it seems like you are going nowhere, you look back to see the great stretch you’ve already covered; it’s a beautiful moment in a hike a keeper metaphor for life.

More tenacious endurance, to keep moving higher, and suddenly we were there, atop San Cristobal, very literally up in the clouds. It was difficult to see the crater or much of anything at the top because of the swirl of both the clouds and sulfurous residue but just being there at the summit was an incredible feeling. We had done it…pressed forth far enough to claim victory over San Cristobal.