El Cerro Chirripo, Costa Rica
May, 1995
During one of the early planning sessions John and I contemplated a wall map of Costa Rica I'd just purchased at a map gallery. After a minute of study I found El Cerro Chirripo, the highest point in the country, and placed my finger on it. A few seconds of heavy silence followed.
"We must climb it."
"Absolutely."
It was well that we were in agreement on the issue because a split here on climbing the highest mountain in the country probably would have spelled disaster for the summer. In the beginning stages we weren't so much concerned with the cultural or language exposure of traveling in Costa Rica, but whether or not it was possible to stand on the highest point in the country. In talking with people in Boulder who had traveled in Costa Rica and climbed Chirripo, we learned that it was the country's classic backcountry adventure. These conversations were sprinkled with terms like "insane," "hellish," and "damn ornery howler monkeys." Our curiosity grew.At that time we were working for an adventure travel company so it was not a problem to tack up my wall map of Costa Rica right in the office. When we happened by each other at the fax machine or the copier John and I whispered the word "Chirripo" just to feel it roll off our tongues, reveling for an instant in the raw, adventurous power the word heralded in our imaginations. Summitting Chirripo was to be the capstone event of our travels in Costa Rica, then scheduled for a two month duration. We read books and studied Costa Rican national park journals. I drifted off to sleep at night envisioning our final summit push, two exhausted and grimy mountaineers clawing their way to the top of a steep rock pinnacle. Then we were finally on top, delirious with happiness and shouting for joy amid the rugged and isolated alpine scenery in one of the few spots in the world where you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. By the time we had arrived in country, we had blown the hike so out of proportion in our minds that climbing even Everest in the dead of winter in tennis shoes and boxer shorts would have been child's play compared to our grand expedition up Chirripo.
The day we left our suburban barrio in San Jose, Costa Rica, John's housemom had a nervous breakdown. She was a professional woman who worked in the government offices downtown and was always very in control of herself. But when John's talk of scaling Chirripo turned into action, she forbade him to leave the house with any such plans in mind. She maintained that spirits haunted the heights of Chirripo and that strange things happened to men in those high, desolate mountains. If for some reason we were spared by the spirits, then the physical rigors of the hike would surely kill us both. There were rockfalls, dangerous cloud forest animals and mud-slicked chutes just off the trail that descended over thousand-foot cliffs! I decided that for a woman who had never left the urban community of San Jose, she was certainly able to paint quite a graphic picture of the various ways we would meet our deaths. They argued for a bit but John wasn't fluent enough to get his point across and in the end Josefa shut herself in her bedroom and refused to say goodbye. She knew we were goners.
Not all Costa Ricans get this emotional about Chirripo. It is however regarded as a daunting undertaking and the ones who do climb it train for months in preparation and then brag about it for years. At over 12,000 feet, Chirripo maintains a climate and ecosystem completely foreign to most Costa Ricans. The area is characterized by cold and rainy weather, overcast skies and temperatures that hover just above freezing. Chirripo is located within its own national park on the continental divide in a mountain range sprawled across the sparsely-populated southern section of the country. Chirripo and neighboring La Amistad national parks make up over 250,000 hectares of isolated mountain wilderness that continues south to the Panamanian border. It is the largest stretch of virgin cloud forest and tropical dry forest in the country and houses a precious stockpile of biological diversity. In the days before Columbus, only medicine men from the Talamanca Indian tribe ventured to the enchanted heights around Chirripo. It was believed the area held magical powers dangerous to commoners. Adding to the legends were the lists of mysterious disappearances in the mountains. If this haunted and supposedly dangerous mountain should exist anywhere in the country, the isolated southern cordillera was the place.
This added nicely to the aura and attraction of Chirripo for John and I. The fact that we had to travel so far and confront various natural disasters was great fodder for our imaginations. We knew the chances of ever becoming internationally-renowned celebrity mountain climbers in this life were extremely slim, so we made do with what we had and continued building up the danger and import of this Chirripo trip.
May 15. On the bus ride from San Jose, we climbed out of the central plateau and crossed the continental divide at 3500 meters at the auspiciously-named "Mountain of Death." Swinging from the rear view mirror was our driver's rosary, an item he made a point of kissing at various stages during the trip. The highway followed the tops of the ridgelines for several miles and it was here that John and I were treated to our classic vision of montane rain forest. Fog congregated in the valleys between the densely- forested mountainsides along the road. The folds of terrain numbered into the distance, cut by the frothy white lines of tropical rivers. This, not language programs amid the polluted urbanity of San Jose, was the real reason to come here. The road wound off the divide into the southern foothills and eventually reached the town of San Isidro, our next bus transfer point. It was from here that we would be taking the local transport to the small pueblo at the border of the national park.
Once in San Isidro things became a bit more raucous because it was a Sunday and the day of a soccer game between the town team and Puntarenas, a town on the Pacific coast. Pulling into town we encountered truckloads of people waving immense purple and white flags. There was scattered horn honking, random shrieking and heavy drinking. At the center of town we found a lively market scene complete with a bandstage and a crowd of dancing Costa Ricans. Everywhere flew the purple and white banners. Kids were standing in the middle of the street selling miniature flags to cars passing by. It was a Sunday, the town team was playing, and nobody was doing anything except getting drunk. At one point the team bus passed through town, did a couple circles around the city park, and took off for Puntarenas. As this happened everyone went crazy, shooting fireworks, yelling, dancing around and generally stopping up traffic. Now I understand why people here get killed at soccer games. Anything that garners this much emotion has to be dangerous.
John and I slipped through the melee to the bus station where I tried to buy a bus ticket in advance but was politely refused. Evidently you could not buy tickets in advance for the bus to Rivas. When it shows up, everyone crams on board. The fare is negotiated when you get off. So we sat on our packs chomping on tortillas and watched the scene. A weatherbeaten Daihatsu drove by as the driver leaned on the horn and enthusiastically slammed the outside door panels. Backseat occupants frantically waved the flag and screamed at the top of their lungs. Radios blared excitement.
An hour passed before an ancient International Harvester labored up to one of the bays with a marker-scrawled sign in its front window that said "Rivas." There was an immediate rush of activity, as most of the people waiting in the crowded station sprang up and charged the vehicle. John and I grabbed our expedition packs and joined in the jostling chaos. The last few seats in the rear of the bus had been ripped out for passengers with large loads, so we threw the packs there and muscled our way into two seats. The constant stream of people boarding the bus eventually filled the entire center aisle and cut us off from our packs by sight. Getting back to them would have been physically impossible because the sheer crush of human bodies made any movement quite difficult. I tried to suppress images of razor blade thieves slicing open our packs and picking and choosing at their leisure while just a few feet away we sat crammed into a seat, powerless to do anything about it. We left at 2 pm for the 20 km trip to the tiny pueblo called San Gerardo de Rivas on the border of Chirripo National Park.
Most of the busses in Costa Rica are ex-American school busses, which have sufficient leg room only for extremely small and short people, namely dwarves. Our height constantly worked against us whenever traveling by bus. Today it was to be no different except for the added twist of piling another person in the seat with us. It was tight. And it smelled bad. But we were on our way. To pass the time I browsed a local Chirripo guide pamphlet. The most interesting aspect of the trail, among many, was on the "Howler Monkeys." These fiercely territorial primates howl and scream as they travel through the trees to let other howlers know exactly where they are. Fights frequently result when trespassing monkeys don't heed the warnings. Because of the size discrepancy, howler monkeys in most cases do not attack trespassing humans, who as a rule are usually quite oblivious in respecting monkey terrain as they hike through the jungle. As an alternative, the howlers defecate into their hands and simply throw the mess at the offending party.
The further we drove along the route the emptier the bus got as people disembarked at the small towns and farms. About halfway through the trip the road ended and we were faced with a gravel lane which rose dramatically into a forested hillside. We stopped for a moment as the driver searched for first gear and everyone settled in for what was to be the rough part of the trip. I gripped the seat in front of me as we lurched off the main highway onto the secondary road. As we powered through the deep ruts on the single lane, canyon vistas opened up to our right. On the left side, branches from over-hanging trees scraped angrily along the length of the bus. After the first 20 minutes of bumps and chuckhole shocks I went to the rear to sit on my pack, thinking it would be a bit more comfortable for the bumpy ride than the hellish kid-sized seats. Here I met a Belgian man who had just arrived in Costa Rica after two months in Columbia, "looking for real estate bargains" as he put it. He wore an unbuttoned, long-sleeved shirt with epaulets, stained khakis, a panama hat and sandals. A 20 year-old frame pack slid around between his feet with each lurch. After a few minutes of conversation we made plans to split a hotel room (if any even existed in the village). He looked like he had seen some heavy travel and would probably have some good stories to tell.
The last 10 kilometers of the dirt road took an hour and a half to cover. The bus finally reached the hamlet of San Gerardo de Rivas and disgorged the few remaining passengers before turning about and pulling up next to the cantina. The driver switched off and went in for a drink. John and I and our new friend Jean hiked a half mile up the road before finding a hotel, which did not take much consideration as there were only two to choose from. The "Rocadura" had an open second story bar room that looked out on the village soccer field and the steep ridgeline directly beyond. We sat at a corner table and clinked our beers together as clouds marched down the valley. Looking into the sky, I imagined that we could just make out the lower flanks of Chirripo itself.
Over the local "Imperiales" we talked economics, microbreweries and the ups and downs of Costa Rican cuisine. Perhaps the best part was trading travel stories. Jean had amassed a small fortune of experiences while in Columbia and was keeping us entertained in between chain-smoking his Derby cigarettes and sipping beer. One particularly interesting piece concerned a trackless jungle region in northern Columbia called the Darien Gap. It is a vast jungle province which stretches into southern Panama and has no roads, towns or government presence of any sort. A confusing network of trails is all that permeates the jungle. Because neither the Columbians nor the Panamanians want to go to the expense of building a road through it, there is no logging, settlement or tourism. Neither government patrols the region, making it an ideal location for illegal activity. Many of the Columbian drug lords have their cocaine processing facilities here, far away from the hassle of the police. Jean described it as a lawless, free-for-all drug zone. There is a backpacking trek through the area from the outpost town of Yaviza in southern Panama to the town of Chigorodo in Columbia, but the area has become extremely dangerous to travel in recent years. Hikers are routinely shot for fear they are government spies searching out the locations of the coke factories.
I tipped my bush hat down low and regarded Jean with serious, squinting eyes. It was a scene right out of a movie. We were sitting at an open-air bar in backcountry Costa Rica watching a mysterious Belgian chain-smoking the local grubby cigarettes and discussing so matter-of-factly Columbian drug lords, hidden coke factories and dead backpackers.
The hotel was $3.00 US per person for a night. It was a tight little room with three bunks and foam pads for mattresses. Bamboo stakes held open wooden louvers over the screenless windows. The bathroom facilities consisted of a plastic shower tub and a metal sink and spigot. But at $3.00 a night we didn't mind. This was why we came. The sound of crashing white water coming down from the montane rainforest more than made up for the spartan accommodations. After my friends had gone to bed, I washed down my face in the sink with Dr. Bronners castille soap and dried it on my shirt sleeve. Ducking between lines of laundry hung on the back porch rewarded me with a view of the full moon and intermittent clouds falling away to the south. The riverfall drifted out of the valley and a dog barked somewhere down the road in the darkness. It was the most peaceful moment I had had yet in Costa Rica.
4:30 am. The occasional cries of roosters reached up the valley, infiltrating the foggy morning chill above San Gerardo de Rivas while John and I fumbled with our backpacks in the darkness. Jean mumbled an "Au Revoir" as we clomped out of the tiny room into the outdoor hallway. As we cinched up our waist belts on the backpacks outside the little hotel, we paused for a quick moment. We exchanged a grave glance as I said, in my best Orson Wells,
"Operation Chirripo has now commenced."
At 5:00 a.m. John and I were hiking up the one street in Rivas. As we walked through the gathering morning light the street soon tapered into a horse trail connecting the outlying farmhouses. A mile into the hike we reached the border of the national park which afforded us our first photo opportunity and water break. The lower elevations of the trail just outside of town were covered with the tropical dry forest and meadows of tall grasses. The path angled up into the foothills past cow pastures and dense stands of mahogany. A corrugated tin roof stood over the gate to Chirripo National Park. We secured the park passes on our gear and contemplated the steep greenery of the trail as it wound up the valley and out of our sight line.
My imagination was running wild. I envisioned the press conference we would call in San Jose upon our triumphant return to civilization, fresh from the Chirripo climb. John and I would be sitting behind a table draped with banners proclaiming "Chirripo '95." We would each wear baseball hats with the same logo. In my mind banks of microphones and eager reporters crowded around the table, shouting questions as John and I squinted in the high-intensity lights and popping flash bulbs. Off to our right Wolf Blitzer spoke excitedly to a CNN camera crew.
"Thanks for joining me here in San Jose, Costa Rica. The American team of John Kin and Jay Boynton has just returned from their successful summit bid of Cerro Chirripo, the highest and most dangerous mountain in Costa Rica. After overcoming incredible odds and numerous disasters including, but certainly not limited to, treacherous mudslides, ferocious cloud forest beasts and even voodoo curses placed on them by local Indian tribes, these two intrepid explorers were able to claim the summit and make it back alive. The question burning on everyone's lips at this point is: How DID they do it?" Wolf approaches John and lays his hand on his shoulder as video tape whirs and automatic film advance motors click like machine gun fire.
"John, what would you say was the toughest part of the Chirripo climb? Was it the treacherous mudslide in the jungle downpour the first day? Or perhaps the massed attack by the wild boars?" "Uh, the mudslide, probably."
"My God, man. What happened?"
"Well it was definitely sketchy. We were slogging up the trail when suddenly it seemed half the mountainside slid off, catching Jay and I in a river of silty water, uprooted trees and thousands of pounds of earth. We used swimming motions to stay on top of the debris and were both able to maneuver to the side of the slide and grasp vines just before the whole mess was swept off a thousand-foot cliff."
"Unbelievable."
"The wild boars caught us by surprise, but luckily we were prepared for such an eventuality. We are both trained in the use of fourteen different assault weapon systems and after the initial shock, we were able to put our guns to good use. The key in this type of operation is flexibility, I've always said."
Wolf, shaking his head, moves over to me.
"Jay, there has been talk in the international climbing community of a Boynton/Kin attempt on the highly dangerous north face route of Gasherbrum II in Northern Pakistan this summer. Is this true? And does the fact that this route has never been successfully climbed have any bearing on your decision?"
"The fact that the north face has never been done doesn't phase us at all, of course."
"Last summer an entire Japanese team was caught in an avalanche and fell to their deaths in an icy crevasse. How does this affect you two?"
"It's all part of it. If you aren't going to take any risks in your life you might as well stay in bed all day and watch soap operas." Wolf turns to the cameras and continues.
"There you have it. A study of unbelievable courage and bravery from the highland jungles of Costa Rica. I'm Wolf Blitzer for CNN. Back to you, Bobbie."We entered the cloud forest around 7:30 am and stopped for a breakfast of fresh papaya in a sunny cove of vine-enshrouded mahogany and ceiba trees. Ropes of moss dripped from every limb. As I cut the papaya, I commented to John about the scenery and our good fortune that we had been able to avoid the dreaded mudslides and other assorted dangers of Chirripo. He replied, "Yeah, so far so good." He was already lost in his own world. I kept slicing with my Swiss Army knife, watching the sticky papaya juice run over my fingers.
With the exception of the rest stops, the hiking proved to be every bit as hellish as the reports indicated. The trail, which gains over 8,000 vertical feet over 20 kilometers, was one of the longest and toughest hikes I'd ever attempted. I'd scaled higher mountains in Colorado, but those hikes were always much shorter and required only day packs for the ascents. Here we carried full packs with sleeping gear, stoves, extra clothes, and a week's worth of water, fuel and food. The combination of those factors, plus the fact that the trail seemed to climb straight up the steep valley walls, made John and I wonder if there would be anything left of us when Josefa's dreaded "Chirripo spirits" showed up.
Through much of the forest terrain a cloud of flies hovered around us. Individuals would make frequent attacks on my nose and ears and several became entangled in my hair until I put on the highly fashionable mosquito head net. Drops of sweat fell off my nose when I shook my head. I wrung out portions of my t-shirt and watched exhausted muscles in my legs ripple and shudder with the uphill effort. After the first two hours we were silent, each of us trying to access some kind of meditation state to deliver us from the physical rigors of the hike. On a bright note, we still hadn't encountered the infamous dung-slinging howler monkeys.
After six hours of hard hiking we entered the Paramor, the Central American version of a sub-alpine zone. Several years before an immense forest fire had reduced entire mountain hillsides to eerie moonscapes. Clouds moving in for the afternoon shower coursed through the burned out remains of the once-forested land. Our rest stops found us leaning on the fallen trees, attempting to ease the pressure from the shoulder straps by resting the backpacks on the wet logs.
1:15 pm found us trotting into the base camp on deadened legs, shivering under a gray sky in our
sweat-soaked garments. The deserted "Base Crestones" camp consisted of two wooden shelter buildings, each a rack room with a padded loft running the length of the wall and a bathroom at the back. A kitchen adjoined to one side with a sink and wooden counter. Wind whistled through holes in the warped wooden plank construction. It had a metal corrugated roof and dusty wooden floors, under which mice scampered. It was, without a doubt, the most blessed thing John and I could have ever laid eyes on at that point. After sharing a quick dinner of ramen noodles and tomato mix soup, we changed into dry clothes and crawled into our sleeping bags.
The next morning, our grand anti- climatic summit attempt began at 7:30 am. We left the heavy gear at the refugio and took a couple day packs with crackers, water, cameras and rain jackets. It was anti-climatic because from an emotional standpoint, summitting a non-technical mountain is
best accomplished on the same day it is begun. When we hit the refugios the afternoon before we were aching, gasping for breath and dangerously close to death. But strangely enough, this is the best way to summit a mountain because the emotions are at their most vivid and unforgettable. Summitting a mountain when you can barely walk and have been slogging all day up impossible trails contemplating the shrinking odds of survival is a much more powerful experience if done all on the same stroke. Stopping for the night in the refugios broke our rhythm. The next morning greeted us with monumental aching soreness, but the summit run up three more miles of valley and another thousand vertical feet felt more like a day hike than the summitting of the highest point in Costa Rica.
We went two miles up the last valley, 1/2 mile over some saddlebacks and the last 1/2 mile scaling the actual summit ridge. The final part featured some sketchy rock scrambling to the summit cone but it wasn't anything outrageous. As we approached the summit rock cairn I realized we hadn't been wrapping ourselves up in the emotion of the achievement like I envisioned we would be. I figured we'd have champagne and fireworks and an eight-piece band heralding our
accomplishment on the final summit approach. Reality proved to be much different. John and I were over 100 yards apart, too exhausted for pagentry, and pretty grim in attitude and demeanor. Attempting to attach some gravity to the moment, I commented to John when he caught up, "Do you realize we are now standing on the highest point in Costa Rica?" "Fuckin' Chirripo, man. Can you believe it?" The only sound was the wind whistling through the summit rock cairn. Tufts of grass poked between the ancient volcanic rocks that were piled randomly about the small summit. A wren lit on the rock cairn and watched us while John fiddled with his camera. As I surveyed the quiet scene I realized the emotional tidal wave I was expecting was never going to materialize. Somehow the summitting act didn't mean what we thought it would when we were staring at the wall map back in Boulder. We got a quick view of distant mountain ranges to the East and what we think was the Caribbean, but clouds soon rolled in and obscured everything. We were on top by 9:55 am and that was almost too late. We snapped our pictures, signed the summit register, and then took off before the rain hit.
On the descent we blundered into a maze of scrub brush that choked the mountainside and succeeded in hiding the trail from us. After losing our way we spent an hour bushwhacking through the sagebrush-looking flora, splashing through mini rivers that were still draining the mountains after yesterdays' hours of rain. The mud found its way into everything, including the mosaic of scrapes and scratches that covered our legs. We talked women, half-heartedly sang song lyrics, and continued slogging our way down the mountain. Dinner was rice, beans and tomato mixture soup. The rains started intermittently around 3 pm, then graduated into a full downpour around five. This continued past the time that we fell asleep, because I remember lying snuggled up in my mummy bag for night number two being extremely happy with the opportunity to have a rainstorm lullabye.
After we scarfed down our breakfast of oatmeal, granola and tea, we slathered sunblock over ourselves and hiked back up the valley in the direction of the Chirripo massif. Enthusiasm was seeping back into us with another night's rest and some hot food. This hike turned out to be much more eventful than the actual climb up Chirripo because it followed the scenic ridgeline that
overlooked the valley. We were rewarded with vantage points of Chirripo itself, the northern saddleback terminus of the valley, and a host of ranges stretching away to the sea. The Caribbean was hidden by the cloud cover, but a number of dark blue ridgelines stood eerily out of the fog. To our west we could plainly see the Pacific ocean and most of the Osa Peninsula from our lunch break rock. To the south we could see all the way to Panama, a hazy grey strip on the horizon. We stopped on the way back down to the refugios on a high rock shelf with a commanding view of the valley. We lay back on our packs in the overcast light, listening to the winds and the occasional cries of wrens. Ten minutes into our rest the sound of coyote howls drifted across the valley from the northern end, making an eerie break to the silence. We didn't know coyotes were up here, as they hadn't been mentioned in any of the literature we researched about what kind of wildlife we would find on Chirripo. The cries soon finished and silence returned to the high Chirripo valley. After another ten minute's reflection, we walked the rest of the way back to the refugios about 50 yards apart, each of us lost in his own thoughts.
Our last day on Chirripo we burned the remainder of our fuel cooking breakfast oatmeal and tea, and then loaded up the packs for the trip down. It was bright and sunny in the morning so we bathed our greasy faces once again in sunblock before beginning the long trek. The distance from the refugios to the hamlet of San Gerardo de Rivas was almost 16 kilometers, roughly half in the eerie Paramor and half in the cloud forests. The morning Paramor hiking was somewhat dry but around noon we reached the cloud forest and the rain. Here we were treated to close-up views of steep foggy hillsides crammed with tall trees and jacaranda vines. The tree trunks were covered in
mosses and their crowns were lost high overhead in the cloud banks. Vines hung from every limb, which themselves sported entire gardens of flowering plants and poinciana. Birds sang out strange tunes from high in the canopy and water dripped off every leaf and bromeliad. I made a point of stopping every so often to inspect the plants and experiment with the macro close-up function on my camera. We arrived at the midway lean-to shelter just as the sun disappeared and the rain began a two-hour pounding of the mountain. After a snack we wrapped ourselves in plastic and took off through the rain-soaked forest.
At various points along the trail the sounds of thunderous cascades emanated from gray grottos of fog. Could this have been one of the off-trail dangers Josefa had warned us about? The rain reduced entire flat sections of the trail to muddy mosquito bogs and created mudslide conditions on the steeper parts. We jumped from rock to rock in the downpour as water soaked through our pants and trickled down our backs. My one lasting image of this part of the trip was John, who had slipped and fallen in the mud a number of times, yelling, "I am yellow man! I am yellow man!" as he jumped from rock to rock in his yellow poncho. As the cloud forest gradually blended into the lower elevation dry forest, blinding sunlight replaced the rain in the lower valleys. The sun-baked patches of open and exposed trail created heat shocks that hit us in waves. After four days in the chilly alpine rain, we had almost forgotten where we were. Layers were peeled off and water breaks became frequent. We rejoiced in the fact that we were out of the much-ballyhooed mudslide danger.
But my imagination was not churning out visions of press conferences and ticker tape parades anymore. My mind was singularly focused on the little corner table at the Rocadura bar with a couple cold Imperiales standing nearby. Getting off this damn mountain was the goal that eclipsed every other thought running through my weary head. By the time we'd reached the border of the park our calves and thighs were jellified from the constant flexing. We were no longer placing our steps, but simply throwing our feet out in front of the other. We'd been planning our steps around rocks and roots on the trail to avoid turning an ankle for the last eight hours and the exercise was wearing incredibly thin. The hiking trail finally gave way to the single street of San Gerard de Rivas, which began as the horse trail we had been following near the park entrance. We stumbled right up to the second storey bar in the Rocadura.
I muttered to the barmaid "Dos Imperiales, por favor" and without stopping headed straight for our corner table with the view. Just as we unshouldered our packs and fell into the chairs the clouds opened up in a thunderous downpour. We stared blankly at the sheets of rain before our eyes and grumbled sentence fragments about "good timing" and "blind luck" about the fact that we had missed another dousing by less than four minutes. The rain soaked down the little town and brought the fog down again from the cloud forest. It was as if the forest still wasn't finished with us. When the beers came I clinked John's bottle with mine and offered the toast:
"To finding women who will tolerate us when we are old and gray talking about our glory days in Costa Rica."
"Amen."
