This is the second of two posts about Edita and my second ascent of Pico Duarte, the highest mountain in the Dominican Republic, via the Mata Grande Route. This post covers the later part of the trek from Valle de Bao to La Cienaga, across the main summits.
In the last post, I explained how we came to return to the Dominican Republic and attempt its highest mountain, Pico Duarte, by the Mata Grande Route. I covered the first part of our trek through jungle on the northern side of the Cordillera Central mountain range to the high-altitude grasslands at Valle de Bao, beneath the forested peak of La Pelona.
I pick up the story as we leave our campsite for the main ascent.
Day 4 – Valle de Bao to La Comparticion
Despite signs in every camp saying No musica, the Dominicans decided to play it loud last night. Perhaps they thought we were too far away to hear it, but we certainly weren’t. It didn’t stop me from sleeping, but I must have drifted off and woken up four or five times to thrumming beats before the camp became peaceful.
Still, I manage to get enough sleep before my alarm peeps me awake in darkness at 4.45. There has been a lot of dew overnight and the tent is damp. It’s also rather cool outside. The first thing I need to do is wander up the hill to use the bathroom. With the Dominicans still sleeping and the camp in darkness, I decide to brave the more comfortable al fresco toilet, which is refreshing and breezy at that time in the morning.
By the time I get back to the tent, Roselio and Jade have lit a fire. I sit with them and have coffee, cereal and hard-boiled eggs while Edita continues to get ready. She catches up by eating more quickly. Roselio fills our water bottles. When he sees Edita’s pee bottle in her duffle bag, he offers to fill that as well and is surprised when she refuses. I manage to convey the purpose of the bottle with a series of hand gestures, eliciting hoots of laughter.
When first light arrives, we see an eerie mist rising off the grassy plain in front of La Pelona. When we leave at 6am, there is enough light to walk without torches. Jade escorts us back to the junction on the corner of Valle de Bao and points us in the direction of the trail.
It takes us a little under five hours to reach the top of La Pelona, climbing from 1,800m in Valle de Bao to 3,095m on the summit. The trail follows the forested ridge on the opposite side of Valle de Bao from where we camped. A combination of the early start and the forest shade mean that the walking is easy, and we plod slowly upwards for over two hours without stopping. By 8.15 we have climbed to nearly 2,500m, more than half the ascent. The path starts to level out and we stop for 15 minutes to eat some snacks while sitting on a fallen tree trunk.
Our guides still haven’t caught up by the time we leave. At 2,600m the trail starts to descend as the forest thins. La Pelona rises straight ahead of us across a col, while to the left a more distant La Rusilla rises like a whaleback. The latter is the Dominican Republic’s third highest peak, which we failed to climb last year. We hope to remedy this tomorrow. Both peaks are wreathed in forest green right up to their summits
We descend 100m, and at 9am we reach a gloomy clearing in the forest that goes by the name La Hamaca (‘The hammock’). Beyond it, the walking gets tougher as the forest continues to thin and the hot sun powers through. I glance up and see cliffs high above us on La Pelona’s eastern flank. They make me feel weary, but I know that as long as I keep plodding then our trail should come out above them.
Our guides finally catch us at 10.30 while I’m admiring the view back down to the grassy plain at Valle de Bao. The grasslands had felt huge when we camped beside them, but from high above I can see that this little splash of pale green is just a tiny pond in an ocean of forest.
I plod in hot sun up an increasingly rocky and barren trail. Then, suddenly, we pass behind a crag and I stumble into a place that I recognise from last year. A sign points behind me back down the Mata Grande trail. There is an abandoned hut lying just off the trail and I know that behind it there is a derelict watchtower that marks the summit of La Pelona.
Our guides are right behind us, but they leave us to visit the summit on our own. Last year, I remembered it as one of the less distinctive summits, though some of this was because a thin mist had accumulated and there was no possibility of seeing long distances. The summit is large and tree-clad, though the trees are widely spaced. Today the sky is clear, and between trunks I can glimpse the forested top of Pico Duarte rising about a mile away.
Without summit indicators, it would be impossible to decide what is the highest point of La Pelona’s summit. But thankfully, the place is marked if you know where to look. On a pile of rocks in an area that looks a likely candidate, surveyors of yesteryear have embedded metal discs confirming its prominence. More obviously, someone has erected a rickety old 20m watchtower that has long since started to fall apart. The final platform is missing completely, and its steps peter out a few metres short of the top.
Like last time, I have no intention of climbing this structure, that looks like it could collapse at any minute like a loosely tightened Meccano set. This time Edita decides to brave it, but it makes me nervous just watching her. She leapfrogs some of the missing steps and I plead with her not to go any further. She stays on the highest step for a few minutes. I can’t bear to watch, and find a comfortable cluster of rocks to sit down and eat my lunch.
But after I’ve eaten, I pluck up the courage to go up there myself. The wooden steps slope downwards slightly, and I clutch tightly to the metal girders on either side. Unlike Edita, I stop at the first missing step and come straight down again, job done. Given that Pico Duarte is only 3m higher than La Pelona, this step is almost certainly higher and therefore the highest safe(ish) step in the Caribbean.
Jade is waiting for us back on the trail and we follow him through the trees and down to the hut at Valle de Lilis where Roselio is waiting with the mules. This appears to be the smartest hut in the national park, but no one ever uses it because there is no water source.
We continue along the traverse between the two peaks on a trail of coarse red pebbles. The pine trees are young here, barely taller than a person, and I suspect this section may have been cleared by a recent forest fire. It takes only ten minutes to cross the traverse and reach the resting place beneath Pico Duarte’s summit. We arrive at midday. Wooden benches line the interior of a pitched-roofed shelter with open sides. These resting places don’t exist on the Mata Grande side, but there are many on the La Cienaga Route and they provide welcome relief from the sun.
As Roselio takes the mules down to La Comparticion, our final destination for today, Jade waits at the resting place, watching over our bags, while Edita and I walk up to the summit of Pico Duarte on our own. Not that our bags need watching over: once again, we have the summit entirely to ourselves. It takes us just half an hour to walk up through the scattered woodland to the highest point in the Caribbean.
Despite having been there just eleven months ago, Edita somehow manages to climb up the wrong pile of rocks. The trail ends at a signpost in front of a small crag. Edita is walking in front of me, and she disappears around the back of this crag without a word of explanation. Meanwhile I double back up the larger pile of rocks where a flagpole and a cast iron bust of Juan Pablo Duarte marks the summit of Pico Duarte.
As I start to take a summit video, I hear Edita shouting across from her perch.
‘I’m on the wrong summit!’
She comes across to join me and we take our summit photos. The sky has clouded over since we left La Pelona and the views are not as good as those we had last year. A grey mist masks the forested hills and ridges below us, though we can still look across Valle de Lilis to La Pelona, which we left an hour earlier.
We descend quickly to the resting place, where we find Jade sleeping. We wake him up and share our food. Edita tries to feed her apple to his horse, but it’s not interested.
It takes an hour to descend through forest to La Comparticion. The sun is overpowering and my descent is laboured. There is a nasty moment further down that I partly foresee. Like she did last year, Edita is tempted by some narrow shortcuts through the forest that are not as awkward underfoot as the stony main trail. Some of these paths head into dense undergrowth and you can’t always see the exit. I warn her to be selective about which ones to take, but she doesn’t heed my advice.
I see her take one narrow path where the terrain plunges off the left side of the mountain. The main path keeps to the right, and if Edita keeps going then she will end up far below La Comparticion in dense forest. Jade appears behind me on his horse, but my Spanish isn’t good enough to explain our predicament. Only when I call Edita’s name through the trees and she answers back some distance off the trail, does he realise what’s happened. We wait for her, and eventually she scrambles through the forest to rejoin the trail some way above us.
All is well, but I’m tiring by the time we approach La Comparticion. Jade rides on my heels, and when I stop to let him by, he refuses to go past. I walk the final mile wondering what a horse kick to the ankles will feel like.
We reach La Comparticion at 2.30, after an 8½-hour day. I know from past experience that it’s not a comfortable place to stay. There is one giant barn of a hut for trekkers, which has no furniture. It reminds me of school trips when we had to sleep on the floor of a sports hall. The kitchen tent is dark and dirty, and last year had just a single chair. I’m surprised to find the camp is empty, except for two park rangers who are stationed up here. We were expecting to find another group of Joel’s here. For some reason they have not arrived, and we have the barn to ourselves again. We pitch our tent inside it, in preference to the sloping dusty ground outside.
The dry weather means there is no water in camp. The watering hole is 50m below the huts, accessed by means of a deep cutting. There is no pool deep enough to swim in. The water source consists of a small puddle fed by a pipe. The latter is at shoulder height, which means we can use it is a shower, but it’s an icy cold one, like being spat on by a seal. It’s certainly my least pleasant wash of the trip.
Later that evening we have dinner round the campfire, like we did last year, with our guides and the two park rangers. Once again, Edita leads the conversation in her pidgin Spanish. Somehow, we are able to communicate. We learn that there are forest fires down in the valleys south of Pico Duarte, and the lack of rain means that they are hard to control.
With another long day ahead of us tomorrow, we agree to rise at 5.30 for a 6.30 start.
Day 5 – La Comparticion to La Cienaga
For the fourth morning in a row, my alarm beeps me awake in pitch darkness. This time I’m fast asleep and not ready to spring into action. Despite being deserted, it’s been a noisy campsite. There are many stray dogs here, and one was barking for long periods during the night. There are also many chickens. When the dog had lapsed into silence, a cock took over and started crowing long before dawn.
I snooze for fifteen minutes until my second alarm beeps at 5.30. I get dressed slowly, make a visit to the longdrop, then come back to finish my packing. I’m ready for breakfast at 6am, but Roselio is slower this morning. Eggs are eventually ready at 6.30 and we leave at 7am.
As the trail climbs lazily up a forested hillside to the pass of Descansa Alto de la Vela, around 250m higher than La Comparticion, I’m dismayed to see that two stray dogs have followed us out of camp. A third appears when Jade catches up on his horse. It’s stressful walking. Once again, Jade follows right on my heels. I swap with Edita, but she finds the horse’s footsteps just as unnerving. This time we stop and glare at Jade until he understands that we’re not going to move until he goes on ahead.
We reach the turn-off for the trail up La Rusilla at 8am. The hillside narrows to a saddle, and a faint path leads off the main trail into an area of tall grass. We arrived here last year in the late afternoon. I was sweating with fatigue after climbing around 1,600m from La Cienaga in sweltering heat. When I realised there was no trail to speak of, and we would need to ascend for 400m through dense forest to reach the summit of the Dominican Republic’s third-highest peak, I started laughing. Had it been the highest mountain in the Dominican Republic then there is no doubt that I would have plodded on, but the third highest? We turned around and continued down to La Comparticion. It proved to be a good decision: shortly after arriving in camp a heavy rainstorm enveloped the mountain.
But now it was 8am and we had the rest of the day to descend to Valle del Tetero. I also knew what to expect in terms of trail (or lack of it). This time we are determined to climb La Rusilla come what may.
Jade leaves his horse among the grassland on the saddle and threads his way between the trees. The trail is faint; he is much quicker than we are, and he rarely stops to wait. We frequently lose the trail in his pursuit, and find ourselves forging our own route between the trees. The terrain is rough underfoot with many piles of stones to scramble over. There isn’t much space between the trees and we have to be wary of skewering ourselves on pointed twigs sticking out of tree trunks from ankle to head height. We are both wearing shorts, and soon my legs are mantled in scratches.
We continue in this way for two hours with no improvement in the conditions. Sometimes I’m not even sure if Jade knows the way, but as long as we keep going upwards, there isn’t much that can go wrong.
At 10 o’clock we emerge into a clearing where a pile of flat rocks marks the top of La Rusilla (3,044m). Our position is confirmed by a metal survey marker embedded in the largest rock. There are forests as far as the eye can see. Although the summit clearing is bare of trees, one particularly annoying pine partially obscures the view of the twin summits of Pico Duarte and La Pelona to the east.
We share our food with Jade and stay on the summit for about 15 minutes. My legs are scratched to buggery, but I’m wearing zip-offs, so I put the bottom half of my trouser legs back on for the descent.
Finding the way back down will be much harder. It would be easy to get lost on the descent and end up on the wrong side of the mountain in dense forest. Happily Jade is able to keep to the trail. He races ahead and stops only occasionally when we start to lose sight of him. As a guide, he is not a patch on Roselio, who not only keeps a discrete distance on his horse but would certainly be waiting for us on foot.
I take it gingerly, wary of twisting an ankle or skewering myself on a dead branch. Twice I fall on slippery pine needles and on one occasion I put my foot through a hole. Happily I have a soft landing on each occasion. On one of these I land in a nice comfy sitting position and find it tempting to stay there, but Edita is waiting for me and I struggle to my feet.
We arrive among the grasses at the foot of the La Rusilla trail an hour after leaving the summit. I slowly descend to the main trail, but when I look back, there is no sign of Edita and Jade has mounted his horse and continued up the main trail. I sit down on a shady bank and wait. Ten minutes later, I’m still waiting, so I wander back. Edita has discovered an internet connection and is sitting on a log, answering her work emails.
We meet Roselio and Jade half an hour later at Aguita Fria, a campsite in an open area of hillside overlooking the western peaks of the Cordillera Central. As its name implies, there is a water source here and a covered resting post. Our guides are waiting in a shaded grassy area a few metres below the main trail. There is a direct route down to Valle del Tetero from here, where we intend to spend two nights in what Joel has described as the nicest campsite in the Cordillera Central.
But Roselio is looking very solemn when he greets us, and he has some bad news. He speaks slowly and my Spanish is only rudimentary, but I’m able to pick up some key phrases: incendio forestal (forest fire) and no llueve lo suficiente (there is not enough rain).
‘Fuego?’ I reply (fire).
‘Si.’ (yes).
‘No permiso?’ (not allowed).
Roselio shakes his head. ‘Lo siento’ (I’m sorry).
The reason we were the only people at La Comparticion last night was because the national park was closed yesterday due to the forest fires that are still raging. Without rain, the national park authorities are finding it nearly impossible to put them out. It is too dangerous for us to go to Valle del Tetero in the direction of the fires, and we have been asked to descend directly to La Cienaga.
Our six-day trek has been cut short by two days, but there isn’t much we can do. At least we’ve been able to complete the Mata Grande Route and ascend the three highest peaks. Joel’s other group got two hours up the La Cienaga Route when they were asked to turn back. I wonder if Roselio had some advanced warning of the park closure and this is why he hurried us through Valle de Bao without a rest day. If so, then it was a good decision.
Last year we raced down to La Cienaga on the final day of our trek, but I’m a little more weary after our ascent of La Rusilla. The trail is stony and difficult underfoot, and I plod slowly. We stop for lunch at the resting place of La Laguna, on a forested ridge a little below 2,000m. I filled my bottles here on our previous visit, but this time the water spout is dry. We share our remaining snacks with Roselio and Jade and embark on the descent.
The trail below La Laguna is lined with sunken holloways carved out of the forest. These are smooth and earthy like the surface of a dirt-bike track, and Edita is keen to run down them like we did last year. Running downhill is easier on the knees because you’re not trying to brake as hard, but it’s a lot more tiring on the lungs. I let Edita go ahead as I settle for a brisk walk.
It takes us 45 minutes to descend to the covered resting area at Alto de la Cotorra, at 1,750m, then another hour to descend to Los Tablones at 1,300m. The dusty holloways give way to rocky forest trail. By the time we reach Los Tablones, the bulk of the descent is behind us, but there is still another 4km of flat forest walking to the trailhead at the park entrance, which lies at 1,100m.
We finally arrive at 5pm after a 10-hour day. We cross the footbridge over the river and ascend the steps to the park entrance. There is a covered area with tables and chairs, and I slump down to rest. Roselio and Jade have been trotting behind us for the last 2km, but with Roselio leading, they kept their horses a good distance behind us and we barely noticed them. As they unload the horses and bring our bags around, Edita finds an internet connection and books an extra two nights at our hotel in Jarabacoa.
The taxi is waiting for us at the trailhead, so we say our goodbyes to our guides and depart. We had planned a longer trek, and it had been reduced to four days – only one day longer than our ascent by the standard route last year. But it had been much more satisfying to come in via a more remote route, and tick our third and final peak. We were happy enough.
You can see all my photos from the trek in my Dominican Republic – part 2 Flickr album.
