author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
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. I pick up the story as we leave our campsite for the main ascent.
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With Edita working in Haiti for a second year, we returned to the Dominican Republic to explore its mountains for a second time. Last year we climbed its highest mountain, Pico Duarte, by its quickest and easiest trail, the La Cienaga Route. This year, we opted for the remoter Mata Grande trail.
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Situated at a confluence of the Bhote Khosi, Trisuli and Langtang rivers at the end of the road from Kathmandu, Syaphru Besi was the gateway to the Langtang trek, Tamang Heritage Trail, and pilgrimage route to Mt Kailash in Tibet. That was until last month.
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If you lived a comfy life at the park entrance, why would you follow a pair of strangers for three days up 2,000m of mountain and back down again? That’s precisely what a dog did when we climbed Pico Duarte last year. Here’s Karim the dog’s ascent video. If you look closely enough, you may just catch glimpses of Edita and myself in some of it too.
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Ever since an incident in the Italian Apennines, the promise of ladders on a hiking route has made me nervous. As we approached the 11 ladders of the Grand Balcon Sud on the Tour du Mont Blanc, I wondered: would they be like the cakewalk on Everest or the sphincter ticklers on Corno Piccolo?
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Without requiring technical skills, crampons or a down-suit to fend off the biting cold, Mont Blanc trekkers cover more cumulative metres of altitude than Everest climbers. So my guidebook says about the TMB, but how did did we find it, and was it really like climbing Everest?
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This is the second of two posts about our recent visit to the mountainous island of Hispaniola. In the first post, I introduced you to the Dominican Republic, and how we came to trek there. In this post, I describe our assault on Pico Duarte (3,101m), La Pelona (3,095m) and La Rusilla (3,040m), the three highest mountains in the Caribbean.
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A few years ago, I wrote a blog post to explain that from that moment on I would aim to climb more obscure mountains that hardly anyone writes about. But how to decide which unusual peaks to climb? Well, that was the easy the bit. I would ‘go with the flow’.
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There is a moment in your life when you start reminding yourself of your dad. For me that happened earlier this month while I was editing Edita’s videos of myself trekking the GR20. It wasn’t a pleasant realisation.
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It’s that special time of year when you get to see more of my amazing videos. A full eighteen months ago, Edita and I had the great pleasure of trekking the GR20, the infamous long-distance trail along the spine of the mountainous island of Corsica.
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