The Devil´s House Made My Butt Numb

Last weekend I spent an amazing time with 10 friends in Pucon. We rented a house, relaxed, partied, and most importantly...climbed a volcano. For my first volcano scaling experience, I was not disappointed!

Pucon, located in the Lakes District about 10 hours south of Santiago, is the extreme sports capital of Chile. With several national parks at the doorstep it is situated perfectly for a huge variety of excursions from horseback riding to rafting to zip-lining.



Carly and I on the ski lift, jumping a good amount of hiking with a short ride. Jacob posing once we´d made our way into the snow.

The hike was about four hours. The worst part was the crampons - a devilish invention making it easy to walk on icy snow but hard to actually lift your feet due to the wonderful weight of the things.



Villarrica means house of the devil in Mapundunge, the native Mapuche language. It is an active volcano under 10,000 feet. It largest recent eruption was in 1971, when it took out a local town and killed many people. They said that just a month earlier it was much more active and was firing some lava.



Alex checking out the view into the crater. It was possible to walk around the entire cone, but we stayed relatively close. The one time I tried to be a little daring and climb and interesting area they blew the whistle on me - literally. So I quickly came down.

We hit it at just about the worst time to climb the volcano because there was least amount of snow. Although that sounds good, and means less time wearing crampons, the ashy volcanic rock is horrible to walk on because every step involves losing a little ground as your feet slide in. With crampons you don´t lose any ground in the snow.



Rosalyn´s glasses served well. The intoxicating sulphur smells emanating from the orifice were horrible. We were coughing, hacking, covering our noses, etc. A strong gust of wind, of which there were many, seemed deadly. Unfortunately we failed to see lava, but its evidence was everywhere. Including this little dried river of it next to Jacob on the way down!



The descent was really hard until the finally just let us slide. We had to walk most of the super-steep part and then enjoy the rest.



This was one of the lesser slides toward the bottom of the mountain. The guides impressively skied down on their shoes. I tried. I fell. And my ass was honestly quite numb for a long time afterward.