Dylan writes:
On Christmas Eve, I had one of my horrible, periodic allergy attacks, and spent the evening reading in our room while Laura went to church with the family. She indicated it wasn't all that different from the usual church, except for a handful of skits by the kids, and that it was longer than usual. Then, for the rest of the night, the town popped and banged with firecracker explosions. No fireworks, mind you - nothing to look at - just a lot of sudden loud noises.
The next morning we met up with Nina N-----, Her daughters Nina B---- and A--- G-------, and B----'s 10-year-old son G-----, to climb El Pital from their house. We've been up El Pital several times, but each time from Rio Chiquita, a canton on the eastern ridge. That route is a dirt road, easy hiking, and heavily trafficked. We have to bus about 10 kilometers to Rio Chiquito, which takes about 45 minutes.
On Christmas day, however, the busses don't run. Further, we wanted to learn the route from El Centro, which is at the base of the north-western face of El Pital. Everyone we spoke with who was over the age of forty claimed to have done it once, twenty or more years ago. Nobody we know under the age of twenty had ever done it. We had also heard that John & Kathy, the volunteers who liver here before Will, had made an unsuccessful attempt or two to find this route. So with Nina N----'s 20-year-old memories as our guide, off we went.
In true Salvo-style, we left an hour and a half late, around 9:15. Laura and I had plans to attend a first communion at 3:00 in Las Pilas, a half-hour walk from our house. We also needed time to change and shower, so we had a deadline to return around 2:00, and a turn-around time of 11:30. Everyone we asked said it was a 2 hour walk, so we should have had just enough time to go up, have a 20 minute lunch, and come back.
Well, we made it nearly to the top and we found a clearing with three possible trails. For 20 minutes we followed the one that was likely to lead us around the east side of the peak to join up with the Rio Chiquito road. It paralleled some "poly-ducto," black ABS piping used for irrigation, for several hundred meters, and then petered out. It was about 11:30, so we stopped there and had lunch and decided to head back. We planned to return on New Year's Day for another attempt.
On the way down, however, we must have taken a wrong turn, because we found ourselves descending a steep ridge too far to the west. Keep in mind, the summit of El Pital is deep in a Salvadoran cloud forest, damp and mossy and cool, with pines and cypresses and orchids. Slipping and sliding on the steep hillside, and scrambling over down trees, and narrow paths over precipitous mudslides. Eventually we could hear a brook down below us on our left, to the west. Shortly thereafter we stumbled across a concrete border marker, indicating that we were on the border of Honduras, and the creek to our left was the headwater of the Rio Sumpul. Our canton is on the Sumpul several kilometers downstream, so we knew not to cross the river, but to follow it down. Eventually we found another outcropping of poly-ducto, and we determined that we should follow that, because it would lead out to a house or an irrigation system in a cabbage patch. The latter was correct, and we found ourselves out in a clearing several kilometers to the west of home. We cut north and east, down and right, until we encountered a Honduran man looking for his cows, who told us that we were in "Sumpul," which is not the name of any canton or caserio. We asked if he knew a path or road to El Centro; he looked puzzled, told us that Honduras was to the left, and we should go "alla, abajo" (there, below), which is one of the two different directions that exist in El Salvador (the other is alla, arriba; there, above).
To make a long story short, we hiked over hill and dale, through cabbages and blackberry thickets, and got home just on time. We arrived at church in clean clothes and with deodorant covering the sweat, five minutes before our friend whose daughter was having her first communion (she was, typically, a half-hour late). The church was packed, and I sat outside on the retaining wall with all of the apathetic young men; Laura pushed her way in with the women and stood on tired feet through a 1 1/2 hour ceremony. We had a lovely dinner of Carne Asada with the family, returned home and promptly fell asleep.
Two days later we did it all again. Our friend Katherine, a PCV in La Palma came up the 26th to see our site and she spent the night. On the 27th we set out to climb Pital by the same route. We left at 8:30, and she had to get back by 4:00 to catch the last bus back to La Palma. We made it to the clearing with the three trails around 10:00, and this time we went right. For 200 meters it was wide and clear, following some poly-ducto. It began to narrow, until we found ourselves passing over steep muddy precipices on narrow, slippery trails. We came out to a creek pouring through a cave formed by some fallen boulders. The clouds had socked us in, and everything was dripping and magical. I scrambled up through the underbrush to see if I could locate any kind of trail, but nothing was availing, and there were spots neither Laura nor Katherine wanted to pass. A tree near the creek was marked with red paint, so I suspected it was the Sumpul again, just a little higher than before, and that we had drifted, once again, too far to the west.
So we went back to the clearing and had lunch. We determined that we had another half-hour to go forward, so we tried the third path. This one, the middle one, was much fainter than the other two, and in fact disappeared for 20 feet or so, which is why we hadn't taken it the first two tries. You have to understand, these are not maintained recreational trails. They exist for locals to get to their cabbage patches, to collect firewood, and at the higher altitude, to lay and maintain poly-ducto to supply household and agricultural water. The fact that the path (probably) continues on to the top of the mountain past the source of the water is just a function of the fact that some people naturally have the need to "get to the top." But since those people are far fewer than the ones who come up there for work, the last stretch of trail is hardly used. Remember, nobody we know had been up that way more than once, and not for twenty years.
So we followed the third path up the ridge until it split several times into faint paths. The main path appeared to drop off the ridge and pass east around a small peak; multiple faint paths bushwhacked up the hillside. We stayed on the main path and came out to a clearing where I could clearly see that the eastern ridge descending to Rio Chiquito was still a good 1/2 hour ahead. At that point we had to turn back, and we returned without incident and far earlier than we had expected.
The next day our boss, the Assistant Country Director of PC El Salvador, brought his two daughters up to see our site and climb El Pital. We apparently graduated from college with his elder daughter who looked familiar but we didn't know her. Anyhow, we rode in the white Peace Corps SUV up the Rio Chiquito road and sat in the sun eating pupusas and carne asada.
We're making a third attempt on New Year's Day. This time I'm pretty sure we'll make it, since our return deadline will be much later, and I'm confident we know the route. Once we know it, this will be a half-day hike for me to do solo. Wish us luck.
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