Backpacks full of ham, cheese, bread, and various other less noteworthy backpacking equipment, the four of us set out for Pico Pan de Azucàr in the Venezuelan Andes. Angelik (French girl), Ivan (Greek guy), Caitlin and I (silly Americans). We left from the town of La Culata, hiking into Parque Nacional Sierra La Culata, with the goal of summiting Pico Pan de Azucàr at 4700 meters. The ascent began quickly. The first steep climb sucked the air out of my lungs and slowed down the girls significantly, but eventually I found my rhythm and continued the hike uphill with only minor difficulty. The landscape was spectacular and our solitude was interrupted only when we passed a large group of firemen from Mêrida in training and a trio of local cow herders having lunch. 
We decided to join the herders in their lunch break at a primitive shelter known as El Refugio. As I scarfed down my ham and cheese sandwich, I watched in horror as Caitlin, after smelling the cheese and making the gagging face, fed hers to the herders dogs and Ivan followed suit. I was comforted by the fact that Angelik gobbled down her entire sandwich, commenting that it reminded her of the cheese in France. We marched on to our campsite at the base of the peak, passing through a green fertile valley filled with wild horses as we followed a small stream. We arrived at the basecamp and found the small stream connected to a waterfall rushing down from the mountain wall. The temperature began to drop rapidly and we quickly set up our tents. I had spent the last leg of the hike after lunch farting up a storm so I took this opportunity to relieve myself behind a rock. It didn’t help. My stomach began to cramp up violently and we all decided it might be best to rest before we started cooking dinner. When I lay down I found I had a headache to go along with the stomach cramps. A nap seemed like the best solution and I drifted to sleep with Caitlin at my side. I awoke to find Caitlin yelling at one of the wild horses who had decided our food was up for grabs. The horse managed to rip through the plastic and eat one of our packages of nasty cheese, before Caitlin scared it off. While the others started to prepare dinner, I lay in the tent, unable to shake my headache. Eventually it got too painful to bear. I stumbled out of the tent and doubled over, vomiting the remnants of my sandwich. Unsure whether it was the sandwich or the altitude I tried unsuccessfully to eat some pasta. After three bites of pasta and two sips of tea, I threw up again. This time, thanks to the detective skills of Ivan, we discovered I was only ralphing up bread. By this point the temperature had dropped to what could only be somewhere between 0 and 5 degrees celsius. I curled upin my sleeping bag wearing almost every layer of clothing I had brought and still shivering. Using a nalgene filled with hot water to soothe and warm my belly, I spent the night tossing and turning.
I awoke weak and groggy, having slept maybe a couple hours in total. But the nausea was gone and more signs were pointing toward food poisoning, not altitude sickness. Maybe a combination of the two. “Bad cheese, when eaten at a certain altitude causes explosive diarrhea and vomiting”, I imagined myself explaining to friends and family back home. In any case, though still feeling weak, I felt I should try and summit the peak. After all I had come all this way. We left our packs at the bottom, bringing only water and warm clothes with us, but as we started climbing I felt I was still weighed down by my pack. Ascending the steep climb to the base of the peak, I struggled to take deep breathes and felt like a walking zombie. 
Hoping to shorten the climb, Ivan led us through a steep canyon off the trail. We passed through forests of frailejons, an odd cactus-like plant that could grow taller than people and grew only at high elevations. It felt like we were passing through a Martian jungle, a scene right out of Red Planet. Eventually we reached a plateau and realized that our shortcut had set us up for a half mile vertical climb to reach the ridge of the peak. Angelik was having terrible stomach cramps at this point, saying she also felt on the verge of throwing up, and was sure she couldn’t go on. We decided that we would meet back on the ridge.
The climb felt like a ninety degree incline, and the sand-like terrain did not help matters. It felt like we were marching up a vertical sand dune. I reached the ridge, out of breathe, but in awe of the landscape. It was clear where the peak’s name, Pan de Azucâr, had come from. The other side of the ridge was a soft, sandy mountain like a mound of sugar. I looked back down to see the red speck of Angelik collapsed on the side of the mountain. 
The remaining hike to the peak was not difficult and required just a little climbing over jagged rocks. Most disconcerting was just the feeling of being completely exposed on the ridge, like the wind could blow us down either side of the mountain at any moment. Like most backpacking trips, the big payoff was the breathtaking view from the peak and the feeling that we were completely alone for miles. Photos never do spectacular views like this in the mountains justice and words really can’t either. As I gazed between jagged mountain peaks in the distance, lakes, and valleys, the struggle to make it here faded in my memory and seemed inconsequential. This feeling has always drawn me back to the mountains and back-country again and again: the feeling of discovering a lost landscape. A moment in time where nature seems to be showing off her beauty just for my friends and I. I tipped my cap to her and we started our descent. We savored the fruits of our labor for all of fifteen minutes before time and the wind told us it was time to go. The weather was starting to turn sour and by the time we reached Angelik and the ridge my hands were numb from the cold. Getting down the peak was actually trickier than getting up, although watching Ivan run down so as not to lose his momentum, you never would have guessed it. Angelik admitted that she was having diarrhea the same color as the cheese from the day before. I wondered if the horse from the previous evening was having the same problem. On our hike back she had to stop twice more and we all agreed that it must have been the cheese. Angelik and I were the only ones (besides the horse) who had eaten it and the only ones who got sick. While this may be a convenient way of blaming food and not altitude, it seems the most logical in my mind. We hiked along tired, but in good spirits, planning our verbal assault on the supermarket that sold us the funky cheese (in the end we settled on warning the cashier). All and all, despite the best efforts of the alti-cheese, 75 percent of the group defeated Pico Pan de Azucàr. That’s no “A” but, hey, at least we passed.
- Jake
