I had come to Pucón specifically to climb the 2850m high Volcán Villarrica, one of the prime things to do in the Chilean Lake District. There are several volcanoes in the Lake District you can climb, I think I chose this one because you don’t have to climb down again. No, you’re not stuck at the top forever until a helicopter comes to your rescue, you slide down on a sort of luge track. That sounded like great fun as well as meaning I didn’t have to descend 1000m on foot.
I had chosen the tour company Sur Explora to do the ascent with. There are a myriad of companies in Pucón that you can climb with, because you have to climb the volcano with a qualified guide. But how did you know how to choose the right one? For me, it wasn’t about money, within reason. Saving £10 or £20 wasn’t a priority. It was all very well going with the cheapest company and then not getting to the top. Then you’d completely wasted your money. The best I could afford, that was my mantra.
Years ago in New Zealand when I wanted to do a tandem hang-glide, I was looking at leaflets in tourist information and found someone who was a former world champion that could take me. The girl at tourist information was trying to persuade me to go with someone else because it would save me £7. An extra £7 to fly with a former world champion seemed like a bargain to me. They were so used to backpackers trying to save every penny where they could, they didn’t consider that anyone would be willing to pay more than they had to. But I had decided that if a former world champion was there to take me hang gliding (whatever you had to do to be a world champion hang glider, I had no idea) then it wasn’t worth worrying about £7.
I could have asked my bed and breakfast host for a recommendation because it turned out that Alain used to be head of tourism in Pucón and could recommend plenty of good tour operators. He actually had Sur Explora on his list, but he still asked me about my experience with them afterwards and I advised him that he should definitely keep them on his list as a top recommendation. I was very impressed with them.
However, I read a review on Trip Advisor that wasn’t directly about Sur Explora but about climbing Villarrica in general, a British man in his 50s who recommended Sur Explora for their patient and encouraging guides and said that there were other companies who had a faster pace that were sending people back down the mountain because they were too slow. But he made it to the top. And he said he wouldn’t have done it without them. That was good enough for me.
The booking process was quite challenging. I contacted them on Facebook and then on WhatsApp in Spanish and then sent the form they needed twice to make the booking. In the end, none of that would have been necessary, as I could have simply gone into the office the evening before and made a reservation. But I didn’t know that. And if I could make a reservation, I was going to, just to make sure.
I went into the office and parted with £90 to do the climb the next day. I tried on 2 pairs of boots. One pair was slightly larger, but they were also very padded and I had a feeling I would need that. As comfortable as they were, they were hurting me by the end of the day, so I was pleased that I had chosen the more padded ones.
It was going to be an early start, I had to be at the office at 6am, which meant leaving the bed and breakfast, which was further away from Pucón than I expected, just after 5.30am. Alain said he would leave breakfast in the fridge for me, all I could manage at that time of the morning was a small piece of bread and some cherries, but I made cheese sandwiches out of the bread and cheese left over to take with me on the climb as I was told I would need to take some food and at least 2 litres of water. I could have easily managed with one litre of water and significantly lightened my load. Climbing the mountain was hard enough, but climbing it with a 10kg rucksack on my back made it a lot harder.
Apart from the guides, I was the only one around at the office at 6am. I wondered why I’d had to get there so early when they were busy going and picking up two bus loads of people and all I had to do was put my shoes on and transfer stuff from my rucksack into the prepared one with equipment needed for the climb. Despite the fact that there were only supposed to be 3 of us climbing today, a lot more bags had been prepared. I wondered if they were late reservations or if they were doing something else since there were some mountain bikes in the shop.
It turned out we were all climbing. The Colombian man and his son from yesterday, and a Brazilian woman, Cristina and her son, Rafael. There was also a bunch of people from Israel, I never counted, maybe there were 6 or 8 of them. They were, like all Israelis I’ve ever come across, extremely talkative. On the climb, I didn’t know how they had the breath to talk as well as walk.
It seemed a very short drive into the National Park, but that was because I was nervous about the climb and keen to put it off for as long as possible. We passed the ski lift which didn’t appear to be working. That meant an extra hour of climbing if the chair lift was out of order. However, there was a second chair lift, which was the one we needed and that was thankfully working.
The chair lift took you 400m or so up the volcano and saved you walking for another hour. It cost £10 to use the chair lift which was a very basic one. It was the first one I’d been on which didn’t have a barrier coming down over you. Apparently it was impossible to fall out of it. I wasn’t convinced, but thought if I kept leaning back and held on tight, I should be all right. No one else was falling out of it!
Some people felt like it was cheating to take the chair lift. I had no such thoughts. Even without the chair lift you weren’t climbing from the bottom. I was going to be climbing 1000m to the top of this volcano, I was prepared to take all the help I could get. Even with the help of the chair lift, I was far from convinced I was going to make it to the top, so I might as well.
As I was on my own, I rode up the chair lift with one of the guides. I confided in him that I was nervous about the climb and he told me not to be, it was easy. I can tell you now, it was not easy. Not for me. But it also wasn’t overwhelmingly difficult. With some help and encouragement I was able to make it, so I think it is within the limits of most, because I am pretty useless. But you do need the right guide to help you if, like me, you are pretty useless.
When we got the chair lift, it was the usual story, before starting our ascent, I needed the loo. No toilets anywhere. I thought at the chair lift there might be some very basic facilities. But no. Me and a couple of the Israeli lasses were reduced to dropping our drawers in a ditch, supposedly out of sight, in reality we could see the chair lift from where we were, but there was nothing else for it. After that, I was set for the day, my body needed the water I drank far too much to have to expel any on my ascent.
The ride up in the chair lift wasn’t too bad, even though I was still uneasy about there being no barrier between me and the ground. When I got to the top, I was grabbed and pushed to the top of the stairs to stop me being hit from the chair lift coming back round again. I asked if we’d be getting the chair lift down. Apparently not. We were sliding down instead. I asked if most people took the chair lift on the ascent. The guide said that 90% of people did and that could mean the difference between making it to the summit or not. I was hoping it would make enough of a difference for me.
We got kitted up. No need for crampons as the snow was quite soft, just an ice axe. We were to stab the ice axe into the mountain side as we went up. It was going to take about 4 hours and it was nearly all on snow. I was surprised. I suppose if I’d thought about it logically, how were we going to slide down if there was no snow? So surely it stood to reason we’d have to climb on snow? But that hadn’t really occurred to me. Maybe I’d thought that we climbed up one side of the mountain with no snow and slid down another side with snow. I’m not sure. Whatever I’d thought, the reality was, this was like mountaineering.
I’d climbed Snowdon before in Wales, over 3 years earlier with my niece and nephew, Megan and Dylan, the Rhyd Ddu Path, which goes along the ridge. It was summer, the conditions were pretty good and there wasn’t any snow. We didn’t need any special equipment, not even hiking poles.
This was different. This was the first guide cutting steps into the snow, the second guide behind him making them more prominent and me in third place gingerly following in his footsteps. I was told to relax, trust my boots, trust the snow, I wasn’t going to slip. The snow and the boots weren’t the problem. My balance was. After a while I was given a hiking pole for my other hand so that I had something to balance me out and that made it a lot easier. I was also told to walk more upright as I had this tendency to lean forward and that helped too. It meant that my breathing was easier and my muscles didn’t hurt as much. I don’t think I walked completely upright, but I was certainly maintaining a better posture than I had been before.
I got quite adept at swapping my ice axe and my hiking pole to opposite hands every time we turned a corner. Basically we were zigzagging up the mountain on the snow. We did about 45 minutes and then stopped for 5 minutes. It was still another 3 hours or more to the top. We walked further, stopped for another 15 minutes and then it was around an hour and a half to get to the top.
I had very conflicting emotions going on in my head while I was mountaineering. I had never been supremely confident about making it to the top, but I still wanted to try. While I was climbing on the ice steps up the volcano I kept thinking I wasn’t going to make it, but at the same time I was telling myself I really wanted to reach the summit and that just one more step got me closer to the top. Just one more step. One more step.
It was quite disheartening when I was telling myself that and I could see loads of people way above me zigzagging up the mountain. It looked a long way. Could my muscles take it? It was made even more difficult by the fact I was carrying this extremely heavy rucksack on my back. It was practically crippling.
But I was determined. And additionally, and probably more importantly, the guides and the other climbers in my group were all very encouraging. Cristina, the lady from Brazil, kept telling me I was doing really well. When I heard it was only about an hour and 20 minutes left to get to the top, I realised I was more than halfway there now, I had almost made it. I would be mad to turn back now. The cut off point for reaching the volcano summit was 2pm and it was only about half past eleven, so we had plenty of time.
We made it almost to the summit and was told it was just another 20 minutes and we would be at the top. This was the time to take off the rucksacks and just use the ice axe and pole to make that final push to the summit. There was no way I was giving up now. I was always just behind one of the guides. They knew I was the one who was struggling with this climb more than anyone else in the group and they were looking after me.
Sur Explora pride themselves in getting people to the top of the volcano that other tour companies would send down the mountain after half an hour. I may not have had much confidence in getting to the summit, but the guides and the man in the office all said I would make it. Besides which, I was keeping reasonable pace. I wasn’t massively slowing everyone else down. I was generally just behind the guide, who obviously thought the pace was fast enough or he would have speeded up.
There wasn’t as much ice on this final push to the summit. We were hiking on lava. Some of it was quite difficult, but the guide was always there to help me. And I made it!
At 12.49pm I was at the 2850 metre summit of Volcán Villarrica!
And with over an hour to spare before the cut off time. Easy! No it wasn’t, but you know what I mean.
We walked to see into the crater. This is an active volcano that is constantly spitting and spluttering and throwing rocks and lava into the air. It was doing that while I was up there.
I have been on White Island in New Zealand where recently people tragically lost their lives in an eruption. I knew it was the most active volcano in New Zealand when I went there in 2002 and I can vaguely recall looking into the crater. I remember the boat ride across to White Island was really rough and everyone being really sick on the boat going over there, but once on the island, it was steps to the summit.
Volcán Villarrica was something I will remember more vividly, because of the effort I put in to climb it. 1000 metres of mountaineering with an ice axe for 4 hours with a 10kg rucksack on my back really made me feel like I deserved to see into that crater.
I watched it spit and splutter and throw rocks into the air. This was nature at its most powerful and dangerous. An active volcano telling everyone it was very much alive. It was an exhilarating feeling being up there, right next to the crater.
Cristina congratulated me. She said my determination was inspiring and I had done really well. I was happy to have got to the top, it was a definite achievement. Climbing a mountain and a volcano all in one. This was the closest I was ever going to get to climbing Everest. This would do. This could be my Everest.
I went over to the look at the other side of the summit where there were magnificent views of the surrounding volcanoes and valleys. One of the volcanoes was actually higher than Villarrica. The views from the summit were amazing wherever you looked. You didn’t have to look into the crater to appreciate the wonder of nature. The distant volcanoes, valleys, lakes and mountains were equally as beautiful, although not as scary!
Getting down from the summit back to our rucksacks was quite a challenge. Getting to the top is one thing, but if the guides get you up there, they also have to get you back down again. I was at the front as usual getting a helping hand from the guide.
Then it was time to get our equipment on for the slide down. Waterproof trousers, waterproof jacket, nappy(!) (it was just an extra piece of waterproof fabric for more protection as you slid down the mountain) and a plastic tray to sit on to make you go faster.
We got our instructions on how to descend. The Israelis weren’t paying much attention, but seemed to have no trouble. I was hanging onto every word and trying to take the instructions in and I still got it hopelessly wrong. Luckily we had a practice first.
I had the rucksack on my back, so this was weighing me down again and my natural instinct was to lean backwards instead of forwards, even though I tried not to. This meant I went careering out of control and also hadn’t quite grasped how to use the ice axe to slow me down either. It was the fastest I went down the mountain all day!
Thankfully, I didn’t end up at the bottom like a cartoon snowball, eventually you hit an uphill part and that ends your run.
After that incident, it was decided I couldn’t be trusted to go down the mountain on my own and I was assigned my own personal guide to accompany me and get me down in one piece.
They have carved out these luge runs for you to slide down. At first I went behind the guide so he could act as my brake, and then when I got the hang of the sliding technique and the braking, I went too far the other way and kept stopping, so the guide was then behind me and if I stopped, he could push me from behind, although I did get myself moving as well. Usually when we hit an uphill spot I wouldn’t have enough momentum to carry me over it.
Those round plastic trays we had to sit on were extremely uncomfortable and I accumulated loads of snow as I went down which also slowed me down. Sliding down a mountain on a luge run is more difficult than you would imagine. Or maybe I’m just hopeless.
There were spots where we couldn’t slide and I’m not quite sure how at one point I managed to get us way off course. The guide decided we would unofficially slide down in a sort of train where he’d be in front and I’d have my legs round him so we didn’t have to walk to the actual luge run I’d managed to get us so far away from. That was terrifying. I kept thinking at any moment we were going to fly off the side of the volcano.
The problem was, when I walked I kept falling over in the snow. I think my muscles had finally had enough and were making a protest about doing any more walking. My balance was now also shot. But eventually we made it to the bottom of the luge run and then had to walk back the rest of the way. There wasn’t much snow after that, it was mainly volcanic sand which wasn’t too difficult to walk on and the final part was totally flat.
I’m not sure how long everyone else had been waiting when we got back to the car park where the van was parked, but they all gave me a cheer that I’d made it and all the guides congratulated me and gave me a hug. Everyone had been so friendly and supportive of this old lady who decided she wanted to climb a volcano.
The journey back to Pucón seemed to take forever, when on the way it had taken no time at all, but eventually we were back in Pucón. The guy at the office said he told me I would make it.I really can’t thank the staff at Sur Explora, both guides and office staff, and my fellow climbers, enough for their patience and support on my climb to the summit of Volcan Villarrica. If anyone is in the Chilean Lake District and is considering climbing Volcan Villarrica, I thoroughly recommend Sur Explora to do it with, especially if, like me, you’re not as young and fit as you used to be!
I would say, you do need a certain level of fitness to do this. I do quite a lot of walking in my normal life and I try and do bits and pieces of other exercise too like dancing and Pilates. I’ve climbed Snowdon in Wales and done long day hikes in mountainous National Parks in Canada and the States. If your idea of exercise is walking from the sofa to the fridge and you’re out of puff climbing the stairs, attempting this is not a good idea. But you don’t have to be Bear Grylls to do this either.
In addition, I was expecting my muscles to be really sore the next day. Cristina suggested we do an 18km hike the next day. She said it was an easy hike, but I didn’t think I’d be up to 18km after climbing a volcano with an ice axe today, so we went and soaked in some local hot spring pools the next day instead. However, my muscles weren’t hurting anywhere near as badly as I was expecting.
I did a Via Ferrata course in Quebec in Canada in 2018 and it was so hard on my leg muscles I couldn’t sit down for several days. Every time I tried to sit on a chair or get into the car I was in agony.
I had no such problems the day after climbing Villarrica. A bit of backache, probably from carrying the heavy rucksack, but no muscle soreness in my legs. I could have done that waterfall hike in Villarrica National Park the next day after all!
I travelled to the Chilean Lake District during the first week of January 2020.
I climbed Villarrica volcano with Sur Explora who are based in Pucon, the adventure capital of the Chilean Lake District. They don’t have a website but they are on Facebook. You can contact them through Facebook or call into their offices in the centre of Pucon.
I stayed at Maison Nomade, a bed and breakfast a few kilometres from the centre of Pucon. You can book with them directly through their website.
Pucon is in the Chilean Lake District. I drove from Puerto Montt Airport which is around 340km and approximately a 4 hour drive. It is also possible to fly to Temuco Airport which is approximately 90km from Pucon and a 90 minute drive.
I flew to Puerto Montt from Santiago with LATAM Airlines. The flight takes approximately 1 hour 45 minutes.
Read the three part series about my hike on the W Trek in Torres del Paine
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Days 1 & 2
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Days 3 & 4
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Day 5 & Glacier Grey
Read my experiences driving the wild, rugged and remote Carretera Austral.
My Tips for Driving the Carretera Austral
Driving South on the Carretera Austral
Read about more of my adventures in Chile
Rafting and Canyoning in Futaleufu
If you would like to read about some of my other adventure activities on previous travels there are some links below.
Canada: Quebec – Waterfalls, Via Ferrata and A Religious Theme Park
Greenland: Viewing the Aurora Borealis by Snowmobile