My First Backpacking(ish) Trip

How Backpacking Cerro Chirripó in Costa Rica Changed My Whole Dang Life

It was autumn, 2018. My final year of college. Somewhere along the way, I’d realized that I was on track to graduate a semester early, and I wasn’t prepared for that, so I leapt at the opportunity to study abroad. I landed on a program in Costa Rica studying ecological resilience – a program far outside the scope of my special education and English literature majors. All I knew was that I wanted to be outside more. I had barely begun my hiking journey, but I was hooked on it and wanted to combine my piquing interests of sustainability and spending time outdoors.

Academically, the program kicked my butt; if you can believe it, lesson plans and literature-based essays did not prepare me very well for lab reports. It was the longest amount of time I’d spent outside of Ohio by far, and I was way out of my element. Fortunately, I’m decent at making friends, and I made some great ones.

For our week-long fall break, I wasn’t sure which group of friends to join. Everybody was making plans, and I was content to listen to what every plan had to offer before deciding what mine would be. One of the plans was to hike “the second tallest peak in Costa Rica.” Even with my limited hiking experience, my question was… why not the tallest? (I’m lucky that the highest peaks in Costa Rica are relatively low compared to some other mountains in Central and South America, because I would not have been even remotely prepared to conquer those.)

So, we set off to hike Cerro Chirripó, the tallest mountain in Costa Rica.

This girl had absolutely no idea what she was getting herself into.

Before we took a bus to the town of San Gerardo, we had to reserve permits from the national park office to hike that trail and to sleep at the basecamp near the summit. For my first “backpacking” trip, I was lucky that tent camping was prohibited, and we were required to sleep in the established building. I didn’t have a sleeping bag, much less a tent. I didn’t even have a real trekking backpack; I was borrowing my cousin’s travel backpack, meant for flights (perhaps more equipped for the other kind of backpacking). My other friends all had legit trekking backpacks. And sleeping bags. And backpacking experience.

I knew literally nothing about hiking meaningful distances or elevations. Up until that point, my longest hike may have been 5 miles, maybe a little more. This one was 24 miles with over 9,000 feet of elevation gain, broken up into 3 days of hiking.

Toward the end of Day 1 of 3

The first day was 9 miles – already the longest distance I’d hiked in a single day, compounded with probably 7 or 8,000 feet of vertical gain. In a way, I’m glad I went into the experience knowing nothing about how difficult this kind of hike would be. I was by far the slowest in our  group of four young women, even though I was a regular runner at the time, but it didn’t bother me to be “bad” at hiking; that’s how it is at the beginning of any activity. We’d started the hike before sunrise, so I didn’t see how rocky and vertical the first few miles were. I didn’t have enough knowledge to know that it should have intimidated me. To me, it was just a hill to climb. I think if I were to go back and do it now, it would scare me more than it did then.

When we got to Crestone Basecamp, we ate our measly sandwiches and bought some hot agua dulce from the vendor. We could have prepaid for more substantial meals to be portered up, but we were relatively poor college kids, so we subsisted on sandwiches, trail mix, and cereal for most of the week. When we picked out our bunks, everybody else laid their comfortable and warm sleeping bags on their mattresses; I just had the two thin blankets provided by the basecamp to try to warm up and dry off from the cloud forest rain. At some point in the night, the others must have noticed that I wasn’t sleeping, because I remember them donating their blankets to me; their sleeping bags were insulated enough to keep them warm. If you can believe, I didn’t sleep very well. How was I supposed to know?

The second day, we woke up well before daylight to try to get to the summit for sunrise. We miscalculated by at least an hour, but it was incredible to watch the landscape become visible, first in hazy blues and purples, then in dazzling shades of gold and red. I’d never experienced that before, and I was enamored by it. It was also the first time I’d experienced real fear of nature. It had thunderstormed a few hours earlier, and my friends had to teach me the basics of above-tree line lightning safety before we ventured out into the dark. We also saw fresh puma prints with our headlamps, and that was enough to give all of us goosebumps. We weren’t the only group staying at the basecamp, but we were the only ones getting such an early start. We’d almost considered turning back, and I’m so glad we didn’t.

That day, I fell in love with the backcountry. I didn’t even care that I was out of breath (partially from the strenuous hiking, partially from the altitude; Cerro Chirripó sits at 12,533 ft above sea level). I had never felt the joy of being so tired and dirty in the mountains. I had never known the beauty of isolated alpine lakes. I had never experienced the fire of reaching a goal that felt impossible and yelling out a feral scream. The other women celebrated the accomplishment for me as much as they did for themselves. I couldn’t have made it to the summit without their constant encouragement, their words of advice, and their patience.

The third day was a simple downhill 9 miles back to San Gerardo. Two of the women had hiked back the previous day, but two of us stayed to do some extra hiking around the area. It ended up raining, and we were too tired and cold to do much more than a couple flat miles around Crestone, but we enjoyed playing cards and drinking agua dulce to our hearts’ content. The remaining hike would have been easier, but my friend’s hiking boots had given her some gnarly blisters. When we got to the road, she was limping so badly, she almost took her boot off to hike the gravel road partially barefoot. A very kind man happened to drive by and offered to drive us the remaining stretch down to the town; incidentally, I think this event is also what made me fall in love with hitchhiking.

That trek changed everything for me. I don’t think I’d be the person I am now, the hiker I am now, without this exact trip, this exact hike. Cerro Chirripó was far and away the hardest hike I’d ever done up until that point. Thousands of backpacked miles later, I can no longer say that that’s true.

What if I’d gone surfing in Jacó instead?

I am forever and ever grateful for that fateful fall break and the women who supported me up the mountain the entire way.

L to R: Sadie, Daisy, me, Kiley; the best squad for my first trek!