This past weekend I climbed Pico Paraná, the tallest point in southern Brazil and the 11th tallest peak in the entire nation. At 1,877 meters (6,158 feet) it’s about the same height as Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.
I was the only foreigner in a group of five hiking with Lucas Kenji of the start-up adventure agency Get Out. I met Lucas through the hostel where I’ve been staying for the past few weeks in the city of Curitiba. He posted a bunch of his photos from the two-day overnight trek onto Facebook, which you can see here.
The trailhead is only a 30-minute drive outside of Paraná’s state capital, but it’s down an unmarked dirt road that meanders several miles into the Serra do Mar range. If a mountain of this size and beauty was so close outside any US city it’d surely be overrun with hikers every weekend — and the signage would be much more clear! But hiking isn’t nearly as popular in Brazil.
We were on the trail by about 8:30am Saturday morning along with several dozen others. The terrain varied from well-packed dirt paths to thick brush that scraped at my legs and arms to big boulders that required scrambling up and over.
After about seven hours (and with plenty of water stops and breaks so our crew could stick together) we arrived to our camp just below the peak.
We pitched tents on a semi-level spot, and then set off for the summit about an hour away.
Parts of this last section were up sheer cliff faces that would have normally required a roping belay but for metal rails bolted into the rock that we could grab.
A shiver ran up my legs as I scrambled up to the plateau-like summit.
On all sides of me the mountain plummeted thousands of feet into a bed of clouds, making it feel like we were so much higher than just 6,000 feet! The clouds turned blue as the sun set below the horizon, giving way to a sea of stars overhead. The thick Milky Way carved through the black night sky.
We descended from the peak in the dark, our headlamps lighting the steep path down. At one point I lost the trail and started to walk straight off the cliff, only realizing it as I stepped forward and grabbed the shrubs at my sides to pull myself back. We doubled back and found the path back to the camp site. I stripped naked and sprinkled water over my body to wash off some of the day’s sweat and grime. The air was chilly with a slight wind, and I bundled up in my pants, flannel shirt, windbreaker, and wool hat.
Time for dinner: Oreo cookies and dried noodles! We didn’t have a camp stove, however, so I migrated over to another campsite and made friends with a crew who did have a portable stove. They boiled me some hot water, and that bag of instant noodles was miraculously transformed into a steaming bowl of delicious stew.
