The next big challenge is the summit tour of Piton des Neiges, the highest mountain on the island and the Indian Ocean. Since, as you know by now, the sight is always best in the early morning hours, today we hike to the base camp, the Refuge de la Caverne Dufour, to climb the summit tomorrow at the break of dawn in the light of the headlamps.
Today we start quite differently with a walk on the road. From Cilaos we walk to the parking lot Le Bloc on the D 241 between Cilaos and Bras Sec (where you see the cars on the picture, for lazy people there is also a bus). Naturally, we do not start without fresh food, and so a crispy, good smelling baguette sticks out of the backpack. In case of need, to be able to leave a few bread crumbs for the relapsing photographer 😉 Already on the road it goes crisply uphill and at the parking lot we take a short break.
The recovery only lasts a short time, because a few meters after the parking lot a long steep climb is waiting for us. A total of 3.5 hours is estimated for the tour. The path is very well constructed and winds its way uphill. Step by step by step … you know the story 😉
Time for a view down – we have already gained a good bit of altitude!
Even more steps! However, the tropical forest holds numerous fascinating plants, such as the already known bearded lichens on the branches, which inspire us anew. Like lametta they hang from the trees, they obviously feel well in this humid climate.
The more we gain altitude, the more the vegetation changes, the tall trees are followed by low shrubs. The path becomes steeper again and leads to a saddle from which we have a good view of today’s destination. A few minutes later, we have reached our accommodation at 2,400 m above sea level.
The 1200 meters of ascent were a bit exhausting, however, we arrived in time. We choose two beds in one of the 4 dormitories (with 12 beds each). Until dinner, there is still a lot of time, which we spend reading. More and more hikers arrive at the cabin. The large common room is cool, impersonal, noisy, and uncomfortable, but we make the best of it. I hesitate whether to make the ascent tomorrow. The ascent would not be the problem, but the descent of about 600 meters in altitude, especially since afterwards additional 900 meters in altitude descent are waiting. Will my knee (which has not caused any problems so far) manage 1500 meters of descent? I decide with a heavy heart against it and will have to be content with Markus’ photos.
After dinner, we go to bed soon, a long day is waiting for us.
This article has been semi-automatically translated as a service for foreign users. See details here.
We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
Essential Website Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
Other external services
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
Privacy Policy
You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!