Conquering the Piton

8-4-07 Piton Hike
I did it!!! I hiked the larger of the two Pitons. At 5:45 am I met a bus at the training school in Micoud, St Lucia with 30 other sleepy volunteers. We drove to Vieu Forte at the base of the Piton. It was much more rigorous than I thought it would be and it was pretty much straight up. About 10 minutes into the hike I felt like I was ready to call it quits and had no idea how I was possibly going to make it to the top. Climbing straight up seemed impossible and I didn’t think I was in good enough physical condition. I was breathing hard the whole time and sweated so much I was wringing out my ponytail. It was basically climbing stairs 2,600 feet. The steps were made of rocks and roots. The rocks at the top were slippery from the rain and moss so I slipped once between some rocks but miraculously I was hardly even scratched. It really brought the group together to test ourselves in such an excruciating way. As a small group of 7 or 8 we split off from the other groups who were going at their own paces. We picked our way carefully albeit quickly straight down the way we came up. I am glad you couldn’t see all the way to the bottom or the vertigo would have been terrible. We found a dead tarantula along the way and what looked like a bright orange hermit crab. About ¾ of the way down my legs (and by all accounts everyone else was feeling the same) felt like Jello. I was half afraid they might give out and came close to falling once or twice. The bottom couldn’t come fast enough. I got a false sense that we were close long before we actually were and we all pretty much ran out of water. I was incredibly thirsty so I asked around and we found that Kit still had a whole bottle of water so she graciously divided it up between everyone. The last 20 minutes was sheer willpower and muscle memory because I don’t know how I was moving my legs, they were so shaky and tired.