Pico 2351m
By a quirk of politics rather than geography Pico counts as the highest mountain in Portugal although it lies about a thousand miles away in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Seen across the sea from the other Azorean islands it takes on a dreamlike quality and offers an irresistible challenge to the climber, a challenge quite easily answered by the walker accustomed to steep and rough terrain.
A road runs up to about 1200m where there is a cave in the lava and a rather grubby small well, the last water on the mountain. Some books claim that the ascent can be made from this point in one hour but our taxi driver suggested that we allow eight for the round trip which we found not a moment too long. Grass and heather gave way to loose scree as we climbed an intermittent path through the lava marked by a series of posts. We arrived on the rim of the vast crater with the steep summit cone, which gives the peak its unusual profile, away on the far side.
We circled round the rim, above the clouds, and scrambled up this final loose steep cone which has its own tiny summit crater complete with sulphurous smell and desultory puffs of steam to remind us that we are on a volcano which last erupted less than 300 years ago. From the top we gazed down on the vast exceptionally flat floor of the crater as shown in the second picture.
The descent was rough and steep and quite uncomfortable. Clouds had gathered around the slopes of the mountain but the island of Faial could be glimpsed through them far below to remind us that we were living now in that dream world on the mountain which we had gazed at across the sea for so long.
Next day we woke to torrential rain and did not see the peak again until we flew away from the Azores. As the plane broke through the clouds we looked back at the mountain standing clear above them. That final glimpse of Pico remains as an abiding memory of the peak which perhaps more than any other in my experience emphasised the sharp contrast between the vision and the actuality, the dreamlike summit seen across the ocean on a hazy evening and the rough lava beneath one's fingers on that final steep summit cone.
Walking the World Index
Get your own Free Home Page