Ash Wednesday

by F. W. Stembridge

A FORMER PRESIDENT and THE PRESENT ONE went in January 1961 on holiday to Teneriffe.

I have asked the Editor to put the titles in capitals because that makes it rather more like the “JUST-SO” stories and this isn’t really a tale for proper mountaineers.

The object of the holiday was to swim and laze in the sun and all went to plan with one exception. For on Teneriffe there is a mountain—the Pico de Teide—an extinct volcano of lava and clinker which pushes its summit cone 12,150 feet into the blue and cloudless sky. And the F.P. being a man of amazing energy, and the P.O. one of weak will, they climbed it.

Never has an expedition started so strangely equipped. The F.P. wore khaki shorts and a very smart panama hat. The P.O. had on a bright blue pair of Terylene trousers with shoes to match. They lolled in comfort on the back seat of a chauffeur driven Super Snipe clutching their picnic bags as they drove in the early morning of star-studded darkness to the foot of the climb.

If you are rich and correct and not a member of the Y.R.C., you hire a guide who comes armed with pack-mules and the key to the Rifugio and you spend the night at 10,500 feet. Having none of these amenities we climbed for an hour, then sat on the cold granite slabs outside the very superior but securely locked refuge and ate a boiled egg and chicken leg for our second breakfast.

As we climbed we had a moment of unforgettable brilliance. Almost fifty miles across the sea the mountain backbone of Grand Canary was in silhouette against the red dawn sky. As we crossed a slope of brown and yellow lava the sun rose through a nick in the distant ridge. At once the hillside flamed into brilliant orange, fading after perhaps five seconds into the pale cold light of early morning.

The sun beat upon our backs but a following breeze cold enough to numb ears and finger tips encouraged us to keep moving and made the climbing pleasant and temperate.

Nothing moved: nothing lived except ourselves. Later in the day in the summit crater we saw one lizard and as we descended a vulture and two ravens circled in the cloudless sky, but as we followed the rough and narrow path through the tumbled impassable slopes of lava and clinker the world was dead. Below us was the ring of the main crater with a perimeter of twenty-five miles, above us the summit cone of six or seven hundred feet of ash streaked with lava. The mind could not grasp the awesome horror, the noise and destruction of the eruption. One could only look at blocks of clinker bigger than a house and try to realise that these were inci-dental scraps which had been flung out of the fire.

The first sign that the volcano was not entirely extinct was a blow-hole in the shadow of an overhanging wall of lava just below the foot of the summit cone. The sun never reached that corner and the scalding sulphurous steam condensed and froze on the surrounding rocks. The entrance reminded us of a tight pot-hole. The F.P. suggested a meet. The P.O. suggested metal ladders.

We toiled up the steep loose ash of me final cone, hearts pumping a little because we were now above 12,000 feet and less than five hours before we had been at sea level, and walked over the rim of the summit crater. Roughly circular and perhaps three hundred yards in perimeter, it sloped fairly steeply inwards to a depth of about eighty feet. Dozens of small blow holes were surrounded with brilliant yellow sulphur crystals. The F.P. bent to collect a specimen and regretted it at once as scalding hot steam erupted over hand and wrist. It was several hours later before we lost the taste of sulphur in our mouths.

We wandered round inside the crater for photography and to collect rock specimens, then sat down for a little food. The wind blew cold but the hot crusted ground provided a welcome warmth to our grateful posteriors. The underworld felt very near and we both silently hoped it would keep its distance.

We ambled gently down in the hot sun, pausing at the refuge to collect our spare food and water. At about 9,000 feet we crossed the sharply defined upper limit of scrub. On the ascent the vegetation had looked grey and arid. As we reentered it looked unbelievably green.
 
We rejoined the Super Snipe to find the driver engaged in repairs in the expectation of still some hours to wait. He muttered that we had been ‘rapido’, quickly screwed it together again and drove us down the track with instructions to stop for beer at the first cafe after we got back on to the metalled road. The cafe proved to have only one bottle of beer left in stock so, with due deference to age, the P.O. insisted this went to the F.P., then drank two lemonades too quickly and burped gently all the way back to the hotel. It wasn’t mountaineering but it was very good fun and an incredibly interesting day.

We were staying about 500 feet above the village so the P.O. suggested a walk down for an aperitif before dinner. He wanted to get the full height differentiaf of 12,150 feet and also is very partial to his aperitif.