We spent a few days in Pucon at the end of the Dragoman tour and had the opportunity to trek up the Villarrica Volcano. Again we were lucky with the weather, the day before we arrived had been wet and foggy and it was not possible to do the volcano. But our day was warm and sunny with little wind so was perfect.
The trek itself is guided and you are given lots of specialist gear. It starts with a chairlift up the first 400m to get over the loose volcanic gravel section and then there is about 1 hour walking up rockier paths. After this it's crampons on and a slow slog up the ice and snow to the top. At the top you can feel the sulphur in your throat which makes it hard to get a good look at the crater the the smoke that continuously flows out of it.
Next is the fun bit! Sliding down :-) You have a strange nappy type pad to strap to your bottom and also a small plastic sledge for the slower sections and basically you just sit and slide down the snow and ice. This was done in short sections of maybe a few hundred metres down each. The top two were very steep and it was incredibly difficult to maintain control using the ice pick dug in to the slope along your side. A couple of members of our group failed entirely causing one of them to be dubbbed "the human cannonball" after he rolled down the mountain for the second time taking out 2 other people and requiring the guide flinging himself on top of him to stop! It was awesome fun and wish I could do it again.
For more details of the walk up see Nick's running blog.
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