Backpacking on a Volcano in January

Nick and I went on an overnight hiking trip up on Mt. Etna with Boy Scout Troop 53. There's not many times that you get to say you went backpacking on a volacano in the winter.

The trail we hiked is part of a system that goes all the way around the mountain. The round trip distance was 7.3 miles and at one point we climbed over 4,900 feet (to 4,9001 feet.)

We set up camp and then went for a short walk to a lava cave. Did some splunking (sp? cave exploring) and saw a couple of wild horses. When we got back to camp, it started raining. Just light sprinkling at first, but by 8:00 pm it was coming down pretty good and turning to big, fat, honkin', wet snowflakes.

Nick and I have a couple of small pup-tents. The tents are new but the design is old and we didn't have a rain fly. They leaked. We gathered up our ground pads and sleeping bags and migrated to the rifugio. Nick fell asleep as we discussed all the character we were building while laying on a frozen conrete floor in a cabin on the side of a mountain in the dead of winter as opposed to playing X-box all day or something like that.

I tossed and turned all night - finally getting up to go pee at around 3:00 am. I pulled my boots on and wandered outside in my long-johns to a light dusting of snow and a crystal-clear sky filled with so many stars it was hard to find a constellation. If I wasn't so cold, I would have stayed out for a few minutes.

We were up at 7:00 am the next morning, had some coffee and oatmeal and started back down the mountain. What took us four and a half hours to climb up the day before only took an hour and a half to descend.

I tried to sleep on the 90 minute drive home, but was too uncomfortable. We got dropped off at the rec center parking lot a couple hundred yards from the house and hiked home with our packs on through the neighborhood. Nick went upstairs to our bathroom scale and weighed himself with and without his pack. His pack weighed in at 26 lbs - and that's after we had ate all the food and drank all the water out of it! Nick's only 85 lbs (soaking wet) so that was quite an accomplishment for him.

We had a great time and decided that by this time next year, we will be much more experienced and prepared for a winter backpacking trip on the side of a volcano.

Ciao,

Bud