Piton des Neiges

Le Piton des Neiges is the big mountain pursuit of Reunion Island. Call it Maine's Katahdin, Tanzania's Kilimanjaro, or heck, Nepal's Everest--it's the right of passage that turns mortal men into super humans.

All that happened to me was rapid advanced aging: stiffness that I hope not to experience again until my 90th birthday and irregular breathing that may have otherwise been attributed to cancer sticks, except that I'm not a smoker. I was stumped by the entire experience. But my friend, Caroline and I had a fantastic time.
Before we started the epic road trip up to the trail head, I made everyone eat Piton des Neiges yogurts. There's a whole line of dairy products on Reunion Island named for this mountain boon, and I figured it would be good luck for us to fuel ourselves with it. Caro thought I was borderline intolerable. BUT, we both made it to the summit in the end, and I'm not calling that a coincidence.

The trail from Cilaos to the gite summit base camp only takes about 2 hours to hike. It's short but steep. No matter. We arrived huffing and puffing, had our lunch, and then twiddled our thumbs. The plan was to spend the night in the gite, then wake up at 4am and hike the summit for sunrise. Since we had gotten there so quickly and had a long afternoon ahead, I got giddy with childish excitement and boredom, and decided to kill some time by exploring the summit trail for a little while.
Before I knew it, I was delirious and alone without food, water, or a cell phone at 3070m. But, I got some great shots on the summit above the clouds.
I also got dizzy, scared, and guilty thinking about leaving my future children motherless, so I hot footed it down to civilization so as not to die alone.

We had a very cold but convivial evening in the gite that culminated with us eating an epically heavy creole meal of sausages dipped in oil. It was a long night of terrible digestion, bunk beds filled with bloated hikers tossing and turning in agony. At 4am, after a sleepless night, the whole gang hiked to the summit with our headlamps and awaited the sunrise in the frigid, burning cold.
Sadly, with the sunrise came a pretty intense cloud rise. This all gave way to a chilly damp rain that chased us down the mountainside immediately. I felt glad that I had had a clear view the afternoon before. It left me feeling that the hardest part about hiking the Piton des Neiges is the weather. And the sausages. But we did it, we made it! And I guess I don't need to go back there ever again...