Hiking to a Volcano Rim in St Kitts

And they call this a trail?????

Ever since learning that the Caribbean islands are full of volcanoes, hiking up one has been on my bucket list! We have now done that and I am thinking I never want to do it again!

View of Mt. Liamuiga and the St Kitt coast as we approached the island

We arrived in beautiful St Kitts after a calm downwind sail of about 45 miles from St Barths. As we sailed down the coast, Mt Liamuiga, a dormant volcano dominated the view. I immediately researched where to find the trailhead. Many of the sites talked about hiring a guide for the hike, but since I would classify us as pretty experienced hikers and I could download the map using my All Trails app, I figured, no problem for us to do it by ourselves.

Per the UWI Seismic Research Center: Mt Liamuiga is the only live or likely to erupt again volcano in St Kitts. It has had a number of explosive eruptions in the past, but the most recent major eruption occurred 1600 years ago. It is possible that two small eruptions also occurred in 1692 and 1843.

We felt like we were in no danger of this volcano erupting while we hiked it!

After spending two very rolly nights at anchor in St Barth’s earlier, we were in search of a calm anchorage and dropped anchor in White House Bay on the southern part of the island. We are surrounded by steep green lush and rocky mountains. It reminds me a bit of New Zealand except with palm trees! The only negative about our anchorage is that the bus system only operates in the north part of the island which is where Mt. Liamuiga is. We decided to take the dinghy into a dock of a nearby closed restaurant and walk out to the road and try to hitchhike. A Vervet monkey surprised us as he jumped down from a tree and and hid in the brush. Welcome to the Caribbean! Apparently more monkeys than people live on St. Kitts!

View from Timothy's Hill. We are anchored in the far bay in the middle picture.

The only cars that stopped were taxis so we took one into the main town of Basseterre for $40! It was a beautiful ride at least and the driver stopped at infamous Timothy’s Hill so we could take in the view and take some pictures. In town, we hopped onto one of the local buses (actually just passenger vans) and paid the equivalent of $1 each for the 40 minute ride to the trailhead. There was some wild driving on the narrow road as vehicles use both lanes indiscriminately, but somehow with a lot of beeping of horns, they miss having collisions. We were the only non-islanders on the bus, but everyone was friendly and helpful as they dropped us along side the road and pointed which way to go to find the trail.

Well, the actual trailhead turned out to be a 1-1/2 mile walk uphill along a concrete road in the blazing sun. We were drenched with sweat by the time we got to the actual trailhead and were wondering if we had enough water and if maybe this wasn’t such a great idea…But off we went into the shaded trail. We met two other parties on the trail returning from their hikes and there were only two vehicles parked at the trailhead so we knew once we passed by the others we were the only ones on the trail to the rim. In the middle of a rain forest with dense foliage, vines hanging down everywhere, that thought can be a bit spooky. If we got hurt, we would be on our own until someone happened by the next day. The first group we met was a couple with a guide. The guide joked that the Saskatchewan on the mountain eats people and watch out! The group had not gotten to the rim because the trail got too strenuous. That had us a bit worried. The next person we met was a younger man on his own (got his PhD at NC State, small world!). He said there was some rough scrambling up rocks, but it was worth it. So on we went.

The unexpected long road to the trailhead was bordered by lots of very rich looking farmland. The Vervet monkeys unfortunately destroy a lot of the crops.

The All Trails map said the trail was 3.8 miles roundtrip which didn’t sound too bad, but if you read the comments, people say they found it much longer, more like 6.5 miles. My Fitbit clocked 7.5 miles. But I digress…the first two thirds of the trail was medium strenuous. There were some steep sections, but then you would get a break so you could catch your breath. Beautiful dense rain forest foliage surrounded us and we came across a couple more of the monkeys. We definitely knew we weren’t in Kansas! But then we got to the place the first group had turned around. The “trail” turned into basically scrambling up a steep muddy creek bed. You had to grab onto rocks and tree roots to push and pull yourself up the “trail”. We had to scramble on hands and knees up the rocks. The only reason I call it a trail is that there were orange blazes periodically to mark the way through the dense forest. It was so humid and our hearts were racing from the exertion. We had to stop and rest quite a bit. We were both totally soaked with sweat and muddy and by now knew we definitely didn’t have enough water. We were also worried about time and getting back down the mountain in daylight. We repeatedly debated stopping and heading back down. Nah, that would be the safe thing, but let’s keep going.

We eventually got to the rim at 3:15pm. We had climbed about 3000 ft of elevation from the start of the road and it was much colder here. The wind was howling up top. Was it worth the effort? Not so sure….the peak was surrounded by clouds so we didn’t have a view over the water and other islands in the distance, but we did have a view into the caldron, smelling of sulphur and enjoyed watching the clouds blow into and over the rim.

The clouds looked like rain so we decided we had better get moving. If the creek bed and gulches filled with water, we would really have trouble getting down. It had taken us 3-1/4 hrs to climb to the top from the trailhead so now we needed to hustle down, being careful not to turn an ankle or get hurt. Although David truly has had a miraculous recovery from his detached retina last January, he still has some depth perception problems so trying to scramble down wet slippery rocks in a darkening rain forest was a struggle. He fell a few times, but luckily didn’t get hurt. We intentionally took it very slow for that first third of the way down knowing that if one of us got hurt, it was going to be a long night on the mountain. Once we hit the real trail 1/3 of the way down, we moved quickly and got back to the trailhead at 5:15pm. We gulped down the last of our water. The sun sets around 5:35 here so we still had a bit of daylight to hike back down the 1-1/2 mile road to the main road where we could flag down a bus back to town. We were totally soaked, muddy and exhausted, but also proud that we were able to do the whole hike!

Views at the rim. We were absolutely disgusting by the time we reached the rim!

It was a long day as once we got back to town, we were starving. We stopped at a nearby KFC thinking we would take it back to the boat to eat. I knew I was too tired to cook. Fast food has a new meaning..it took 50 minutes to get our order. Island time man! We then found a taxi and had a really interesting conversation with our driver about life in St Kitts and politics. We motored back in the dinghy in the dark (had a headlamp to light the way) out to our boat at anchor. We were very very happy to be home!

Today, we are resting our sore bodies and planning our next adventure that most definitely will not involve a 6-1/2 hour hike up a volcano!

A five master ship out for an evening cruise