The Last of the Kokonukos
There is a duality in the Kokonukos way of thinking. In their understanding, the world and all that takes place within is influenced by hot and cold. Death, like the glaciers that once crowned the two highest peaks of the Kokonukos volcanoes, is cold. Life, like the thermal waters seeping from the mountains, is hot. In this paradigm, humans revere the spirits who inhabit the natural world, the plants and trees, the wind and rain, and the volcanic peaks. Some are hot, some are cold. Positive and negative, fire and darkness. These are the anchors of their world.
This mentality is shaped by the community’s living space, an area known as the resguardo (much like USA’s Indian reservations). The Kokonukos resguardo is located in Southern Colombia, borders the Puracé National Park, and ranges from 2400 and 5000 meters above sea level.Most visitors come to the Kokonukos for Puracé (4650m), a smoking stratovolcano 3–4 hour climb from the Pilimbalá Refugio. If you’re lucky, the weather will cooperate, you’ll gaze into the 150 meter deep crater, and fumaroles will blow sulfuric steam and gases from the crater’s rubble. If not, you’ll slog up, wander through the clouds, and get rained on or blown off the mountain.
Puracé is where the trail ends. Few venture further across the spine of the Kokonukos chain of volcanos — which translates to ‘Monster with a shiny head’ in the local language. The Kokonukos guide association is 30 members strong, yet none have gone much further than Puracé: to a dozen volcanic craters south, including Pan de Azúcar (4800m), the furthest and tallest of the Kokonukos and our principal objective.
Just a few Google searches and you understand that expeditions to Pan de Azúcar rarely get past Puracé, whose name means ‘mountain of fire’. “The plan was to cover the whole volcanic chain: Puracé, the craters and Pan de Azúcar, but the furious cloud cover didn’t let us,” says one Colombian writer.
Similarly, another hiker turned around after a rather poetic flight: “The wind roared… suddenly I felt myself rise above the ground. I was conscious of the levity of my body floating in the air, like a daydream in which eternity is contained. I was sustained and transported by a soft and powerful force, and then the sensation was interrupted when my right leg hit the fluffy ground, followed by my shoulder and then my head, which fell to the earth as if it were going to detach itself. My cheeks were brutally compressed against the soil, leaving me wounded and confused.”
I found maybe a dozen. Another story chronicles a Colombian mountain climber who loved volcanoes because the sulfuric vapers “purify his respiratory channels” and who had a plan much like ours. His group spent the entire expedition hunkered down in the crater of Puracé. Unrelenting wind destroyed a tent on day two, and their second tent buckled on day four, right before the group’s unceremonious retreat. “There was nothing left to do but think about condors and ration our water,” he wrote in the country’s main newspaper, El Tiempo.
Even the operator who helped me organize this hike, Colombia Oculta, had yet to see a successful summit of Pan de Azúcar. It’s the weather, I was told. Edgar, however, said the volcanoes themselves were responsible.
Edgar was our only connection to the Kokonukos. In all estimates, he’s the man who has spent the most time on and around these peaks. He has been to the top of Pan de Azúcar more than 15 times, approaching it from several sides. Where the trail ends, Edgar begins.
He got his start when the government’s institute of natural resources came to the region interested in what the mountains had to offer, geologically speaking. Without maps, the environmental agency recruited a young Edgar, and they blazed trail through volcanic tuff, moss, and fog.
Over the years, Edgar has created an approximate map of the area in his head, and can quickly spot a mojón, or cairn, most of which either he or Colombia’s mining and energy authority, Ingeominas, stacked. Today, Edgar is pushing into his late fifties, and his patience for giddy mountain tourists is wearing thin. Still, by 7am we manage to get him on the trail, armed with a whistle, a tent, a bag of cooked rice, and a couple hard-boiled eggs.
Respect your Elders
Since 1948, Puracé has erupted 17 times. The strongest known eruption was in 1849, when the volcano’s dome exploded burping pyroclastic rocks and ash over the city of Popayán, 44 kilometers away. In 1985, following a deadly eruption of one of Colombia’s 15 active volcanoes, the government began monitoring Puracé as an estimated 250,000 people living within striking distance.
By the time we reached the crater of Puracé, another group had already arrived. It was Saturday. Sarah, a Kokonukos guide, explained to them the role of reverence, and I moved closer to listen.
“These mountains are not merely piles of rock put here so people can exercise,” she explained to a group of Colombians tourists. “For us, this volcano is sacred and if we don’t act that way, we will not be allowed to be here.”
Edgar came up the trail, mumbled something about cameras and ordered us to move on. We bordered the crater and the fog thickened. We walked down a ridge he calls the “knife edge” passing another monstrous crater, Piocolló, and descended into the Paletará crater where we set up camp. We weren’t going to make the mistake of previous expeditions, trying to sleep on Puracé is never a good idea. Obviously, the spirits do not want that.
That evening, Edgar outlined the cosmovisión of this shiny-headed monster. Way back then, before humans were born from the high mountain lagunas, the feminine Puracé exploded, sending candela (light) into the skies and southwest towards her partner, Sotara, a masculine volcano some fifty kilometers away. The union resulted in the creation of the dozen or so other volcanoes, including Pan de Azúcar. The Kokonukos people always refer to Puracé as their elder, though today’s understanding of shifting plates date the crater of Puracé as the most recently formed.
Nevertheless, nobody argued with the Kokonukos creation story, and before consuming any food or drink, we meditated, asked for safe passage, and made a small offering: a few drops of rum into the sand, served from the palm of the hand not the metal flask. That night, the volcanoes accepted our group of foreigners; we drank from a nearby laguna and relaxed on the desolate hardpan of a volcanic crater created millions of years ago.
Us vs the Volcano
Jeff, Troy, and I, best of friends from Utah, and my friend Pol from Barcelona, had all converged on Kokonukos for the reoccurring ritual of facing adversity together, far from the confines of society. Unfortunately, Jeff had a rough start. The next morning, he turned around due to a chesty cough and the prospect of a near impossible recovery above 4000m. Were the spirits of Puracé singling him out? A cold welcoming, to be sure.
With Edgar and blue skies, we continued to the second camp of Laguna Negra, the base camp for climbing Pan de Azúcar. On the way, the rocky volcanic floor gives way to a robust layer of yellow, orange and green moss covering practically everything. Above 4000m, the earth bed comes alive with plants, some associated with Colombia’s páramos, others unique to the Kokonukos fertile eco-system. Pink coral-like succulents, small frailejones and purple, yellow, white, and orange flowers grow astutely. Under the mossy foam, the soil — rich in iron, zinc, and nitrogen — retains water that feeds the resistance against extreme temperatures.
From the trail, we watched a condor soar down the western flanks of the mountains. Edgar said it was one of just three raptors living in the park. The Andean Condor, the world’s largest flying bird, lives over fifty years, which means the birds have lived through all of Colombia’s modern blunders. That same condor may have witnessed the FARC murder nine Colombian backpackers on their way to Puracé, in 2001. A somber thought.
The trail skirts around volcano Quintín, through the Valley of the Mummies, and descends to the shores of an alpine lake known as Laguna Negra. Upon seeing the water shimmering with reflections of the craggy Cerro Killa, I whooped in joy. Edgar turned around blowing a high-pitched whistle.
“Don’t yell!” he angrily whispered. “Our voices bounce off the mountains, back and forth, back and forth, upsetting everything, making storms. The rain will come.”
As we prepared camp, the clouds crowded out the afternoon sun, and the wind picked up. Racing the rain, Edgar hurriedly covered his cheap tent with an extra-large plastic sheet that he then weighed down with stones. As the laguna went from placid to squally, we hid out in the tents. When the rain stopped, I asked Edgar what these mountains had in store.
“They are testing us. Upon arrival, the clouds began raining. The volcano and the laguna must see us cower before them. We did, we lowered our heads and ran to our tents. Now we are welcome.”
Searching for Sugarloaf
After raining all night, we woke up at 5am under a blanket of fog. Edgar repeatedly warned us about the dangers of wandering around in the fog. Walking away from camp in the fog, even getting up to go to the bathroom, is a risk. We lay back down; at 6am the air was clear, and high-in-the-sky wispy cirrus clouds predicted a day of pleasant weather. By 9am, the four of us were standing on Pan de Azúcar’s crater, having gained the summit up a gradual ridgeline on the north-facing slope. Without a trail, our path followed the mountains contours, coinciding at intervals with several mojones (cairns) overgrown with moss.
We spent an hour on top, waiting for windows of clarity to see down into Colombia’s fertile valleys, south to Sotara Volcano, or north to Colombia’s highest volcano: Nevado de Huila (5400m). On our way down, the clouds pelted us with rain and for brief time, hail. We trampled over the mossy carpet back to Laguna Negra. Traversing a steep slope, we slipped and fell down several times. Edgar said “it’s not your fault you fell down. Nature pulled your down to take a payment. When she does that, it’s best to place your hand flat on the moss and rocks, that way you get more out of falling.”
Back at camp, we relaxed the rest of the day. We took off our shoes and walked barefoot around the laguna, where a family of ducks squawked at each other. Around 3pm, the sun broke through, and I set off to make one more summit: Cerro Killa, a 300m plug whose south facing approach was gradual with several vertical boulder problems. On top, I stacked a mojónbefore the clouds returned.
Edgar reinforced the idea that man does not conquer mountains. In today’s mountaineering, writers too quickly associate conquest with standing on the mountain’s zenith. On a mountain, we do little more than experience it, a power so compelling that man ends ups conquering himself.
On the final day, we followed our footsteps back towards the refugio. A fatigued Edgar took his time crossing the range, up and down each crater. Descending Puracé, we passed a large volcanic vent, the mountain’s spirits spewing heat and energy. Back at the refugio, we sat in hot springs. Heat cured our bodies, while cold beer spirits tainted our minds.
Who knows how many more Pan de Azucar summits Edgar has in his future. The Kokonukos also face a lack of resources, information, and gear to equip the next generation of high mountain guides. Only a handful of Kokonukos have been to Laguna Negra, and except for Edgar, no one has summited Pan de Azúcar. That is a shame because the real beauty of this brilliant monster lies in its vibrant eco-system, balanced between the hot and cold forces of life.
Photography: Nico Parkinson, Pol Cucala, Troy Rawlings.
For more information about organizing this trek, contact Iván Macías from Colombia Oculta.
