It is now Wednesday 6th of January, and first it was hard to recall everything we've been up to these past few days, because it has been such a rush. After a decent cup of coffee everything started to come back to my mind.
On Monday was the day we planned to go to Tenerife and hike up to Mount Teide at first. But we slept for too long and ended up missing our ferry by a few hours. After a short chat with the guys we decided to head to Las Palmas anyway and buy some stuff that we needed including new battery for the camera and so on. We also visited some local breakfast-place that was unbelievable.
Finally on Tuesday morning we woke up super early and packed our stuff and turned our car pointing to Agaete, where our ferry was planned to take off. We got to the marina at around 8 o'clock in the morning and after a few snapshots and short speaks we were on the ferry and on our way to Tenerife.
The ferry was one of these fast ones and after an hour sail we were on our first stop at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. From there we still had a nice, maybe an hour long, drive to the foot of Mount Teide. On our way we stopped at an amazing bocadillo place, where the chicken-sandwiches almost melted in your mouth. The meat was so tender that you really need to experience it by yourself to understand what I mean.
After a million turns on the serpentine road we finally got to the down station of Teleferico de Teide. And that was where the sketchy part started.
Let's just say that it is strictly forbidden to go skiing in Mount Teide, so you probably get the idea how hard it is to get in the lift with a huge amount of ski-gear with us. Luckily the people working at the lift station where really understanding when we told a small white lie that we are a film crew working on a photo shoot for Dakine catalog.
The next hard thing was to convince the guards at the top station that we are only going to walk down to Refuge de Altavista, which is a small hut located a few hundred meters down on the volcano's north east face, and hike back in the morning to film the catalog photos in the morning sun. They bought it, and we were again one step closer to conquer the Mount Teide with skis.
We walked down to the refuge and when we got there we noticed that we only had a liter of water and no food for the evening and the night. Luckily, if you can say so, one guy sold us 4 cans of some old canned food. There were some meatballs, sausages, peas, and some disgusting fat looking stuff. We mixed everything in a huge pot and my god was it terrible. Pasi decided not to eat it, wise choice. But it still was the only source of liquids and energy, so we had no other choice than eating it, nice.
We woke up at 6.30 in the morning and started to wait for the first glimpses of light, so that we could start our hike up the mountain. And yeah, our breakfast was two cups of undrinkable heated water with sugar in it. Finally a little bit after 7.15 the light came and the climb began.
At around 9.15 we got next to the top station, where we had hidden our equipment. We took our skis in our backpacks and started the steep hike up to the top of the mountain.
At around 10.30 we were up on the top and it was time for some photos once again. We shot some speaks and actually built snowboarding boots for Pasi, so that he could ride down. On our drove up we stopped by at a gasoline station and bought the ingredients for Pasi's boots. The main structure was Blumi's hiking boots that we topped with some tinplates that we found from the gasoline station and some duct-tape. And it really worked.
The snow on the volcano is far from good, and it's actually closer to ice. Not good skiing, but first real skiing on the trip anyway. We skied down in short runs and filmed it with five or six cameras from different angles. The skiing on Mount Teide is really, really sketchy because of the icy snow, so we cannot recommend it to anyone who does not know for absolute sure that they are not going to fall. With the sharp volcanic rock it is almost certain that you end up dead if you fall and slide down to the rocks. But still after some sketchy and scary skiing, this is were the really scary part began.
Skiing in nature reserve area on Mount Teide can really get you in jail. The maximum penalty for it is 3 years in jail. So we were super scared, when we saw the guards pointing at us after the ride and waiting us to hike up to the top station of the lift. So we had no choice than to head their way and thank God, thank Shiva and every other god, they were actually more stoked about our skiing than pissed at us. They said that it was cool to see some professionals do it rather than some drunken tourists with sleds getting themselves into huge trouble.
After some funny smalltalk with the guards we headed to the lift and back down to safety. On the lift we met a really nice Irish family, who were stoked about our riding, especially the young lad with a cool grim on his face. We finally got back to our car and o'boy did the water and the chocolate bars that we forgot in our car taste good after a nice 500 meters of vertical hike at high altitude and rough skiing down the face of the volcano.
We backed our car once again, and started to descent down the serpentine road towards the party town of Las Americas. Pasi knew a nice after ski (laughing when I'm writing) –bar for us and so we headed there. For real, the bar is a surf bar owned by some Finnish guys. We had a few after ski -cocktails and headed back to Santa Cruz to catch the ferry back home.
After a long drive from Las Palmas we were finally back in at Pasi's place in Playa del Ingles. We were really tired, but still stoked and happy.
-Jani
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