El Teide

The island of Tenerife was built by the accretion of three large sheild volcanoes. The result is the third-largest volcanic ocean island on Earth by volume, with its dormant El Teide the third highest volcano on a volcanic ocean island, at 3,718m/12,198ft above sea level.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the trivia.

Yesterday, I joined Rob Kesselman (bass), Don Liuzzi (principal timpani), and Paul Roby (assoc. principal 2nd violin) on a hike up Mt. Teide. We disregarded our jetlag and left the hotel at 6am, arriving to the trailhead just before 8.

The fearsome four hitting the trail just after sunrise



Don and Paul starting out



Rob, way above the clouds



Paul (self-nicknamed 'Towel Head') checking out the rest of the island, including the Las Cañadas caldera and part of the trail we've covered





Once we got high up, we could pretty much see the rest of the island. See the towns way down there? We also encountered some snow.



The peak... to which we didn't get to climb. :(


The peak was unfortunately closed for the season. And when the Teide National Park rangers say closed, they mean closed. A German couple ahead of us went for it and got whistled at quite harshly. Knowing we could have made the summit if we had wanted to, we considered it done. Then we took the cable car back down.


Super-Happy Fun Team on the cable car


The problem was, the cable car didn't let us off where we parked the car, so we had about a 3km walk on the road. As if the 1,150m/3,773ft vertical climb hadn't been enough.




But we did eventually make it back to the car, and a friendly fellow hiker took our picture.




I was pretty impressed with myself to get such a great photo from an open window of a moving vehicle--here's Teide from the drive home. What a great day!