How to get there:
This mountain is located near the city of Valledupar. One can fly there
from Bogota. The ideal starting point for this
peak is Mashiramo Glamping.
Mashiramo Glamping is located at N10.36800, W072.95545, elevation near 2400 meter.
It is preferable to have a car with high ground clearance in order to drive there.
One may start the walk from Mashiramo Glamping or have a 4WD vehicle that may
drive higher and thus reduce the distance to the summit.
Mashiramo Glamping can be contacted
on Whatsapp: +573207379399, Web: https://www.mashiramoglamping.com/
Route description:
There is a jeep road
from Mashiramo Glamping
to the summit. This
road gets worse towards the end. A good 4WD should be able to
get to location N10.3629, W072.9282, elevation about
3000 m. Near this location there is a fork that descends to some
inhabited houses lower down. Continue the right fork to near N10.3631, W072.9108. The elevation
here is about 3150 m. Take the right fork that now zig-zags uphill, then traverses right.
A few final switchbacks will get you to a short (about 200m) summit ridge.
There are some ruins of concrete
structures nearby. The highest point is likely a little NW of the middle of this ridge.
This route (road) runs along the border between Venezuela and Colombia on its last stretch,
visiting both countries.
The road has signs with regular
intervals informing about the protected status of the land.
Comments:
We arrived in Valledupar
on May 27th. The only rental car available was a 4WD Duster, not quite up to the
task of driving beyond the Glamping base camp.
A nice and relaxing afternoon with good meals served.
We started shortly before dawn and drove
up to near 2700 meter at location N10.361619, W072.947685. It is possible to drive higher, but
recent rain made us decide to not test the car to its limit.
We parked and started hiking
around 0510.
We had wind and rain, but the conditions were not bad. Arriving at the summit
around 0815, we traversed the summit ridge, but otherwise felt no desire to
spend time on top.
Returning to the car shortly after 1100, we were quite wet, looking
forward to a nice lunch at the Glamping base camp.
We were not disappointed, after a good meal it
was time to say goodbye and return to our airport hotel. Our flight was on Wednesday,
ie. the following day.
I travelled back to Bergen, Norway, while Adam travelled to Japan. This concluded
our 16 day trip. Many thanks to Adam for being a great friend and hiking partner.
Most pictures in this report is also credit to him.