14

3,000m high in the
Indian Ocean

IN THE GREAT empty expanse of water that is the Indian Ocean, to the west of South Africa and Madagascar, an undersea volcanic chain breaks water twice to form the charismatic islands of Mauritius and Réunion. Ex-British Mauritius has a mountainous southern half peppered with singular peaks, of which the highest is the Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire (828m). Still-French Réunion is wilder and higher, with the active volcano of the Piton de la Fournaise (2,632m) and a mountainous core that soars to a height of 3,069m at the Piton des Neiges. To the west of the Piton there is no higher mountain at this latitude, close to the Tropic of Cancer, until you have travelled most of the way around the globe, past Australia, and reached the Chilean Andes.

The Mauritian mountains are distinctive and alluring, but hardly anyone climbs them. It’s nearly impossible to find a local who even knows where to start. The island is encircled by a coral reef that produces lots of white sand strands and, hard though it is to believe, impoverished souls seem to prefer lying comatose on these.

It’s different on Réunion. There are no beaches here and the rugged, mist-enshrined interior is as strange and exotic a botanical garden as any CGI-enhanced fantasy film could envisage. The climate is tropical and the 3,000m elevation differential produces an astonishing variety of flora. At lush lower elevations, mimosa, hibiscus, bougainvillea, jacaranda and others produce a kaleidoscope of colour. Fields of sugar cane, lentils and geraniums (cultivated for their oil) are commonplace. Exotic trees and alpine plants reach towards the heights.

I’d dreamed of going there since, as a teenager, I’d read an Alan Williams’ Réunion-set thriller. I was enthralled by his descriptions of daring roads that wound up exposed mountainsides to remote villages, which themselves were dwarfed by the high peaks above.

The cost and logistics of seeing it all for myself seemed insuperable until, in 1996, there arose an opportunity to lecture at the University of Mauritius (which is another story). Réunion lay only a short, bumpy plane ride away on a rickety old turbo prop. August was not the best time to go (October to March is the dry summer season), but the timing was not mine to choose.

The main draw on Réunion is the trio of high cirques that scallop the Piton des Neiges: Cilaos, Mafate and Salazie. These are no ordinary European-type cirques of the kind found, say, in the Alps. Each is huge and complex, having an area of between 30 and 40 square miles and its own network of trails. The 37-miles-long R1 long-distance trail links the three cirques by climbing over the ridges that separate them and, in so doing, circumnavigating the Piton at a high level. From the trail’s 2,478m highpoint, it seemed from the map that the summit itself could be reached, and it was to this end that I had lugged backpacking gear around Mauritius.

The expedition turned into the most incredible and most strenuous of any I have attempted. Cloud forests of vertical mud had me vowing never again to complain about the state of British paths, while the searing heat and humidity made me realise for the first time how lucky British hillwalkers are to live in a temperate climate. But what an adventure!

The route began in the dramatic Cirque de Cilaos, reached by a convoluted road whose negotiation was a thrill ride in itself. Surrounded by high mountain walls (remparts) and chock full of canyons, waterfalls and rocky enclaves, it seemed a fantastical place to a humble British hillwalker. Its name is said to derive from a Malagasy word meaning ‘the place one never leaves’, but the R1 beckoned and its call was irresistible. In steep switchbacks, it climbed 700m up a wooded slope to the 2,082m Col du Taibit then descended more gently for 450m to Marla, a small hamlet in the adjacent Cirque de Mafate. Unused as I was to the exercise, this was quite enough for a first day on the trail.

Mafate was a less dramatic but even more remote spot than Cilaos. Helicopters served the small population that lived there, but otherwise it could only be reached on foot. I camped in a lentil field near a treasure trove of a small grocery store whose ice-cold bière went down a treat.

The following morning broke crisp and clear, as was to be the case every day. Only later, as the rising sun heated the air, did mist rise and envelop the summits. I spent the day packless, exploring the cirque’s ravines and waterfalls. At a spectacular spot called Les Trois Roches (The Three Rocks), the river plunged into a narrow slot chasm hidden in the middle of a smooth rock tableland. No wonder canyoneering was such a popular sport on the island.

On Day three, I shouldered my pack once more, climbed out of Mafate and crossed the 1,942m Col de Fourche to the Cirque de Salazie. The 300m ascent was less than half as much as that out of Cilaos but proved an order of magnitude more difficult. After crossing the Plaine des Tamarins, with its strange tamarind trees and their peculiar dangling fruit pods, the route developed into a testing climb through misty woods dripping with moisture. Long stretches of sodden moss had been made passable only by floating rafts of unstable logs across them.

The 1,000m descent of the far side of the col required even more concentration. The steep, slippery trail skirted abrupt drop-­offs whose mist-enshrouded depths I was more than content to imagine rather than see, yet the hushed atmosphere in the cloud forest was otherworldly. The silence was broken only by the occasional day-hiker who would loom out of the murk with encouragements of ‘Bon Courage!’

The waterfall-studded Cirque de Salazie was the largest and perhaps the most serenely beautiful of the three great cirques. With access by road from the other side of the island, there was a proper village here, called Hell-bourg. It even boasted a patisserie whose delicacies it would have been churlish not to sample. When I pitched my tent on the village outskirts, all was right with the world, but if I thought the going had been tough so far…

On Day four, I climbed up into the cloud forest once more. The main trail took such a roundabout route that I opted for a more direct variation that knocked a whole four miles off the distance. Mistake.

The abomination of a path was little more than a rollercoaster of ankle-deep mud that climbed through a labyrinth of moisture-laden trees, up and down slippery inclines of wet rock and tangled roots. With a heavy pack, in the heat and humidity, the effort required to straddle the deepest mud and duck under low-lying branches was draining. There were vertical sections of oozing morass that required you to haul yourself up from tree root to tree root. A couple of particularly ridiculous sections would have been impassable without the provision of fixed ladders.

I confess there was much cursing before I rejoined the main trail, a strength-sapping 1,250m above Hell-bourg. Only then did the going ease as the vegetation thinned and bare lava appeared underfoot. A further 300m ascent brought me to a small hut (the Gîte de la Caverne Dufour) at 2,478m, just below the ridge crest that separated Salazie from Cilaos. I pitched my tent. It was from here that I intended to climb the Piton.

There were a few people sardined into the hut and I was able to obtain some much needed water from the precious supply held in a roof tank fed by rain and cloud. As darkness fell, the temperature dropped alarmingly, yet still I was lured outside the tent into the cold night air by an unexpected spectacle: the cloud had dispersed to reveal a sparkling skyscape of strange southern hemisphere stars. The name Piton des Neiges (Snow Peak) had seemed somewhat fanciful, but it was now clear from the low temperature that it could sport an occasional dusting of snow, and that such an occurrence must indeed be worthy of note in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

I shivered all night in my thin summer sleeping bag and refused to leave it the following morning until the sun hit the tent. I emerged blinking into blue-sky sunshine above a sea of puffy white cloud, with the Piton’s summit just visible 600m above. I set off for it in bitter wind, so dazed from the previous day’s exertions that I forgot my balaclava and lost precious time returning for it.

Morning, 3,069m, Indian Ocean

Patches of ice glazed the rock. White paint marks indicated the route. Cloud billowed up from below, engulfed me for a moment then fell back as I climbed above it again. It was a race to the summit. The final stretch led up a rocky couloir to the summit ridge and an astonishing aerial view of Cilaos, seen through deep holes in the cloud.

Then the rounded summit itself, an unremarkable spot made exceptional by its breathtaking situation. I was standing on top of the highest point in the Indian Ocean, a whole 3,000m of vertical distance below. The cloud layer stretched in all directions, like a cotton wool cushion on which it seemed possible to float, and beyond that, in every direction, the endless blue sea.

As the cloud crept up the mountainside and my sunlit summit perch dwindled, I seemed to be balancing on a speck of land suspended in the air. It was at the same time both magical and unnerving. Then the cold clammy hand of the cloud grabbed me for good and it was time to leave this spot of which I had so long dreamed and to which I would probably never return.

The remainder of the day passed in a blur. I raced down to the gîte, retrieved tent and pack and descended into the cloud forest one last time. The steep trail down to Cilaos seemed endless. When I finally rolled into the campground, I could barely pitch the tent before falling asleep. But the following morning, as is the way of things, I was already missing the heights.

Twenty years later, the R1 is much improved. There are easier variations than the route I followed. In the summer season, the ground is drier. And yet… call me incorrigible, but I’m glad I was afforded the opportunity to hike the R1 when it was at its wildest. It’s a cliché that the more you put into something, the more you get out of it, but clichés are clichés for a reason. Let those who wish to do so lie in soporific torpor on a Mauritian beach until their skins turn to leather. The memory of that battle in the cloud-swept highlands of Réunion still makes my heart soar as I write.