Osorno

pristine canonical ice cream cone

Mountain: Volcan Osorno
Altitude: 8,701 ft | 2,652 m
Location: Los Lagos, Chile, 41°06′S 72°29′W

It looks like a conical drawing of an ice cream. The smooth, creamy surface is pristine, like a tempting scoop atop a crispy cone. For some reason, I imagine it as pineapple ice cream. It definitely doesn't taste like pineapple at 2 AM when we start our climb. Yet its perfect form beams at me through the night. I feel its cold chill as we ascend in crampons. Acclimatized, the altitude doesn’t suppress my hunger, and I plan to have an ice cream on the descent. Osorno Volcano, at the start of Chile's Lake District, might look cartoonish. However, its deceptive appearance belies the reality. The steep slopes of snow and ice are far from soft swirls. They present hard, unyielding surfaces that can lead to serious falls. Climbing this volcano is a physical reminder that not all is as sweet and simple as it seems.