Cerro de Punta (4393ft): Highest Point in Puerto Rico

SummaryNone
OwnerMatthew Gilbertson
Creation Date2011-03-27 15:55:29 UTC-0400
DescriptionCerro de Punta: The Roof of Puerto Rico
4,393ft
March 20, 2011 10:14am
Matthew Gilbertson, Amanda Morris, and Mrs. Morris

Amanda's Picasa Web Album with picture captions

Matthew and Eric's State High Points Page: http://web.mit.edu/matthewg/Public/high_points/

Even though Puerto Rico isn't a state, it is still part of the US and still has a highest point. Officially Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, but there has been growing discussion about the possibility of statehood. Just to be safe, me, Amanda, and her mom decided to climb Cerro de Punta -- the roof of La Isla del Encanto (the Island of Enchantment) -- in case Puerto Rico does become the 51st state.

The journey to Cerro de Punta began in Boston for me + Amanda, and in DC for her mom. We decided that Puerto Rico would be the perfect spring break location: it's warm, accessible, has a highest point, and we hadn't visited before. For $300 and 4hrs of flying you can actually get from Boston to San Juan more easily than the west coast. Plus, it has the feel of a different country but provides the comforts of the rest of the US: drinkable water, same currency, some English, and few people trying to rip you off. So we headed first to San Juan, the capital.

We discovered that the best way to get around Puerto Rico was by car, even though the driving is sometimes a little trickier than in the rest of the US. Often lanes vanish and merge without warning. Giant wheel-swallowing craters in the road lurk around every corner. And the mountain roads are so curvy and narrow that you need to honk before every curve so oncoming traffic can slow down.

After obtaining the camping permits at the Jardin Botanico in San Juan we drove west. Our plan was to camp the first night in Bosque Estatal de Rio Abajo (Rio Abajo State Forest), a rainforest area in the north-central region. We had decided upon the park after many hours of research and phone calls.

It's extremely difficult to find camping and parks information for Puerto Rico. There are many nice state forests and parks on the island, but there are very few official websites and details are slim. The best parks/camping guides we found were travel websites like letsgo.com and fodors.com, along with Wikipedia. We also used Google Earth to look at other peoples’ pictures and view aerial photos.

To add to the difficulty there’s also a huge amount of bureaucracy involved in obtaining a camping permit. You can’t just show up to the park and pay for a campsite. You need to reserve a site more than a week in advance (even if it’s the low season), pay in advance, and check-in for the campsites in San Juan, 50 miles away. Through hours of phone calls Amanda’s mom had luckily identified two key people who enabled us to navigate through the system: Carmen and Darien. Throughout the parks system (DRNA) they were universally known just by first name.

When we arrived at the park we were supposed to get another permit at the guard house before it closed at 3:30pm, but arrived 4 minutes late and the ranger had already left. No problem, we thought, and continued driving towards the campground.

It felt like we had entered a different world. Palm trees and bamboo were everywhere. We had started out that morning in cold, brown Boston and were now in a sunny green rainforest in Puerto Rico. As it turned out we were the only campers in the park that evening so I’m not sure why all of the hassle with the permit was necessary.

To be ultralight we had brought one small two-person tent for Amanda + her mom, along with a tarp and mosquito net-shelter for me. The idea was that we could all hang out under the tarp if it rained. After hiking to an awesome little cave back in the jungle we were lulled to sleep by the sounds of hundreds of chirping coqui tree frogs.

Day 2:

We continued on our way towards Cerro de Punta the next day. First we stopped by the Arecibo Radio Telescope, the world’s largest telescope. It’s a massive 1000ft-diameter spherical aluminum reflector built over a sinkhole in the mountains. Next we headed south to Cabo Rojo, the southwesternmost point in Puerto Rico, for some swimming at the beach. We camped that night at Lago Luchetti.

Day 3:

Next day we explored another interesting state forest, Bosque Estatal de Guánica. It was rumored that the park was home to many tropical birds. By “many” I think they must have actually meant “6.”

After Guánica it was time to put on our game faces and head to the high point. We turned north at Ponce and started the drive into the mountains. As we climbed the vegetation changed from cactus and dry little bushes to lush jungle with palm trees.

The roads became much more challenging. We turned east onto Highway 143, part of “La Ruta Panoramica,” a highway that transects the island from west to east along the spine of La Cordillera Central. It reminds me of the Blue Ridge Parkway, except that the road is only about 1.5 lanes wide and you need to honk before all the blind turns to alert oncoming drivers. I’ve never seen a road that curvy in the rest of the US. Amanda’s mom did an expert job at the helm.

Navigating in Puerto Rico is also a little tricky. Amanda had purchased a good highway map at Barnes and Noble’s that we used to plan the trip. Unfortunately though not all the roads showed up on the map and some small windy roads appeared just as large as major highways, even though, as we found out, they were much slower. To supplement the highway map we had printed Google directions, which showed us the “fastest” route. However we soon discovered that it was much more relaxing to take the major highways rather than the curvy little roads suggested by Google, even though they might be a few minutes slower. I also brought my hiking GPS (a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx) on which I had loaded the topographic maps along with the roads. I think that my hiking GPS was more effective than a car GPS would have been because you can easily scroll across the map and you know which roads are hilly because you can read the topo contours.

Thus, using a combination of Google directions, a highway map, and a hiking GPS, and with Amanda’s mom at the wheel we navigated our way through the interior Puerto Rican highlands. Soon we arrived at La Hacienda Gripiñas, a beautiful mountain lodge at the northern foot of Cerro de Punta, just outside of Jayuya.

The conventional route up Cerro de Punta is a 0.7mi hike along the steep service road that begins southeast of the mountain on La Ruta Panoramica. But that sounded too easy. I had read that there’s also secret route that starts near Hacienda Gripiñas and climbs from the north. Google Maps’ aerial photos confirmed that the roads on the north side ended within a mile of the summit, so I figured that even if you couldn’t find the secret trail you could still bushwhack to the top.

But when we arrived at Hacienda Gripiñas it became apparent that the jungle would be far too slow to bushwhack through. We would need to find the trail. I asked the secretary at the check-in desk if he knew about the route. He said it existed but “you would need to hire a guide” to show you the route. Ha. To me “need to” is a relative term. The “need” to hire a guide made it sound even more intriguing.

But alas, it was not meant to be. There were only a few hours of daylight remaining and we would have 2000ft of climbing. Our consensus was to wait until tomorrow and drive 20 miles to the conventional route which starts southeast of the summit. It paid off because that afternoon we went for a little hike through a fruit plantation and found plenty of bananas and oranges that had been “knocked to the ground by the storm.” It was like we were walking through the fruit aisle in the grocery store.

Day 4: Summit Day

We got back on Highway 143 and headed towards Cerro de Punta. The clouds became denser as we climbed and we had little confidence that we would get a good view. Luckily I had marked on my GPS the parking lot for the summit trail, because there was no road sign. I had read on SummitPost that there’s several radio towers on the summit, which is accessible by a steep service road. SummitPost had advised to leave the car in the parking lot and hike the road because it’s so steep. As we began hiking three 4-wheel drive vehicles drove past us and headed up the road. But it turned out we had made the right decision because soon the vehicles encountered a very steep and slippery section and could proceed no farther. They had to back down about 0.25 mi of some of the steepest road in the country, which has a 15% average grade (3800ft – 4250ft in 0.6mi).

We climbed upwards through the jungle and the radio towers emerged through the fog. With one final climb up some stairs to the top of a large mound we found ourselves on the summit of the Island of Enchantment. We could only see about 100ft through the thick clouds, but the view wasn’t our objective. We basked in the glory of being the highest people on the island. From my research the closest higher mountain was La Grande Soufrière (4,869ft), the highest point on the French Island of Guadeloupe, 353 miles away.

We took the requisite jumping photos, but since Eric wasn’t present there weren’t any juggling pictures to be taken. Pretty soon the family who had been trying to drive up the mountain appeared, and it was time for us to relinquish the summit to them. We gathered a few of the requisite summit rocks and walked down to the car.

We spent the next 5 days seeing more of Puerto Rico, and here’s our itinerary:

Day 5: hiking in El Yunque National Forest, the only rainforest in National Park System.
Day 6: Ferry to the Island of Culebra, snorkeling
Day 7: Beaches on Culebra and snorkeling
Day 8: Ferry back to Fajardo, explore Old San Juan
Day 9: Fly back to BOS

Lessons learned:
1) You need a good GPS, map, and driver to drive in the mountains. We took the wrong road only about four times but Amanda and her mom didn’t know because I acted like it was just part of the route.
2) There’s plenty of good camping in Puerto Rico. You’ll have the most success in getting permits if you call and talk to the key people such as Carmen or Darien.
3) Knowing Spanish really helps. I’d estimate that only 10% of people in the mountains speak English. Most people in the cities speak some English.

And that’s how you climb the highest point in Puerto Rico.