Dominica - Morne Diablotins (4,747ft)

SummaryNone
OwnerEric Gilbertson
Creation Date2013-04-26 21:46:01 UTC-0400
DescriptionMorne Diablotins (4,747ft) – Roof of Dominica
Eric Gilbertson
Dec 31, 2012

LINKS:
Our Country High Points Page
Our Adventures Page


I switched my 2-door RAV 4 into park, turned off the ignition, and started rotating the steering wheel far to the right. I was parked on a slight incline at the trailhead of Morne Diablotins in Dominica, and didn’t want the car to roll too far if the brakes failed. As I kept rotating the steering wheel I heard an ominous “click,” and then the wheel locked. “Uh-oh,” I thought. The wheel now wouldn’t turn in either direction. I struggled for 20 minutes, but nothing worked to unlock the wheel. I was out of cell service, on a lonely road in the middle of the jungle, far from any city, at night. I could still climb the mountain, but getting back to the airport may be tricky with a car stuck turning right. I sat down on the ground to ponder my options.

WINDIEST ROADS IN THE WORLD

I was in the Caribbean for a week over Christmas Break trying to finish off a few more country highpoints. On Sunday, Dec 31 I descended from Mount Scenery, the country highpoint of the Netherlands, on Saba Island and boarded an early afternoon flight to my next objective, Dominica.

I landed at Melville Hall, Dominica at 3:45pm on Sunday and immediately approached the car rental counter, with my Budget car reservation printed out in hand. There were three rental counters in the building, but only one person sat behind the desk playing with his cell phone.

“Hi, I have a reservation,” I said, handing him the form showing my 4-door economy car I’d selected online.

“All the cars are out. We only have an 8-passenger van,” the man responded matter-of-factly. The reservation form obviously had no significance down in the Caribbean.

“Um…do any other rental places have cars?” I asked hopefully.
The man turned to his side and woke up another guy napping in the corner.

“Yeah, yeah I got a car mon,” the second man said. “A 2-door Rav-4.”

“Great! I’ll take it,” I said in relief. I filled out all the paperwork, walked back into the airport to buy an official Dominica drivers permit, and then got in the car. The Rav-4 was the best vehicle I could have hoped for in Dominica: it was short and narrow enough to easily navigate small, windy roads, and all-terrain enough to get up rough gravel.

On the dashboard of the car a sign warned in big letters “DRIVE ON THE LEFT. HONK OFTEN.” I looked at the sign, and then thought back to Matthew’s description of his experience driving in Dominica a year ago. He had said there wasn’t a straight stretch of road in the whole country, that almost every turn was a blind turn, and that the roads were extremely narrow with no shoulders. This sign corroborated his description, and I mentally prepared myself for the difficult journey ahead. It didn’t help matters that Dominica is left-side drive, the opposite of the US.

I carefully backed the car up, and pulled out of the parking lot. Luckily it’s difficult to get lost in Dominica. There’s basically just one road going around the island with few turnoffs. I headed north out of Melville Hall, driving intermittently through lush jungle and small villages. I was amazed how many blind turns the Dominican DOT could throw into every mile of road! I had to honk the horn several times a minute, it seemed, trying to warn potential oncoming cars to stay out of my lane. The roads were narrow enough that it was almost impossible to avoid drifting into the opposing lane during a turn.

I passed through the small villages of Wesley, Anse Du Me, and Hampstead before hitting the first major town – Portsmouth. I had arrived in Dominica with no food in my backpack – thus having nothing to declare and clearing customs quickly – and now I stopped to stock up for the next day. I drove around looking hopefully for a grocery store, but couldn’t recognize any building as obviously selling food. I finally asked some locals and they pointed me to a nondescript little building. I went inside and scrounged up some bread, junk food, and water bottles from the meager pickings and then continued south.

As the sun was setting I turned off the main road just before the town of Dublanc at a sign for Sindicate. This road was even narrower than the main road, and wound straight up the hills into the interior of the Island, but luckily there were no other cars out tonight. I wound through fruit plantations, then into the jungle until finally reaching a sign for Morne Diablotins half an hour later. I pulled off the road, parked the car, and that’s where the steering wheel got stuck.

STUCK

After my initial 20 minutes of fighting with the steering wheel, I had sat down to ponder my options.
1. Give up and go to sleep, hike the mountain in the morning, and afterwards walk/hitchhike into town to find a tow truck to get me back to the airport
2. Walk until I could find a cell signal, and call the rental company to ask what to do (but they were already closed)
3. Fight the wheel again.
I chose option 3. What could it hurt to struggle a little more? I spent another 15 minutes trying to press every button in the car, pushing the car back and forward, kicking the wheels, yanking the wheel really hard, all to no avail. The car wouldn’t even turn on when I tried to turn the keys.
Finally, I tried sticking the keys in just halfway, and then pulling the wheel the opposite direction, and presto! It unclicked and returned to its normal position.

I let a huge sigh of relief, took out the keys, and didn’t dare touch the steering wheel again. Finally, I could worry about merely climbing the mountain. I took out my small tent, walked past a sign the may or may not have said ‘no camping’, and camped about a hundred feet into the woods.

THE JUNGLE GYM

I awoke at 7am and was packed and ready to go thirty minutes later. Now I could with certainty recognize the letters that spelled ‘no camping’ on the sign at the trailhead, but I had already taken down my tent so didn’t worry about it.

The trail at the base was steep but very well-maintained, with wooden steps leading through lush jungle. After an hour and a half I emerged on a small knoll poking out above the trees, with a view that I imagined being amazing if I weren’t inside the clouds. I imagine this is the point where most people stop hiking, because the trail seriously deteriorated afterwards. The viewpoint was obviously not the top, but I could envision it taking someone 2-3 hours to climb up there, and the trailhead sign had warned the hike could take 2-3 hours.

Beyond the viewpoint the trail basically turned into a muddy jungle gym. That morning I had made the decision to hike in crocs instead of sneakers, and the muddy trail was now vindicating that decision. Sometimes the trail would be flat, with shin-deep muddy sections that would suck the crocs right off my feet. Other times it was steep, requiring me to use my hands to pull my body up on tree branches. At all times it was a jungle gym. Big roots criss-crossed the trail at waist or head height almost the entire way, requiring acrobatic skills to crawl over, under, and through the jungle gym.

If I’d had an axe and a full day I could have cleared out the entire trail, but for some reason the Dominicans decided not to maintain this last stretch. Perhaps they want people to truly earn the summit of the country. I struggled through the jungle for 45 minutes before emerging on another small rocky outlook. I noticed a small geological survey marker in the rock that said “Morne Diablotins.” This is the second place people might be fooled into thinking was the summit. On a cloudy day like today it certainly looked like the tallest point around, and it even had this official marker to prove it. But, I knew from Matthew’s account hiking this mountain the previous year that this was merely a false summit.

I admired the view into the clouds for a moment, but then plunged back into the jungle. Fifteen minutes later I finally emerged on the true summit of Morne Diablotins, as verified by my GPS and the fact that nothing was obviously taller around me. It had taken 2.5 hours from the car, just as the sign at the trailhead had predicted (assuming it actually meant travel time to the summit for a reasonably-fast hiker). It had been drizzling most of the morning, but miraculously as I got to the summit the clouds broke and I got a panoramic view of almost the entire island.

I hung out for about 10 minutes, until the clouds rolled back in and it started drizzling again. The summit was actually kind of exposed to the rain, so I ducked back into the jungle and continued back down the trail.

BACK TO THE CAR

I soon emerged from the jungle gym and started hiking down the normal trail. Not far past the exit of the jungle gym I met a couple hiking up the trail.

“How much farther?” they asked, predictably.

“Um, I left the top an hour ago,” I responded. They looked disappointed. “And the trail gets a lot worse real soon. You have to use your hands most of the way to climb over and under stuff. It is pretty fun, though.” I could see what they were thinking ‘worse?! It’s already a hard trail!’

The man in front looked down at the muddy crocs on my feet, my bare chest (I was going shirtless since it was raining) and my skimpy little day pack. He and his wife were decked out in serious hiking boots, big packs, fancy trekking poles, and all kinds of fancy hiking accessories.

“Do you live around here?” he asked. “You do this mountain a lot?”

He must have thought I was treating the hike pretty nonchalantly based on my attire and attitude.

“Nope, never been here before. I responded. “Good luck. I should also mention, the first viewpoint you get to isn’t the top. And the second one that has a little marker in the rock that says ‘Morne Diablotins’ is also not the top. The trail gets even worse after that one, but the next viewpoint actually is the top. Have fun!”

I continued down the trail, jogging at this point because there were no jungle-gym roots to get in the way. I don’t think I’d told those people a single word they’d wanted to hear, and I would doubt if they turned around at the second viewpoint (or maybe the first) and called that close enough.

By 12:30pm I reached my car for a 5-hr round trip. I celebrated by picking a few grapefruit from the trees nearby and eating some lunch.


BACK TO THE AIRPORT

Somehow I’d planned on the hike taking all day based on other reports I’d read, and here I was with half a day still remaining. I decided to explore a little more of Dominica, so drove back down to the main road and looped up to the northern peninsula, then back down towards the airport. I passed the airport on the east coast of the island, drove into the jungle in the interior and found a stealthy dirt side road to camp out on that night.

I flew out the next morning for the next objective of the trip – Mt Gimie in St Lucia.