Morne Diablotin Climber's Log

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jmitch421

jmitch421 - Mar 28, 2016 8:41 am Date Climbed: Mar 16, 2016

Summit of Dominica  Sucess!

Climbed this mountain alone the trail is easy to follow and near to the top it is very overgrown and dense tree branches and roots barely what I would call a trail but you can follow red pieces of ribbon tied to the branches and there is not an easy way to get lost due to there being almost only one way to go. Near the top there are several false summits before you reach the true summit. At the final summit there is a clearing where many people can finally spread out and relax after scrambling for over an hour. The survey marker is not on the highest point but on the peak before it I guess the surveyers had enough of the difficult route and said f*ck it and didnt put the market on the actual high point.

Shaylee

Shaylee - Jan 9, 2012 12:47 pm Date Climbed: Jan 3, 2012

Diablotin  Sucess!

Jan 3 2012

Scott

Scott - Jan 9, 2012 8:55 am Date Climbed: Jan 3, 2012

Diablotin  Sucess!

Today Shaylee (my seven year old daughter) and I climbed Morne Diablotin, the highest mountain in Dominica. Some sources say that Diablotin is the toughest climb in Dominica, but we found it to be slightly easier than Trois Piton.

From Portsmouth we took a taxi to the beginning of the trail and asked the taxi driver to pick us up at 4:30 PM from the same location. The trail to Diablotin starts off with a steady grade, but isn’t too difficult. The rain forest in marvelous and we got some quick glimpses of the rare endemic parrots which happen to squawk quite loudly.

Once the ridge is reached, the climb became much more challenging and we were constantly wading through deep mud (sometimes nearly knee-deep) and climbing over roots and logs. This is what is known as a jungle-gym climb because you are often climbing over roots several feet above the ground. There were some slippery rock scrambles as well. The going was quite slow and because of the mist it was quite slippery as well. It was also the muddiest climb that I have ever done.

The weather was mostly misty, but on occasion the sky would partially clear for brief period and at other times there would be heavy rain. After lots of tiring work, we found ourselves at the summit, but we couldn’t see that much because of the mist.

The climb down was as challenging as the climb up and we had to hurry in order to get back to the trailhead by 4:30 PM. We had some torrential rains and Shaylee had a couple falls and got a few bruises.

We made our way down the mountain as quickly as we could, but we missed the 4:30 PM time by seven minutes. When we didn’t see our taxi waiting for us, we walked down the deserted road for over an hour before another taxi picked us up. He knew the other taxi driver that was supposed to pick us up and it sounds like he left for a couple minutes to go get some water and it just happened to be at the exact time when we got to the road and thought he wasn’t coming. Everything worked out fine, but it was a pretty long day.

Lolli

Lolli - Jan 17, 2011 6:48 pm

Cool place

Recommended. Signed to see which kind of suggestion of climbs I get now :-)

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