Pico de la Nieve, La Palma

A day off the boat, and a big one: from the marina at sea level straight up to Pico de la Nieve, 2,239 m up on the rim of the Caldera de Taburiente, and back down again on foot.

La Palma is a young volcanic island and very much still an active one. It rises steeply out of deep Atlantic water, and its spine of mountains climbs to well over 2,000 m within a few kilometres of the coast, which is why it’s often called the steepest island in the world for its size. At its heart is the Caldera de Taburiente, a huge erosion crater close to 10 km across whose walls drop away almost 2,000 m in places. It’s now a national park, and Pico de la Nieve is one of the peaks along its rim. The island’s highest point, Roque de los Muchachos, with its cluster of observatory domes, is a little further round the rim. In the south, the Cumbre Vieja ridge is still building the island: its last eruption, Tajogaite in 2021, ran for almost three months and sent lava flows all the way down to the sea.

The walk up shows the whole range of it. On the island’s northeastern slopes, the moist trade winds pile up against the mountains and keep the slopes damp, feeding dense forest. Lower down it’s laurel forest, the kind that once covered much of southern Europe, and higher up it gives way to tall Canary Island pines, whose thick bark lets them survive forest fires. Above the treeline, bare volcanic rock and scree lead up to the rim, with steep faces falling away into the caldera.

The weather went from bad to worse. It was already cloudy at the marina, and we were in fog by the time we were climbing through the forest: the same trade-wind clouds that keep it so green. At the top there was cold rain instead of a view into the caldera, and on the way down the wind picked up and the rain came at us sideways. We were soaked by the end, but it was still a good hike.