Cerro Chirripo, Costa Rica’s highest peak, rewards hikers with marvelous views

To stand atop Cerro Chirripo, at 12,530 feet Costa Rica’s highest peak, and watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean about 50 miles away, you must first excel at waking up in the dark. Four a.m. is okay; 3:30 is even better. At that hour, the stone floors of Base Crestones, an environmental research station that allows up to 60 backpackers to sleep in its spare dormitory beds each night, are cold enough to freeze your feet through two pairs of woolen socks. There’s a good reason for the unheated station’s nickname: the Refrigerator. Here, at 11,200 feet, mid-June might as well be mid-winter.

The first eastern glow of sunrise is still two hours away, but the summit of Chirripo lies two miles distant and more than 1,000 feet up. Now is a good time to find a head lamp and begin flexing the stiff leather of your hiking boots.

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The mountains of the Talamanca Range run like so many vertebrae down the length of Costa Rica, northwest to southeast, and on a clear morning, their summits tear through the soft fabric of the low-lying clouds that form over the interior’s impenetrable forests. The view from here — to the east, the Atlantic; to the west, the Pacific — is awesome in its totality. Look south: That’s Panama.

There are plenty of thrills to be had in Costa Rica, a country that arguably invented eco-tourism as a form of sustainable economic development. But for all the jungle zip-lining, white-water paddling and quetzal-spotting that awaits the adventurous traveler, there are few moments as sublime as standing on the heights, wind-whipped and bleary-eyed, waiting for day to break. (Even Thoreau, deeply shaken by his 1846 ascent of Maine’s Mount Katahdin, understood this: “The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe. . . . Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.”)

Yet Cerro Chirripo is hardly inaccessible. For even the scrappiest shoestringer, a modicum of planning and a warm sleeping bag are the only essentials. Oh, and a watch with three alarms — the more jarring, the better.

The bus from San Isidro del General, a regional seat on the Inter-American Highway, to San Gerardo de Rivas, at the base of Chirripo National Park, leaves daily at 6:30 a.m. from the central market. The 13-mile road to San Gerardo quickly becomes a series of deep ruts and potholes stitched together by the occasional patch of ungraded gravel. Paralleling the Rio Chirripo Pacifico through swaths of untouched jungle, the ride, if you can stay awake, is spectacular.

My partner, Caitlyn Olson, and I both fall asleep. The bus driver idles outside the park’s ranger station a mile south of town, and barks mildly at us in the rearview mirror until we scramble out the back door, trailing our backpacks.

The Ministry of Environment and Energy oversees all of Costa Rica’s parks and preserves — more than 25 percent of the country is protected — and applies its own peculiar bureaucracy to permits within Chirripo National Park. In the dry season, December to May, it’s recommended that you have reservations up to 12 weeks in advance. This involves wiring money to a Costa Rican bank account. It’s easier to simply show up outside the agency’s San Gerardo office early in the morning and claim one of the first-come, first-served permits. (There is no rainy season in Costa Rica, according to tourism boosters, only a “green season,” but even then a permit is easy to come by.)