Slow travel, and the moments that stay with you

Nicaraguan Volcano Boarding: Lava Eggs and Broken Noses

The outlandish sights from guiding volcano boarding trips in Nicaragua

Coveralls, googles, and ready for volcano boarding | Photo Credit: Daniel Purdy

Cerro Negro (Black Hill) stood like a filthy coal miner emerging from the Earth’s depths back into the world’s verdant beauty. In every direction, Nicaragua’s lush hills softly rolled across the horizon, advertising their thick, jungled forests and endless shades of green. But here, black volcanic ash, grit, and gravelly rock prevailed.

It wasn’t because Cerro Negro was the youngest volcano in Central America, having first appeared in 1850, and thus hadn’t had time to grow the same lush forests as the surrounding volcanoes. But rather like the youngest child in a family seeking attention, Cerro Negro had a petulant habit of erupting far more frequently than its older siblings. Therefore, the jagged borders of the volcano’s reach carved two worlds apart, separating this arid black desert from the lush forest just steps away. From a satellite image, Cerro Negro looked like a dark smudge on a green canvas, the black earth showing the path lava took during the last eruption.

But decades of ash-laden belching had perfectly graded the slope with volcanic gravel. As such, the whimsy of lunatics gave rise to volcano boarding, and it was cringingly simple.

You took a wooden board, about one foot wide and four feet long, glued a white vinyl square (similar to kitchen or bathroom flooring material) to the bottom to reduce friction, tied a rope handle to the front, plopped yourself down, and whoosh! It was ludicrous. It was dangerous. But as outlandish as it seemed, its popularity was greater.

Guiding agencies and hostels led dozens of volcano-boarding excursions from nearby León. And, in the pursuit of a life beyond my desk, the first half of 2018 saw me guiding dozens of these half-day adventures. But one trip in particular permanently lodged itself in my memory as the summation of that activity’s addictive ridiculousness.

As always, our three-guide team led a sweaty hour-and-a-half ascent in full view of the blazing sun. Hefty canvas backpacks, with Quetzaltrekker’s signature yellow boards slung through the shoulder straps, released a cascade of sweat as we pushed towards the two-thousand-foot summit.

We smelled our destination approaching as a nose-crinkling wave of sulfuric steam washed over us. One last switchback. At the top, the volcano’s churning magnetism pulled everyone inward to admire Cerro Negro’s sizzling innards. Splotches of sickly yellow and rusty orange marked the volcano’s sulfur-laden steam vents.

A slow, hot hike to Cerro Negro’s summit with our gear | Photo Credit: Daniel Purdy

One of the smaller volcanoes in the region, Cerro Negro radiated pent-up little dog energy. We could feel, and certainly smell, the not insignificant volcanic activity churning below our feet. The region’s seismographs kept a close watch for imminent eruptions. However, if the volcano did decide that now was the time to release some pressure, we’d unfortunately be the first to know.

I pushed that thought to the back of my mind as I watched a local guide from another group scamper into a particularly steamy rock bed, an area most rational and flammable humans avoided. He turned back to his group with a gleaming white smile, and I recognized Antonio from León’s Big Foot Hostel. His curly black hair was streaked with sweat as he held up a hand, revealing a gleaming white egg.

The demonstration was familiar, and I quickly bade my group to turn and watch as Antonio approached a notably sizzling rock and quickly turned it over with his boot. Amidst the audible rush of steam, he cracked the egg and plopped the yolk onto the rock. To all the onlookers’ delight, Antonio jumped from one foot to the other in exaggerated impatience for a few moments before scraping the now-cooked egg onto a flat rock. Triumphantly, he held it up to his watching jury like Exhibit A at Cerro Negro’s trial for excessive heat.

Laughter and gasps gave way to sizzling vapor as several visitors began spashing their water bottles toward various rock beds. I could have been watching a horde of children splashing around a water park instead of adults scampering around an active volcano. I shared a smile with my co-guides as we turned our attention to volcano boarding.

We stayed at the pungent crater for only a few minutes before moving to the crater’s outside edge. Lush jungles and rolling mountainous landscape provided a dazzling contrast to the barren, sizzling wasteland we’d just turned from. Cameras and phones materialized as every member of our expedition admired the views and tried to make out Leon’s footprint about six miles distant.

However, curiosity and trepidation pulled our gazes downward to the scorched, rocky highway leading to the bottom, where we could just make out our covered passenger truck. A spindly, faint grey line ran from us to that truck, demarcating a shallow gully worn into the gravel by countless volcano boarders before us. This was one of four boarding “lanes,” and the gully’s slight shoulders helped keep our boarders on track without slicing sideways across the volcano. A meaningful silence descended as our guests contemplated the life choices that brought them to this moment.

The view from the start of our volcano boarding lane | Photo Credit: Daniel Purdy

Time to suit up. As one, boards and packs hit the black volcanic gravel, and guests started yanking on coveralls and googles. As smooth as the slope appeared, volcanic gravel was only marginally better than a field of broken glass. Razor-sharp edges abounded, and the stifling yellow coveralls protected our guests from the worst of it while the high school chemistry googles deflected any airborne detritus away from their eyes.

As one guide began a safety talk, my second co-guide and I turned toward the edge. This was always my favorite part. Side-by-side, we jumped.

We half-jogged and half-tumbled our way down the volcano. With each step, my foot slid several inches into the volcanic gravel, making it feel like I was constantly oozing into the volcano itself. The solution was to move fast and light, running down the hill without letting my feet slip too far. The result was a downward scramble as an expanding cloud of dust rose behind us.

Once I saw my designated halfway point about fifteen feet ahead, I took one last lunge forward and landed on both feet. My momentum and the loose stones did the rest, and I cascaded forward on a wave of black pebbles. My co-guide continued to the bottom, ready to collect our boarders and load them into the waiting truck.

My co-guide, Leo, running down Cerro Negro ahead of our volcano boarders | Photo Credit: Daniel Purdy

Above me, I saw thirty expectant faces on the crest of the volcano as I watched my co-guide give the final safety instructions. Moments later, I saw a plume of dust mingled with the bright yellow of our coveralls. Our first volcano boarder was on the way. To my left, a bright orange apparition flashed by. That could only be Bigfoot Hostel and their unmistakable rust-orange coveralls in the adjacent lane.

I waited. A few moments later, a second orange flash streaked by, this time accompanied by a high-pitched squeal of delight. Then a third.

A hard, distrustful glare formed in my eyes as I squinted up the hill to watch the yellow smudge pondousouly approaching me. We didn’t budget time in our schedule to watch one person take half an hour to creep down the volcano. To their credit, perhaps they had stage fright from being our group’s first volcano boarder, or maybe they had a premonition of what was about to happen.

Just as I let out an exasperated sigh at this anti-climactic start, the regular howls of joy and encouragement to my left suddenly ceased as a scream of terror cut through the dust cloud. I swiveled around just in time to see an orange-clad boarder streaking down the volcano much faster than was safe or, judging by the scream, intentional.

Countless occasions guiding these trips taught me that there’s a critical velocity, of sorts, to volcano boarding. Once you reach it, the shallow gullies could no longer hold the speeding board on course. Then, the board was very likely to jump from the lane and into unknown territory. That exact circumstance was now being demonstrated by this boarder from Bigfoot Hostel.

Before reaching their midway guide, the board seemed to leap out of the lane of its own accord and take the rider with it. For a moment, the pair were suspended three feet off the ground as they catapulted forward at maybe fifteen miles an hour. On a steep slope at that speed, it’s amazing how much forward progress those measly three feet yield before you return to Earth. In this case, it yielded plenty of time for the volcano board to wrest itself from the rider like a bucking bull.

As I watched, the board seemed to consciously decide to add injury to insult and pirouetted, presenting its slim, one-inch-thick side to the boarder. The rider’s helmet, goggles, and padded buff pulled over their mouth left little space to target, but the board artfully dodged this protection and made contact precisely on the tumbling boarder’s nose.

As the pair crashed back to the not-so-receptive embrace of a volcanic gravel field, a good thirty feet from where they’d become airborne, I heard a collective groan descend from the top of Cerro Negro. The Big Foot guide immediately jogged over to investigate.

His squirming guest, by and large, avoided any catastrophic damage. But his hands shot up to his nose to try and stem an oozing cascade of blood. His guide quickly yanked a white medical kit from a backpack.

“You good?” I shouted from my spot fifty feet away on our lane.

The guide turned and gave me a thumbs-up, showing he had the situation in hand.

Good enough for me, I thought to myself, inwardly relieved that I didn’t need to get involved.

But despite the fact that it wasn’t one of my guests who had crashed, I realized that we were far from immune to the effects of that misfortune. As I turned my attention upward to signal the next rider from our group, I remembered that I — or more specifically, the crash — was in full view of my already nervous charges at the top of Cerro Negro.

Twenty-nine faces gazed down at me. No, not quite in my direction. Every eyeball was riveted to the scene next to me, and the tension was suddenly more oppressive than the blazing sun beating down on my neck. Some had a hand up to their face, perhaps massaging their own nose in solidarity with the broken one to my left. But one thing was certain: not a soul was watching my pitiful attempts to get them moving.

I waved frantically and discharged a thumbs-up while shouting, “he’s okay!” Not that they could hear me at this distance. But to mock my efforts, the injured rider stood and faced the summit at that exact moment, displaying his fully saturated crimson smock for all to see. I could almost hear the collective gasps, and I could certainly see the sudden tension surge through everyone’s shoulders as they all seemed to take a step back from the edge.

Oh, great, I sarcastically thought to myself as I desperately tried to think of a way to regain the initiative while silently cursing the injured rider for spooking my group.

I waved my hands overhead to wrestle control of my group’s attention away from the scene to my left. Once I felt I had at least half the group watching, I again gave a thumbs-up and waved for the next boarder to come down. But no one moved, and the irony wasn’t lost on me as I considered what they were seeing.

On one side, they had me, their guide, signaling that everything was okay and encouraging them to slide down a volcano on a wooden board. But just steps away, they had a bloody scene from a rider who had just crashed trying to do the exact same thing.

At long last, the injured rider gave the summit a wave followed by a thumbs up as he shouldered his board and began to trudge down the volcano under his own steam. His compatriots in the Big Foot Hostel group gave a cheer, like spectators at a football game when an injured player hobbles off the field. The applause rippled through my group, and I finally saw an adventurous soul reach up and pull their goggles over their eyes as they approached the edge.

Cautiously at first, our group probed the volcanic lane, inching down before slowly accelerating. But the sheer exhilaration of volcano boarding is as contagious as it is virulent. With each board that whizzed by, the shrieks of frightened excitement and howls of adrenaline increased until the unlucky mixing of snout and board faded to a distant memory.

And that was Cerro Negro’s spell. Through the charade of cooking eggs in its steaming crater or the lunacy of rocketing down its razor-sharp slope on a wooden board, this place was magic. It was a different world, a new realm of ash and visceral molten power where the rules just didn’t apply.

Of course, we wouldn’t hop-step across hot coals or consider sledding down a rocky slope back home. But here, we could. The volcano’s simmering strength radiated outward, infecting all of us with the thrill and exhilaration of facing a new, uncharted domain for the first time. Yes, there were risks, from the demonstrated effects of hardwood on noses to the broader fact that we were sledding on the most active volcano in Central America.

Cerro Negro felt like a new, unexplored, desolate world | Photo Credit: Daniel Purdy

But somehow, Cerro Negro coaxed us to accept those risks. And seeing those inhibitions and timid glances melt into heart-pounding joy made every sweaty ascent well worth it. Even the broken-nosed boarder, nostrils stuffed with gauze, had jogged back up the trail to reattempt his ride down. Because some experiences just can’t be missed.

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