A Trek Up Blue Mountain
By Robert L. Batchelder

A full moon burned through the shifting clouds, which looked like sprinting ghosts in the thin mountain air. The eucalyptus trees surrounding Whitfield Hall gave the impression of standing in an Australian meadow, or on the temperate slopes of Haleakala crater on Maui. In fact, the scene resembled many places I’d seen, except Jamaica, where we now stood at the base of the island’s highest mountain. At 7,402 feet, the Blue Mountain peak was barely higher than the Colorado town where I grew up. But this giant began in the deep valleys of rural St. Thomas, where the Caribbean waves pounded the coast and coconut palms swayed in the muggy tradewinds.

Jamaica’s Blue Mountain region, located just northeast of Kingston, is known for producing some of the world’s most expensive gourmet coffee. The majority of it is bought directly by the Japanese, who pay upwards of $60 a pound for the stuff in retail shops. The scarcity of Blue Mountain coffee on American shelves keeps the price around $40 per pound, making it a novelty of the caffeine-addicted rich and famous.

We left Kingston by Jeep at midnight and drove up the battered dirt trail from Mavis Bank to Whitfield Hall. Many hikers overnight at the mountain hostel, leaving for the peak around 2:00 a.m. in order to view the sunrise from the top. Jim, John and I chose to skip the slumber, and began our trek shortly after parking the Jeep and breathing in the cool mountain air. The three of us were well suited for the adventure.

John Higi and I worked together at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, and had made several trips together, exploring various regions of the island. Jim Patnode was the husband of another American consular officer, Lynne Skeirik. Jim, Lynne, and I had explored the valleys of the Blue Mountain-area by Jeep once before, on Thanksgiving Day 1994. Jim was a robust, bearded man of around thirty-five. He had a child-like curiosity about the world, and was always eager for an adventure. All of us were in good physical shape, and, if anything, perhaps a bit overconfident in our abilities.

The first hour of the climb took us through broad, grassy meadows illuminated by the almost surreal-looking moon. It would not have been difficult to read a book in the moonlight that surrounded us, making it possible to see most of the valleys and peaks that encircled us as we climbed. About an hour up from Whitfield Hall lies a small hut and picnic area called Portland Gap. We took our first rest stop here and let several other climbers pass us on the trail. John and I pulled on sweatshirts to compensate for the colder air. Though I had only slept a few hours before leaving Kingston, I still felt relatively fresh and filled with adrenaline. After ten minutes we continued up the trail, which was now growing steeper and narrower. A dew had settled on everything around us, and made the rocky trail slippery under our feet.

For the next two hours, we continued to trudge up the narrow trail. The monotony of the gray, moonwashed path, combined with our lack of sleep, began to hypnotize me until I was overwhelmingly tired. At this elevation, we were surrounded by a lush canopy of trees that obscured our view of the mountain. The result was a kind of weary depression, which came partly from exhaustion, and partly from not knowing how close we were to our goal. Friends who had climbed the peak before gave varying accounts of the length of the hike. As near as I could figure, we could expect a four-hour ascent from Whitfield Hall.

Three hours into the hike, the trail wound into a clearing that gave us a view up the mountain. Though it was not clear exactly how distant the peak actually was, it appeared that we were within thirty minutes of reaching the top. We still had nearly an hour left until daybreak. Overcome with exhaustion and shivering from the cold, we decided to rest for a half-hour and replenish our bodies with water and Oreo cookies. I curled up as tightly as possible in my baggy sweatshirt, but the piercing wind ate straight through my clothing and caused me to shake uncontrollably. I somehow managed to nap for around fifteen minutes before Jim and John woke me to say it was time to continue our ascent. Around this time, I noticed that sharp pains were developing in my left knee. This sensation was not unfamiliar, as I occasionally developed similar pains after playing long tennis matches. An hour from the top of the Blue Mountain peak, however, did not seem like an opportune time to be plagued by this condition again.

I am always amazed at the ability of the human body to function on what can only be characterized as auto pilot after most conscious mental functions have completely shut down. For the final hour of the ascent, I was virtually sleepwalking, or at least hiking in a delirious state, in which the real and surreal -- conscious and subconscious -- blended into a single, blurred continuum. As the surroundings begin to light up with the breaking of dawn, I began to feel more alert and aware of features belonging to the material environment outside the fog in my head. I also became aware that we were, in fact, walking in a dense fog.

Upon reaching the summit around 7:00 a.m., we found ourselves in the thick of a heavy cloud mass which showed no signs of burning off with the sunrise. To our disappointment, we had no spectacular vista, no fiery orange sunrise, no clear view of the surrounding mountains, or of Cuba to the North. Instead, we were trapped in a swirling, damp fog which allowed us to see no more than fifty feet around us.

The peak of the Blue Mountain is not barren of trees and lush vegetation, as are the mountain tops in the Rocky Mountain range in Colorado. Instead, the summit is adorned with large berry bushes, ferns and other rainforest flora. There are only two man-made structures atop the peak: a crude concrete and stone shelter built by British troops during colonial rule, and a pyramid-shaped iron sculpture known as the "Trig Station," which signifies the highest point in Jamaica. Jim, John and I stood around this structure for nearly an hour waiting for glimpses of the sun through the thick cloud cover.

When the sun finally did break through the clouds, it was unbelievably beautiful. The sun itself appeared as a glowing disc through the fog. Around it, brilliant fiery explosions of every shade in the spectrum shot out as clouds swirled in front of the disc. With each explosion, the three of us cheered and begged the clouds to dissipate and allow the sun to break completely through. We continued to admire the spectacular display of nature’s fireworks while hoping in vain for a wider view of our surroundings. A short time later, we began our descent from the peak, walking back through forests, fields and slopes which bore no resemblance to their moonlit alter-egos. About twenty minutes down from the summit we began to see breaks in the cloud cover. For the first time, we had brilliant, unobstructed views of the St. Thomas coast to the South. Below us were coffee fields, river valleys, verdant mountain ridges and tiny country villages, all basking serenely in the morning sunshine.

Our descent from the mountain took just over two hours. Along the way, we stopped to watch several Doctor Birds -- a species of hummingbird endemic to Jamaica -- hover through the trees, making their distinctive whirring sound as they flew. By the time we reached the grassy fields above Whitfield Hall, the temperature had risen well into the eighties and both of my knees were besieged with sharp pains. Despite the physical pain and mental anguish of the climb, I felt lifted by the satisfaction of having climbed the highest mountain in the Caribbean. Whether it was an emotional high, or a chemical one fed by the endorphins flowing through my blood, I felt as if I was walking on air.

We reached Kingston around noon after buying fruit at Whitfield Hall and driving back to town at a leisurely pace. Jim dropped me off at my townhouse without much ceremony, and I proceeded upstairs, where I stumbled into bed for a four-hour nap.