On an overnight climb up Guatemala’s Acatenango, Hannah considers why we do the hard things when the payoff is entirely out of our hands.
Words and photos by Hannah Truby
It’s a few minutes past 4 a.m., and I’m standing on the side of a volcano in Guatemala, wearing every piece of clothing I brought with me. The wind whips the straps of my pack around wildly, and I’ve become so very aware of how thin my softshell pants are. I take off my gloves—I have to—to get to my camera and snap the shutter, and within a minute, my fingers are burning.
I’m cold, if you’re not getting that.
But it doesn’t matter. I mean, I register it, but only on some level somewhere between conscious and sub-, because unfolding before me, minute by minute, is very likely the most spectacular view I’ve ever seen.
To the east of us, the light is just beginning to break. Pale blue gives way to streaks of pink, magenta, and fire orange, and the surrounding mountains—dark, shadowy giants—are slowly uncloaking.Thirteen-thousand feet below us, the city lights break up the otherwise dark expanse of the valley like a carpet of little stars.
There are a couple of groups of us up here, maybe a dozen people each, but the summit stretches wide, and I can make out the farthest group only by the glow of their headlamps in the distance. A surprisingly high number of dogs are running between the groups, wrestling and playing as they go.
Roaming packs of stray and local dogs had accompanied us on various stretches of our hike up Acatenango the day before. Friendly, temporary trail guides, they’d greet us at base camps and join our group in ones, twos, or more, until deciding to forgo our route and off they’d go. Sometimes we’d see the same dog again, astounded at how they could have possibly beaten us there.
At first, it seemed obvious they were tagging along in the hopes of scrounging some food from us hikers. But one (pictured below) woke up with us at camp and joined the group for the sunrise hike. It would’ve been a lot easier, I’d think, to wait back at camp for breakfast scraps when we returned, but I liked to think some of them just really enjoyed the hike, our company, and wanted to see the view, too.
I laugh as they play around us now, thinking how this view, this moment, was likely part of their daily routine, and nothing too spectacular to them.
Besides the wind, it’s quiet. We’re all waiting for, yes, the sun to rise in full, but also for the lucky chance that soon, just for us, Volcán de Fuego will erupt.
From Yosemite to Joshua Tree, the Adirondacks to the Yukon, I’ve gotten to go on some incredible trips for Mountain Gazette. This most recent trip to Guatemala wasn’t MG-related. But when a friend with some soon-to-expire PTO told me we could hike a volcano, I thought, hey, why not make it an MG trip? At least one worth writing about for the blog.
It was a gamble, though. September is the peak of Guatemala’s rainy season, and even though Fuego is one of the most consistently active volcanoes in Central America, getting to actually see it was not guaranteed. Is anything with Mother Nature?
For the chance to witness Fuego erupt, one must hike Acatenango, an overnight journey on Fuego's dormant neighbor. It’s a challenging climb. At just under 10 miles, the hike takes roughly seven hours to reach base camp (or a full 10 to 12 hours if you’re making a day-hike push to the summit) and packs in about 5,000 feet of vert.
Our group is made up of a dozen or so hikers—most of us in our 20s—two guides, and several porters. For an added fee, you can pay to have a small but sturdy man in jeans tote your pack for you on the way up. I tried not to judge those who opted for this. It was a strenuous hike as is, and I’ve spent most of my life in and around the Sierra, so warnings about “high altitude” don’t usually faze me the way they might someone who’s spent their life at sea level, as several people in our group had. Besides, the porters were happy for the money—and seemed pretty happy to be on the mountain, too.
Eddy, our lead guide, has been doing this professionally for a couple of years, but he’s been climbing Acatenango since he was young. When I ask how many times he’s made the ascent, he laughs. “More times than I know, probably.”
In recent years, specifically the post-COVID ones, the excursion has exploded in popularity. Lonely Planet called it the country’s most talked-about travel experience, and, according to Prensa Libre, “volcán Acatenango” was the most-tracked keyword in DataLab’s analysis of Guatemala’s tourism conversation between June 2025 and March 2026.
Naturally, the boom in hiking traffic has led to some changes on the mountain, including an increase in local tour groups and the construction of new accommodations. But make no mistake: these accommodations are not the curated, rustic cosplay some tourism companies package, where patrons can pay a pretty penny for the opportunity to feel like they’re “roughing it.” No, the volcano’s infrastructure remains spartan and rugged, and I hope it stays that way.
I wonder about the environmental impact of developing a protected, active volcanic landscape, and I say as much to Eddy. He tells me that, on paper, the local authority limits hikers to 40 per day, though he’s pretty sure it isn’t strictly enforced. In practice, really anyone can start a guiding business and grow their groups over time.
And grow they have. According to the BBC, local guides in 2024 estimated 200–400 people visiting the volcanoes per day, rising to as many as 1,000 on a busy Friday or Saturday. One guide who started in 1998 recalled that they used to be the only company on the mountain; now, he said, there are 30 other companies, each running its own hiking program and operating its own cabins, roughly 100 in total across the mountain.
While Eddy mentions seeing less wildlife over the years (“We used to see quite a bit. Raccoons, other small mammals and all types of birds. These days, the more people come up here, the less we see”), he seems to have a more favorable view of the growth, which makes sense, considering how much of the local community’s income comes from tourism.
As we climb, we pass through several distinct ecosystems: cornfields, cloud forest, and now, going on hour four, the path flattens some as the landscape opens into a high-elevation forest of pines and other conifers. The trail is flanked by increasingly sparse, wind-battered trees overhead and, at our feet, wildflowers, highland lupines, and Indian paintbrush.
In the days leading up to the trip, my social feeds were flooded with Guatemala-volcano-hike content. Now, actually being here, I can’t help but feel a little wistful. This in itself is a special experience, and getting to experience it at a moment when it seems destined to show up on more and more social feeds—and, inevitably, draw more people to the mountain—makes it feel even more so. Because word will continue to spread. Nature-focused travel will, I think, only grow in popularity, and it’s hard to imagine this hike drawing anything but more people.
I know I probably sound… insufferable? Gatekeepy? Like a tourist complaining about other tourists (the worst)? But I suppose that’s the paradox of travel.
We approach base camp, which sits beneath an increasingly dense layer of cloud cover. Fuego, our guides tell us, is there—right there!—in front of us. But all we can see is a white wall of swirling mist and fog. I feel my resolve, my delusional optimism that we’d surely see it, flicker.
A mountain, we know, does not care about your plans, and a volcano certainly doesn’t give a shit that Nat Geo called it a “top-tier bucket-list experience.” You can plan a volcano hike. You cannot plan the volcano. You can travel halfway around the world, train for the hike, book the guide, carry your gear up the mountain—but weather, ash, clouds, exhaustion, and any number of other things can still have the final say.
It’s okay, I tell myself. We knew this might be a possibility. The hike itself is an experience. I’m here, on this ancient mountain, stepping on the cooled lava of eruptions long past, and soon we’ll gather around a fire and enjoy the hot cocoa and wine the guides brought for us. I then remind myself that, a week ago, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of seeing a volcano; that I am, in fact, not a spoiled brat who expects Mother Nature to bend to my whims; and that I’m lucky—very lucky!—to be here at all. If I don’t get to see Fuego erupt, so be it.
This is generally the attitude one must adopt on any outdoor excursion. When you’re outside experiencing something new and cool, it’s just good manners. But my manners, it seems, went out the window several hours later.
When the clouds finally parted (because they eventually did), they revealed a perfectly exposed Fuego, which erupted not just once, but over and over again. In the wee hours of the morning, I hooted and hollered like a maniac. I couldn’t help it! She was so close to us, so perfectly in view, it really did feel like we’d been given something special—a dazzling lava show, my very first, put on seemingly just for us.
