The surroundings of the Altavista Refuge had a «Dantesque» aspect before the intense cleaning day on Saturday at the top of the Teide.
Mountaineers have reacted to the images of dirt that some unscrupulous people have left on the Lomo Tieso trail, which leads to the summit of Teide. They have done it with an intense cleaning day in the National Park, carried out last Saturday by twenty volunteers, coordinated by Chano Gil, a member of the Tenerife Mountaineering Federation, in which they removed hundreds of kilos of garbage. Suffice the phrase of a walker hardened by years of kicking in the area –and there are many others in the world– such as Pedro Millán: «It has been my best cleaning action and the hardest. It’s terrible how the area was. You can’t imagine it.
Saturday, August 21, 2021. Two dozen volunteer mountaineers, “with absolute respect for the safety regulations for Covid-19,” they point out, climb Mount Teide at dawn. The idea is to reconnoitre the Lomo Tieso trail, the most important in the National Park because it leads to the top of the volcano.
Teleférico del Teide offers its collaboration and that allows them to go up very early to take advantage of the first hours of the day in the face of the high temperatures of these summer days.
Previously, the Insular Federation of Mountaineering, through its president, Humberto Domínguez, had written to the director of the Park, Manuel Durbán. The latter responded immediately to the initiative by authorizing the collection of waste on both sides of the trails.
The mountaineers leave from the upper station of the cable car and begin to descend towards the Altavista Refuge. Armed with bags, gloves and dustpans, they are “perplexed” by the amount of rubbish they find in their path. Especially washcloths and toilet paper, mostly hidden between the rocks on both sides of the trail.
Once at the Refuge, the outlook is simply “bleak.” The surroundings are “full of garbage.” Volunteers carry out a thorough cleanup and fill several bags.
The entrance door to the shelter has been knocked down and one of the benches “on which we usually sit outside” appears smashed and crossed in it. In the surroundings “hundreds of cigarette butts” that they collect with extreme patience The panorama does not change much as they approach two emblematic places: the Estancia de los Alemanes and the Estancia de los Ingleses. Their names have remained in history because scientists from these countries settled there long ago. Arrival at Montaña Blanca with many kilos of garbage. Other volunteers are waiting there, those from the Red Cross, who offer to transport the waste to the nearest rubbish bins, which “makes our work much easier.”
The mountaineers express their public denunciation, “which is what we have left and the least we can and must do.”
They also demand “the deep reflection of all”, in addition to “seeking alternatives that involve a radical change, based on criteria of information and environmental education to transform the uses and customs of the population, both local and foreign.”
From the Mountain Federation they extend their hand, both to the management of the National Park of and to the Council of Natural Environment of the Cabildo de Tenerife “to collaborate closely and contribute our bit to improve the situation.” They do not forget that «it is necessary to provide more human and material resources, without which the current deterioration can increase to turn the most important geological symbol of the Island and the Archipelago into a dung heap». They also reiterate “the imperative need to reopen the Altavista Refuge.”
Pedro Millán assesses on his facebook: «After seven hours of work at high altitude and with a lot of heat, we ended up exhausted in Montaña Blanca. Impacted by the volume and quantity of garbage that we find in our most precious Natural Monument ». But also “while we were descending, we met people who were ascending, locals and foreigners; They applauded and cheered us on, some even dared to carry part of what was collected. I want to think that many of them will think about it before happily throwing their handkerchief on the ground.
