Pico Ruivo is the highest peak on Madeira at around 6100ft, ironically about the same altitude as our house back in Colorado. There is a good trail that links Pico Arieiro (3rd highest) with Ruivo. The trail is maintained and ridiculously well constructed, even with metal staircases in some areas and plenty of paving stones laid. That being said, it is not an easy trail. These two peaks may be of similar height, but in between lies a solid 3300ft of ascent and 3300ft of descent. My knees are a bit angry with me tonight.
You can drive all the way to Pico Arieiro (think Mt Evans for you Colorado folk). We arrived around 9am and got started under a partly cloudy sky. The weather held all day for us, it was beautiful and in the 60s. Absolutely perfect hiking weather!
There are sweeping views of jagged mountains and plunging valleys everywhere you look. It is truly one of the most beautiful hikes I've done. It's massive in every way. The alternate route that I wanted to take one way is closed due to a rockslide last year. That would've been a more challenging, longer and more exposed route, but it wasn't in the cards today. So we settled for an out and back of around 8-9 miles with killer climbs. And for every quad burning step up, there was a knee crunching one down. Ouch.
Morning vistas.
Tom looking like an ant on top of that far away staircase.
The terrain was ruthless. So many ups to be followed by downs. Usually when you climb a peak it's all ascent then all descent, it's humbling to constantly be giving up the elevation you just gained. And the alternating up up up then down down down really takes its toll on your legs, but it does break it up quite nicely. We were plenty ready to summit. It was windy but not too chilly up there and we sat down and had lunch while enjoying the view.
View from the top. Really awesome.
From the summit, we spotted this tiny peak below and decided we should try to get it too.
So we headed back down the trail until we found a good spot to leave it and scrambled up to the tip top. You can actually see Ruivo in the background, where we just came from!
A big thumbs down for the "fun" route being closed.
We saw a pair of these cool birds on the way back down.
With all this hiking, I think tom and I are running on a calorie deficit. A wonderful problem to have on vacation!!
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