How to get there:
From Rio de Janeiro, travel to the town of Teresopolis, located just north-east of the summit.
Next, drive to parking at the south end of town, this location is S22.45649, W42.99483, elevation near
1220 meter. This is a national park, you will enter the park
before getting to this parking area.
There is a reletively small amount of red tape. You are required to fill in a form etc. Free entrance.
The parking area may fill up fairly fast, especially on weekends. This is a popular place with many
visitors. The road extends a bit beyond the parking, but you are not allowed to park at the end of the road.
Route description:
First, walk to the end of the road. Next, the trail starts up left from a water drinking area.
The trail is nice and easy to follow, note that there is a variation near elevation 1880 meter.
The trail going right here may be slightly longer, but also somewhat easier to walk.
If you take the left (slightly shorter) variation, pay attention to a trailfork very soon after
you reach the local col. What looks like the main trail heads downhill, while the correct trail
forks right and continues uphill in order to merge back with the main trail. See the posted track
for details. The summit will come into view and the trail
passes a small camp with a building (closed
when I was there). The final part climbs the peak with some big zig-zag turns. Note that there are
two summits very close to each other. Going right will get you to the highest point, while left gets you to
the officially marked summit.
Here is a quick summary of peaks climbed on this trip to Brazil.
A track is posted on Peakbagger. Comments:
This was the last peak of my trip to Brazil. We had driven
to Teresopolis the previous day. It was a Saturday and the park was already
quite busy by 0800. We got one of the very last spots for parking and started hiking around 0830.
There were many people on the trail, mostly moving a bit slower uphill. I took the left branch
route higher up. Just after the col, I missed the sharp right turn and headed downhill before
noticing that I was now on the wrong trail/route. I quickly turned back up and continued to the
camp, then onwards to the summit. The ascent including some brief stops and my slight navigational
error had taken 3:05 hours. I went to the right summit first, then noticed people and the official
summit marker a short way across. Later, we realized
that the unmarked summit is indeed the highest
point.
Good views back down to the town. Also across to the very rugged Friburgo, an ultra prominent mountain
without any easy route.
After a good break, I returned back down,
this time taking the slightly longer, but somewhat
nicer trail. My return time was also near 3 hours. Many thanks to the group that came along
on this trip, Deividas, Lihua, Michael, David and Rob. We were 6 people with 6 different nationalities
using 2 cars.
