I Climbed El Teide. Then I Slept in El Teide.

I came to Tenerife for cycling. That was the plan — explore the island on the bike, get some elevation, spend a few weeks moving. The bike had other ideas. It turned out not to be in good enough shape for the terrain I had in mind, and after a few days of managing that reality I started making a different plan.

I'd heard about the Anaga forest before I arrived — ancient laurel forest in the north of the island, the kind of place you walk into and feel like you've entered a different time. I'd also started to hear about El Teide. The highest peak in Spain. A volcano. 3,715 metres. The kind of thing that, once you know it exists and you're standing on the same island, becomes very hard not to try.

The one complication: you need a permit for the final section above the Telesforo Bravo refuge at 3,260 metres. The permits are free but limited, released in batches, and disappear quickly. I checked availability and, on impulse, there was one — same day, same hour as a friend I'd made through a ridesharing post. Everything aligned in the specific way that sometimes just happens when you're paying attention.

We went.

The approach: the remote woods

The section most people skip — because they drive to the national park and start from there — is the approach through the lower forests. If you start from town and walk up through El Teide's wooded skirt, you get an hour of pine forest before the landscape opens. These woods are quiet and smell strongly of resin. The light through the trees has a particular quality, low and golden, that makes the whole thing feel more like the beginning of a story than the beginning of a hike.

The lower woods. Most people drive past this part. That's a mistake.

There is something about a long walk-in that prepares you mentally for what's coming. The body warms up. The mind settles. By the time the forest gives way to the first views of the volcanic caldera, you're already in the right state.

The landscape that keeps getting bigger

El Teide's national park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which usually means something was worth protecting. In this case: a caldera — a collapsed ancient volcano — so vast and so alien in appearance that standing inside it feels genuinely surreal. The rock formations are dark and textured. The colours shift from black to ochre to a deep rust red. The summit cone rises from all of it in a perfect geometric shape against a sky that, at this altitude, is always a very intense blue.

The caldera. The summit behind that. Everything is bigger than the photographs suggest.

Above 2,500 metres

The hike changes character above 2,500 metres. The path is steeper, the air is thinner, and the wind — if it's present — is no longer ambient. It becomes physical. You slow down not because you want to, but because your body negotiates a new pace at altitude that your ego takes a while to accept. The trick, which took me too many hikes to learn, is to stop fighting this and start listening. The body knows more about altitude than the part of you that wants to push harder.

Explore. Listen to your body. Feel the nature. Especially at altitude, where the body has more sense than the plan.

Starting in the dark

The idea with the permitted final section is to time it so you reach the summit at sunrise. In practice, this means beginning the last stretch in the dark — through volcanic landscape that feels like it belongs on another planet at night. Black rock, sparse vegetation, silence except for the wind.

As we climbed, the wind grew stronger. At a certain altitude it stops being background and becomes something you have to lean into just to move forward.

My friend gave me his windshield jacket at some point. Even with it, the cold and the force of the wind were constant.

That is not an exaggeration. The wind at the summit is not the wind you experience at sea level. It has a different weight to it. Standing upright felt unstable. Getting on all fours was the only way to keep moving without being thrown sideways.

So we crawled.

The summit

The sunrise from 3,715 metres doesn't translate into description. The horizon curves slightly. The clouds are below you. The light arrives in layers — first deep orange, then gold, then the full morning spreading across everything.

After the cold, the effort, the darkness, and the crawling — that light felt earned in a way that very few things do.

The people who also made it. There is a very specific energy at the top of a hard hike. We all had it.

There is a particular camaraderie at the top of a difficult summit. You didn't all start together, you don't all know each other, but you arrived at the same high point by the same effort and that creates an instant common ground. We stayed for a while without saying much. There wasn't much to say.

Coming back down

The descent is long. Your knees develop opinions. The volcanic gravel shifts underfoot in an inconsistent way. The landscape that looked dramatic on the way up now looks large in a different way — you understand the scale of what you covered. At the bottom of the caldera, when the path re-enters the pine forest and the smell of resin comes back and the light goes golden again, there is a feeling of completion that is specific and real and worth whatever the legs are saying about it.

Way back from the highest peak in Spain. The legs have feedback. The view doesn't care.

The room

I got back to town in the early evening, showered at a petrol station tap because there was one and it was available, and dragged myself to the hostel I'd booked before the hike. Checked in. The person at the desk handed me a key with a small tag on it.

The room was called El Teide.

The room. Called El Teide. After the hike called El Teide. I have never felt more like I deserved a specific room in my life.

I stood in the doorway for a moment just appreciating this. The universe occasionally has a sense of proportion about things. I dropped my pack, lay down on the bed, and did not move for approximately eleven hours. The room earned its name. So, for once, did I.