Gros Piton St Lucia Day Hike Overview
My wife and I love going on different hiking and backpacking adventures, and this past October we decided to treat ourselves to a "Real" Vacation and not rough it sleeping on the ground for one. When trying to decide where to go on Vacation, we had a couple requirements... Clear water for snorkeling, nice beaches, and of course there needed to be a cool hike involved as well. We couldn't just sit on the beach drinking fun drinks all day...
St Lucia in the Caribbean fit all our checks, and we booked our trip with plans to hike Gros Piton! So what is a Piton? St Lucia is a Volcanic Island in the South Eastern Caribbean, and is known for its amazing beaches and two Massive Geological structures called Petit Piton and Gros Piton which are absolutely stunning. They are actually Volcanic plugs that form when magma in an active volcano vents hardens. You can read more on Wikipedia here.
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We stayed in an amazing Hotel called Sugar Beach, which had amazing beaches and was in the middle of both Gros Piton and Petit Piton. You can hike, both but we chose to just hike Gros Piton, which takes less time. We wanted to have time for other adventures on the island as well.
Gros Piton is a 3.2 mile out and back trail, but don't let the short mileage trick you, it's a steep almost 2k feet in elevation gain. The hike is also on a tropical island so it's pretty dang humid...coming from San Diego California, I felt like I was hiking in a pool, I was drenched!
The entire hike took us about 2 hours, and we were in pretty good shape having just trained for hiked Cactus to Clouds literally the week before. We may have planned this vacation around celebrating our Cactus to Clouds Summit đ
Gros Piton Trail Map
The Gros Piton Trail Map can be viewed and downloaded on Caltopo here. I do want to highlight the Slop portion of the elevation profile above. It's steep, pretty much the entire time. We saw other people on the trail who stopped halfway and didn't make it to the top even though it's not a long hike. It is very Steep!
Gros Piton Trail Guide
This trail does require a guide to hike and we made the mistake of booking through our hotel... which was an insane mark-up on the price for zero added value. Basically they got us a taxi ride over. You can pay for the hike and guide at the trailhead when you get there. We did have our own rental, which I wish we drove instead, but parking did not look obvious when we got there, so maybe the taxi was the best bet.
The hike starts in a small little village at the base of Gros Piton, and it seemed to us that a lot of the village's economy revolved around the guided tours of Gros Piton. Our guide had been guiding up Gros Piton just about her entire life and her son was also a guide on the mountain as well.
I have to apologize that I didn't get a lot of pictures of the village we started in. My camera was not having a fun time adjusting from the cold air conditioned room to the hot and humid jungle temperatures. Basically my camera was completely fogged up at the start...
When we did check it, they offered hiking pole rentals. We normally don't use hiking poles for day hikes, but we are glad we spent the money for them on this day hike. It had been pretty rainy all morning, and the hiking poles were almost necessary when coming down the slick wet rocks. I did take a slip at one point even with the pole and gashed my leg pretty good, still got marks months later... St Lucia Gros Piton battle wound.
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As you hike through the lush jungle there are a number of spots that open up with sweeping views of the ocean, so make sure you don't leave your camera at the hotel.
For a hike that is advertised as being very steep, the first section is deceivingly flat. Don't let this deceive you, it ramps up quickly and just gets more steep the closer you get to the summit. Very soon you will be more or less climbing up rocks. Which when wet can be very slippery so watch your footing!
The second viewpoint is just around the corner from the halfway point sign. The trail opens up a little here and there are some good rocks to take a seat on and rest your legs while you gulp down some water.
Being in St Lucia during the rainy season, this was a bit of a wet morning. It didn't rain on us at all while hiking but it was very overcast and hazy. Despite the hazy views, we got a great view of Petit Piton across the water from Gros Piton from this viewpoint.
From the great views of Petit Piton, you continue up toward the top of Gros Piton, and are back in the jungle with ocean views becoming more limited. From here the trail continues to get steeper and steeper with every step towards the top!
Despite the ever increasing steepness of the trail, it is very well maintained, and is a mix of "stairs" in many different forms. We have the tree root stairs, the man made wooden stairs, and the rock stairs. All three forms are very steep.
As we got higher and higher up Gros Piton, we slowly climbed our way into the clouds. The mist of the clouds felt amazing on my skin, it had an instantly cooling effect. The cooling felt great, but we unfortunately didn't have much of a view when we got to the top.
I am sure there is some sort of view behind all these clouds... either way, our hike up was an amazing experience. The greenery of the jungle is always amazing to me especially coming from the more desert and dry environment of San Diego California.
After the tough climb to the top it was an "easier" climb back down to the bottom. By "easier" the hike was less exhausting, but we really had to watch our footing. As I mentioned in the beginning, even with the hiking pole I took a good slip and banged up my shin pretty good.
We may not have had the best summit views that day, but we had plenty of amazing views on our entire trip to St Lucia. Including plenty of great views of Gros Piton from our hotel's beach, while indulging in the local Piton Beer!