First Team to Summit Doyle’s Delight Since 2008

If you ask most people which peak is the highest in Belize, you will likely get Victoria Peak as an answer. Doyle’s Delight is, however, the tallest peak in Belize, with an elevation of one thousand, one hundred and twenty-four meters, it is four meters higher than Victoria Peak. And whereas many successful expeditions have been carried out on Victoria Peak over the last decade, the last time a team reached the top of Doyle’s Delight was in 2008. That changed on May tenth, when a team of twenty-two people completed the summit. The crew consisted of seven foreign nationals, eight B.D.F. soldiers, five Santa Cruz and San Jose villagers and two park rangers from Ya’axche Conservation Trust. We spoke with the organizer of this latest expedition, who told us that the grueling journey took the team five days, which is two days less than when it was done sixteen years ago.

 

Bruno Kuppinger, Organizer, Doyle’s Delight Expedition 2024

“We started the planning process in January so it was a long period of time, almost four months to get it off the ground, because safety is an issue, with satellite phones, back up of helicopters, snake bites and especially the lack of water. We knew we had done it before, where the rivers are and creeks but this year it was very challenging because of the drought. They started May fifth that was a Sunday at four o’clock in the morning and they came back safe with climbing the summit, Doyle’s Delight on the seventh and they came back the tenth of May in the morning eight o’clock in San Jose. It was a trek of sixty-three miles but it really is a rough terrain. It is going up and down. And then of course, the rations are a little bit of rice here and there, some of the ramen and cheese and whatever we have and a little bit of corn tortilla the first two days and the rest we would find in the jungle, like the heart of palms and other stuff. My wish for the past fifteen or twenty years, what I have done, I have done Victoria Peak, I have done The Maya Divide Trail, it is a trail from Toledo all the way to Cayo. Las Cuevas, Caracol, that takes eight days. I call it grand slam if you can do all three, Victoria Peak, Doyle’s Delight and the Maya Divide and I believe this is something that will definitely create jobs here for the tour guides, operators and other entities on the ground.”