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Day 1: Unsuccessful on La Malinche
I hike a lot in Colorado and wanted to test out a "real" high elevation hike. Mexico has a few volcanoes much higher than our mountains at home. It's easy to get to and fairly inexpensive. Pico de Orizaba was a natural choice. Mid January 2022, I flew down to Mexico city to hike some volcanoes with a friend. We hired a guide out of Nomada Mexico, a local guiding company, primarily to show us around and potentlially get us off the mountains in case anything went wrong.
Our first hike was La Malinche, a 14er volcano not too far from Puebla, Mexico. This was a rather unusual year for tha part of Mexico, as all the mountains had had a fair amount of snow, more than normal.
We started the hike around 8am, pretty late as it turns out. The first part of the hike has you walking through a beautiful, lush forest.
As you get higher and the terrain gets somewhat steeper, still on trail, though, we encountered snow and some friendly stray dogs. Apparently, they had been abandoned by people who lived in surrounding villages and lived together high up on the mountain. They relied on the food scraps of hikers to get by. In particular, a lithe black lab, whom we named Rosita became our companion as we hiked higher up the mountain.
At about 13,800', we stopped at a view point (still maybe 700' shy of the summit) and noted some sleet starting to pelt us. Moments later, there was lightning, followed promptly by a loud bang. We got down the mountain as fast as our feet could carry us. At least we got some acclimation! Okay, off to a good start, 0 for 1.
Day 2: Into Orizaba National Park
We drove through Puebla and eventually to Tlachichua, a town near Orizaba National Park, where we stayed overnight at cozy Canchola house, run by Mr Canchola and his daughter, Maribel. The Cancholas run a lodge for hikers and drive hikers inside Orizaba National Park in there fleet of 4wd vehicles.
The following day, they drove us to Piedra Grande Hut, a primitive structure that would be our base for the subsequent hike of Pico. The hut is already at 14,000', which is essentially the tops of our mountains in Colorado; we were sleeping very high.
We did a short acclimation hike around an old aqueduct to a view point, which would be considered a very high peak back home, but here it was a blip of nothing.
We couldn't see the summit of Pico as it was shrouded in clouds. That made me a bit nervous. The guide informed me that there is a chance we could get stormed off the mountain the following day if the weather trend we experienced on Malinche held. That had me worried and puzzling: how can you have thunder and lightning when the temperature is near minus 20 celsius?
We had to go to sleep at 6pm in order to wake up at midnight for the hike up the big mountain. Needless to say, I didn't get any sleep at all; I just lay in my sleeping bag.
The next day was going to be something: 4400' in 2.2 miles: nothing but steep uphill! No summit ridges, no traversing, just up, up and up.
Day 3: The big mountain
After waking up at midnight, eating a light breakfast, the guide and I were off into the night. The clouds had thankfully dissipated and we had a starry, moon lit night. We almost didn't need our headlamps. Just a short distance past the Hut, we encountered snow. This was a huge blessing as the trail consists of that annoying kitty litter scree where no traction works well. We put on microspikes at this point. The trail was hard pack snow, perfectly grippy for our microspikes.
We made good time to the base of the glacier, which is about 16,000.
At this point, it became very very cold. It was hard fiddling with crampons, harnesses and rope with numb fingers. I should remember to wear liner gloves next time! We were standing next to a 1000 foot giant volcanic plug called El Sarcofago, which looks like a terrific 3rd class scramble.
We crawled up the mountain, what seemed very very slowly. We were definitely making progress as the giant volcanic plug started to look quite small, but the mountain ahead was very very tall. Long way to go.
Night gave way to dawn as we hiked higher and higher. It seemed like it would never end. I kept asking the guide if we were close; he kept saying we were, but we kept going higher and higher.
Eventually, we were up at the crater rim as the sun started coming up. A little more walking until we got to the cross and decorations at the summit. We could see the trianguar shadow that's characteristic of volcanoes at first light.
I would love to say I was ecstatic and full of energy at the summit, but I was not. I was absolutely exhausted and just wanted to lie down. I felt quite out of breath, but, thankfully not headachy or nauseous. From the summit, you could see all of central Mexico; Sierra Negra, a nearly 16,000 volcano looked absolutely tiny to the south.
We took some pictures, rested and had a bit to eat and drink and roped up for the hike down. We were able to take a more direct line down on chalky, crunchy and powdery snow. On this day, Orizaba would have made for a decent ski descent had I brought my skis and had more energy!
By the time we got to the spot where we roped up at 16k feet, It was already mid morning and much warmer thankfully. We rested there for a good hour and I noted my energy and good spirits coming back.
The rest of the hike down was uneventful and fairly quick. We made it down to the hut by 11am.
The hike went much better than I expected; in the end, we made excellent time and the snow on the ground made for enjoyable hiking. I don't feel the need to go back to Orizaba anytime soon, but it gave me a lot of confidence for other similar type mountains. Like many endevors, mountaineering is 90% mental and knowing what to expect is a huge advantage.
