| Solo hike up Iztaccíhuatl, August 2009 Trip Report |
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| Solo hike up Iztaccíhuatl, August 2009   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Puebla, Mexico, North America Lat/Lon: 19.18330°N / 98.63330°E Date Climbed/Hiked: Aug 25, 2009 Activities: Hiking, Mountaineering Season: Summer | Page By: nicstandaert Created/Edited: Sep 3, 2009 / Sep 20, 2009 Object ID: 549055 Hits: 240 Loading... Page Score: 86.68% - 3 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Watching the volcanoes and finally going there  View of the volcanoes Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl from my rooftop in Apizaco.
Part of that discovery was to be the Iztaccíhuatl, which I saw for the first that on that same day trip. It suddenly appeared as the road from Mexico City to Puebla took a turn showing the Iztaccíhuatl in all its grace and next to it Popocatépetl.
We moved to Apizaco on the 20th of June, indeed right in the ‘rainy season’ , which is the off-season for
any outdoors climbing in Mexico. I soon realized that it would not be raining every day, and if it did not all day and that there would be many days with clear skies even this time of the year. I had read that the months outside the winter season could have electric activity, rain, strong winds and black ice that make its elevated portions unsafe .
I had hiked ‘El Nevado de Toluca’,’ La Malinche’ and ‘El Tlaloc’ in those first weeks after we moved. It usually didn’t start raining until late in the afternoon, so with an early start you could easily reach the summit and get back in time before the rain. I had so far never been caught by rain on any of my hikes. After each of these summits I kind of felt like I was prepared enough for one of the bigger volcanoes, first of all the Iztaccíhuatl.Unfortunately there was something coming up every time: my girlfriend wouldn’t let me go during the weekend, or on other days dark clouds were covering the sky day and night. But the morning of the 24th of August, I went up the rooftop to have a look at the weather and I could clearly see La Malinche, El Popcatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, the latter ones having their peaks covered in snow. That’s when I decided to go the next day.
I had been thinking about going so many times and I now kind of wanted to get it over and done with! I felt that I would be more peaceful and less restless once I had reached the top of that volcano. I had read a lot about it on the internet and had printed out some of the descriptions I had found on the SP website. I had my ice-axe, but no crampons, but wasn’t too worried about it. I read most of the time you wouldn’t need them, and that you could always rent them at Paso de Cortéz. I got my backpack ready and decided not to worry too much, although I was pretty excited to be leaving the next morning. I thought just to finally go there, and if I wouldn’t make it for whatever reason, I could always come back next week to try again.
That morning of August 25th the sky was very clear again as I saw Iztaccíhuatl’s snow-covered peaks at the horizon to the South West. I rushed to the bus station and was on the 7.30 bus to Puebla. At the Capu bus station I asked for the bus to Cholula, which was leaving just next to the main terminal. I only had to wait a couple of minutes before the bus left. Once we reached Cholula I asked the lady sitting next to me where I had to get off if I wanted to take the bus to San Nicolás los Ranchos. Fortunately she knew, and I got off two blocks from where the ‘collectivo’ was leaving. As I got there, a collectivo saying ‘Xalitzintla’ was leaving but the bus driver stopped and as he saw me dressed with my hiking boots and backpack he recognized me as someone who was heading for the mountains.
Xalitzintla is the last village after San Nicolás Los Ranchos, but to get to Paso de Cortéz you need to get off in San Nicolás Los Ranchos, which we reached after half an hour. There wasn’t much going on at the central square. There was one collectivo in one corner but its driver told me he wouldn’t be leaving until another hour and a half or so, or when his bus would fill up.
The road to Paso de Cortéz  The road to Paso de Cortéz.
The road seemed to be in a perfect condition, which also shows how little the locals often know about the area they live in, especially when it comes to mountains and volcanoes. They don’t really go up there as they don’t see the point of it. Moises, as the guy was called, soon after pulled up his Chevrolet pick-up truck and after getting some gas we got on the way towards Paso de Cortéz. To my surprise this was an unpaved road full of holes and roots and rocks, so it took us about an hour and a half to get there.
On the way I was chatting a bit with Moises. He had just come back from two years in the US where he had been working as a waiter on the east coast. He had entered the country illegally of course, as many of his village had done. His joined his brother who had been there for six years, but as he was the youngest his parents urged him to come back to take care of them. He said he had climbed Iztaccíhuatl four years ago, although I am not sure if by that he meant he got to the top. From my experience Mexicans will always tell you have been ‘up there’, although that almost never means they have been to the top, as they usually walk up in their t-shirt and sneakers to a higher point to have a family pick-nic and then go down again. Of course there are Mexican mountaineers and their number is growing but on an average Sunday you’ll find plenty of Mexican tourists at a parking lot near a mountain for an afternoon out. During the week the mountains see a lot less people, which is understandable. According to Moises there would be a celebration of Iztaccíhuatl’s birthday next Sunday, on August 30th, and a group would go to the summit to make some offering to the volcano. After I insisted on it, the group wouldn’t go to the summit, but to a ‘place in the mountains’, after which those who are interested could go higher up.
When we arrived in La Joya, Moises admitted he didn’t know which way was going to La Joya from here. We walked over to the map showing the area and soon figured out which way to go. The road to La Joya was closed with a barrier, so we walked to the reception at the park’s information centre. I registered and paid 45 pesos, 22, 50 pesos per day. I also rented trekking poles (50 pesos for the pair), and crampons (also 50 pesos for the pair), and left a copy of my passport as a deposit. I also bought a map, for five pesos, which came as two A4 pages, badly copied in black and white, showing the different peaks and altitudes up until the Mendez hut . I told the man at the information centre which was my plan: to hike up that afternoon to the ‘Grupo de los Cien hut’ , to spend the night there, and to then climb to the summit early the next day. We only stayed about 15 minutes at Paso de Cortéz, and left at 12h.30 for La Joya.
Moises was complaining a bit that it was already late and that he should be heading back for some business, but I insisted that he couldn’t leave me there because I would never make it in time to the Grupo de los Cien hut. The guard opened the barrier for us and off we went. We drove past the Altzomoni albergue , La Joyalita and reached La Joya at 13h.00. I paid Moises the 300 pesos, after which he asked me for an extra tip to buy himself a drink on the way back, also because La Joya turned out to be ‘muy retirado’, or really out of way, so I gave him 20 pesos extra.
La Joya, finally there  The start of the trail at La Joya
On the side there was a newly constructed picnic site with wooden benches and tables. Near the start of the trail there were also some informative boards about the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl National Park. I only read one of them as I was in a hurry to get to the Grupo de los Cien hut before it would start raining. I expected the rains to start earlier then in Apizaco or Puebla, because of the altitude, but luckily enough and to my great surprise they didn’t. I didn’t know this at the start of the trail and after eating a cheese and ham sandwich I had prepared at home, I quickly got going.
One thing I did however was to leave my name, my home address in Apizaco, (I don’t have a mobile phone) and when I would be back at La Joya in the Alpine Rescue Box, just in case something would happen to me. When I got back the next day the paper was still there, and it made me wonder how often someone came to check that box. It kind of reassured me though. I had all the gear I needed including ice-axe and crampons, I had registered at Paso de Cortéz and had left a note in the Alpine Rescue Box , and felt in good shape.Leaving La Joya and starting to climb  Looking back from the first portillo  The trail to the first Portillo
The trail towards the Grupo de los Cien hut however, turned out to be fairly easy. Every half an hour or so you reach a ‘portillo’, (a platform), where I took off my backpack and had a break. A description of the route I had printed from the internet correctly indicated which way I had to keep the slope, alternating on the left and right. I had also read that it would take about three hours to reach the hut, so I was surprised to see it on my left covered by clouds two hours after I had started walking from La Joya. I first saw a couple of crosses coming out of the clouds, and then noticed the hut. It had taken me about two hours from La Joya, and I hadn’t even rushed my way up! When you are climbing alone you always go faster as there is nobody to hold you back and nobody to talk to either.
The hut looked exactly as I had seen it on the photos, with its grey metal cover as a camouflage skin. I walked over to the front door and pushed it open. You can’t close it from the outside, but from the inside you can turn a metal bar over the door to block it. All in all, the hut was quite clean. A few shelves had some food on them, a couple of half-empty bottles of water and even some paracetamol tablets. I didn’t touch any of it, but with a broom standing in one corner I cleaned the floor of the hut. As you enter, the food shelf stands in front, and on each side there is room for six people to sleep comfortable, three below and three up, although the maps I had bought mentions a sleeping capacity of 24 to 30 people. I decided to sleep on the upper right part, and also cleaned it with the broom. There was also some cardboard and an old but quite thick and usable blanket. I used it as a mattress as I didn’t bring a mat to sleep on.
I then had a look around the hut and above it on the rim I counted nine crosses. It was almost four o’clock and there were plenty of clouds over the rocks above the hut. There was some snow, just some patches stuck to the hut, and overall the site around the hut was quite wet. I ate another sandwich, drank some water and rolled out my sleeping bag in order to have everything ready for when the night would set in.A walk in the clouds  Me near the Albergue no.19
I walked up to the first cross above the hut, and thought to follow the rim for another hour or so. But it started hailing, and after that hour I started descending towards the hut again. I had reached ‘La Cruz de Guadelajara’, also called ‘La Cruz de los Once’ and had found it lying flat on its back. This was the spot where eleven teenagers had died on their way down when they got caught in a storm in the afternoon of February 5th 1968. There is an inscription on the cross saying ‘no murieron, llegaron a la cumbre’, which means ‘they didn’t die, they made it to the top’, referring to heaven as the top I think.
I felt strange at this spot. These kids had died here, and I imagined their spirit to be present still. I asked them for my protection, and maybe they did protect me. On the several trip reports and route descriptions I had read, this cross was mentioned as an orientation point on the way up, which is a bit confusing when it is lying down. It gets even more confusing as there has been another cross erected by the Club Alpino Mexico, to commemorate all mountaineers who had died in action, which is clearly visible from the hut. I turned around when I got to the cross and it was only as I was going down that I realized I hadn’t gone up the easiest way.
Also, going up, there wasn’t really something as ‘a clear trail’. Sometimes the trail you are on leads you to a big boulder, with a trail going to its left, and another to its right. The next day as I went up, I realized I had gone left most of the times when I got to a boulder, which was the right way the go it seemed, looking back. On the trail back to the hut, I passed some pieces of wood lying around some rocks of what might have been a hut once, maybe the ‘ex-refugio Lopez Mateos’ that is indicated on the map I bought at the park’s visitor centre.
It was 17h.30 when I got back to the hut. I took some photos, prepared my bag for the next day, ate a sandwich and by 19h.00 I was already in my sleeping bag hoping for a good night’s sleep. It didn’t get dark until eight, so I just lay about looking at some of the photos I had taken, and figuring out which route to take the next morning.A night at ‘Albergue no. 19’ (4720m/15486ft)  'Grupo de los Cien hut', or 'Albergue no.19
I admit it frightened me a bit. It reminded me of the night I had in a hut in Nepal when I was going around Annapurna. My bed was right next to the outer wall and I clearly heard someone or something wandering around the hut. But that night in Nepal I wasn’t alone up the mountain. An old lady who lived at the hut a couple months a year was at their that night too, and that kind of comforted me. This time, I was up there all alone, and the nearest human being was about five hours walking away.
I tried not to think of any of the horror movies I had seen but instead concentrate on my breathing in order to block any unpleasant thoughts crossing my mind. Still, the noises were annoying. At one point, it seemed like something was scratching the hut. It was quite faint, so I figured it would be a bird. I even banged the wall of the hut, which seemed to help. At that point I put in my ear plugs. I preferred not to hear anything at all and just sleep. Just sleep! All I wanted was to sleep and for the morning to come soon! I think I slept from about nine to one.
Waking up I recollected dreams that took me back many years, to people I hadn’t seen ever since. I kept turning around and around, and one arm always seemed to be in the way for me to be comfortable, and I tried to remember where I put my arms when I go to bed at home. It seemed that bringing a mat wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all. At three I got up to put on my trousers. My legs and feet were really cold and that wasn’t helping me either to fall asleep. I was wearing two t-shirts and a scarf, so my body was warm. My trousers were still partly wet from the hail of the afternoon, but still my legs felt warmer now.
When I noticed it was five o’clock I thought of getting up. But starting the hike in the night didn’t really appeal to me so I stayed in bed. I woke up at seven, although I had put my alarm clock at six thirty. I overslept, but was glad the night was over! The sun had started to rise, so I jumped out of bed and got ready. I drank some water, had a chocolate bar and started going. I left my sleeping bag in the hut with a note saying it was mine, not to touch it and that I would be back in the early afternoon.Dreaming of the route and reaching the ‘Mendez Hut’ (5000m/16404ft)  View of the route I took. On the right the cross by the Club Alpino Mexicano
I then realized the route I had to take and that I had been so wrong some hours earlier when I was checking out the route. Some days later, back at home, I tried to find that photo with the route again, but I couldn’t find it anymore, and I hadn’t deleted any of my photos. So I must have dreamt the route that night! By the time I reached the fallen ‘Cruz de Guadelajara’ my hands and feet were freezing. I was wearing two pairs of normal sports socks but no gloves. I figured the sun would be strong enough, and it was in the end, except for that first hour the early morning of August 26. I put my hands in my mouth, one by one, and then between my legs. That seemed to help.
Although the sun was rising, I didn’t see it as I was going up the west side of the volcano. It wasn’t until I got near the Mendez hut that the rising sun fully struck me. It took me an hour and a half to reach the Mendez hut at 5000 meters. I had a beautiful view of the Popocatépetl. Right below me was an ice blue glacial lake. I could see La Malinche to the east and behind it the shape of the Pico de Orizaba. Ahead of me I saw part of the Ayoloco glacier. Fortunately the trail leading up too it was clearly visible. Looking back, the part between the Grupo de los Cien hut and the Mendez hut was the hardest part of the whole climb. There is quite some climbing over rocks and boulders, and plenty of doubtful situations in which you could get lost. It may be easier in winter indeed, when there are more people summiting, and when the trail is more clearly visible. That morning I saw trails everywhere, and many of them lead nowhere at all. But I had made it so far, and at least from the Mendez hut I had a clear view of what I had ahead of me.
I don’t know what got into me, but I thought that I could see the summit from this point. On the peak in front of me there seemed to be a big sign, not just a cross, but something that almost looks like a solar panel, and I assumed that that was the summit. I shot a three minute video clip in which I am saying that I am almost there, and that the summit is clearly visible from where I am standing. There is a panel indeed on that part of the Iztaccíhuatl that is known as the ‘Monte Venus’, but it is still more than 1200 meters from the summit. I soon realized my mistake when I was standing at the foot of the ‘Monte Venus’ with the Ayoloco glacier in front of me. I never walked up to that paneI, but I guess it is another sign put in place to commemorate a deceased friend or relative.Crossing the Ayoloco Glacier and on to the summit (5230m/17159ft)  Beautiful rock across the Ayoloco glacier  Monte Venus of the left, Ayoloco glacier in the Middle and the summit in the far back  The 'head' of Iztaccíhuatl
Standing at the beginning of the glacier I admit I felt a little bit nervous. I had never crossed a glacier like this before and considered the chance of crevasses only covered with a thin layer of snow from the past two nights. But then again I thought this was just another rim, covered with snow this time, so there was no reason to worry. I only sank half a boot into the snow of the glacier, so I didn’t put on my crampons.
I put my hiking poles firmly into the snow half a meter in front of me before taking a step and slowly moved across the glacier. As I crossed it I stopped several times to take photos of that beautiful rock that was blocking the sun on my right hand side. When I reached ‘La Panza’ (‘the belly’) I realized I still wasn’t anywhere near the top, so I decided to keep going as fast as possible before the clouds would come blowing in. I was glad to reach ‘El Glaciar del Pecho’ (‘Glacier of the breasts’) which has apparently three peaks. I stood on all three of them ‘just to make sure’. To get to the point commonly accepted as the highest I had to traverse the ‘Glaciar del Pecho’, which was even bigger than the first one I had crossed.
I carefully crossed it and then reached the summit at 10h.30. It was already quite cloudy by that time, and the great view of Popocatépetl I had had until some twenty minutes was gone. I stayed about 45 minutes at the summit taking photos, shooting videos and eating another sandwich. The clouds came and went and gave me on and off good view of ‘La Cabeza’ (‘the head’) of the volcano and of the glacier. The summit was marked by a cross and had an inscription on it saying ‘Iztaccíhuatl Mexico-Alemania-Venezuela’.
Again, as on other volcanoes, I had expected a more formal sign saying ‘Welcome to the summit’, or ‘Congratulations, you have made it’, but none of that. That picture of me at the summit of the Iztaccíhuatl volcano in Mexico could have been taken on many other summit around the world, but I guess that those that have been there do recognize the place. I had reached the third highest point peak in Mexico on my own, felt great, satisfied as I got ready to start the descent to the Grupo de los Cien hut.
Me at the summit
By Nic Standaert, the 2 September 2009
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Mexican Volcanoes
