For those not in the know, which is probably every single one of you, Picode Orizaba is the tallest mountain in Mexico, and the 3rd tallest in North America Standing at 18,500 feet. I decided to do this trip in July of 2006. Craig Huntington had recently shattered my leg in three places. Bedridden, I was catching up on back issues of Backpacker Magazine. In all of the magazines I read, with all of the full articles telling me to go to this place and that, the one article that caught my attention was a tiny little blurb, maybe 150 words long, with no picture accompanying it, on Pico de Orizaba. For some strange reason it captured my attention and I knew I had to climb it.

Since I now work full time and have limited vacation hours I decided that the week of Thanksgiving would be ideal to climb the mountain. Not only is it the beginning of the climbing season on Orizaba, but I only had to take 3 days of vacation to climb the mountain. Not a bad deal! The trip itenerary went like this:

Saturday, fly from Reno to Mexico City and stay at a hostel.

Sunday, take a bus from Mexico City to Tlachichuca (elev. 8,500 feet), the village at the base of the mountain

Monday, set off on foot from Tlachichuca and head up the mountain. Camp at 11,800 feet.

Tuesday, head for base camp at 14,000 feet where a hut would greet us.

Wednesday, make an acclimation hike to 15,600 feet and return to 14,000 feet to sleep.

Thursday, set out at 1:30 AM to summit the mountain. Be back to base camp by 2 PM, have a jeep take us back to Tlachichuca

Friday, take a bus from Tlachichuca to Mexico City, stay at a hotel.

Saturday, fly home!

First of all let me say that this has probably been the greatest trip of my life. Not only is Mexico fantastic and the people so very nice, but I met a ton of people, some of whom I can see myself staying in touch with for a long time. Most of the trip was spent in small villages or completely remote areas, but even in the hustle and bustle of Mexico City did we find the people to be amazing. Our first cab driver gave Charlie (my climbing partner) and I a small clay Aztec medallion and told us that he didn´t want us to forget about Mexico. It was pretty poignant, actually.

A very nice surprise on the trip happened with the re-emergence of my Spanish skills. Some of you know that before I got to college I actually had a very firm command of the language. However, in the past 7 years I have had very few people to talk to and I noticed my Spanish knowledge was slipping. However, I was very proud of my Spanish on this trip as even I surprised myself with how much Spanish I still know. Not only was I able to get Charlie and I around the country, but I was able to have meaningful conversations with peopleas I was even able to recall past and future tenses of verbs! It made me realize that I really do like speaking Spanish and I need to find someone to speak with in the States to increase my proficiency.

OK, this is already long, but I still have to talk about the hike\climb. The short version is that I summitted the 18,500 foot beast, but unfortunately, Charlie did not. In order to get properly acclimated we decided to make it a four day hike, starting at 8,500 feet, with the hike being about 20 miles. It was apparent to me at about 12,000 feet that Charlie was not going to summit. The altitude was really kicking his ass, but he was a persistent guy. He collapsed at 13,800 feet and I had to carry his pack to the huts at 14,000 feet. Then on Wednesday I did an acclimation climb to 15,600 feet,
while Charlie only made it to 15,000 feet before he had to turn around. That was the extent of his climbing, which for a rookie climber is extremely impressive since he still made it higher than any point in the continental U.S. For me, though, I met another group of climbers who were summitting on Thursday, so without Charlie I decided to go up with them. So our day started at 1:30 AM and we summitted at 9:30 AM, and got back to 14,000 feet at about 2:00 pm, so over 12
hours of aerobic exercize at extreme altitude on 55 degree slopes of semi-solid ice. It was pretty much the hardest thing I´ve ever done, and something I´m extremely proud of. I found out from my cool altitude watch that at the summit I was breathing 48% of the oxygen than there is at sea level. Anyways, some highlights from the climb.

1. The stars at 16,500 feet are so bright and brilliant that it litterally felt like I could reach up and touch them. Simply amazing!
2. I was actually able to see the curvature of the earth!
3. I have never seen the hue of red that I saw during the sunrise.
4. During the sunrise the mountain cast a perfect triangular shadow across the land.
5. I almost slipped twice on the glacier and the same thought wentthrough my head, “Wow, I almost died.”
6. I learned that I need to find a way to keep my water warm. The inside of my Nalgene was coated in a quarter inch of ice by 16,000 feet and I was limited to 1 liter of water for the entire day. . . not
good whatsoever.
7. It is NOT SMART to try and go from sea-level to 14,000 feet in two days! I saw more people throwing up on this trip than I have since I saw a group of people try to drink a gallon of milk in an hour.

So as an epilogue, I’ll say that I am planning lots of other mountains to climb up now. Mountains on my list include Chiborazo in Ecuador, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and Aconcagua in Argentina. We’ll see!

Tait