We had really good weather for our summit day.. and for the first time in all my years of leading people on these trips everybody on the team topped out.
Kurt and Jeff Grindstaff were some of the first two to reach the peak that day. There were a lot of people on the mountain. It took us about 7 hours to reach the summit.
this trip involved a lot of logistics.. we landed in Mexico City and took the bus to Puebla and our bus broke down as we crossed the mountain.
when we finally made it into Puebla, we started working on La Malinche, our first hike.
the weather was cloudy which kind of worked in her favor although it did hail on us a little bit after we came down from the summit.
not many views were to be had until we reached the bottom.. and our awaiting taxi driver had run the battery down in his vehicle.
it is a beautiful mountain that dominates the Puebla skyline.
speaking of Puebla, the more I come here the more I love this place.
It really got me in the Christmas spirit.
we made a side adventure in the form of finding some rocks to climb.. Los Pericos was an interesting place down by a reservoir.. I would say they’re probably 40 routes in here and The Rock was made of rhyolite. I’m glad we made this day.
our taxi driver didn’t have a clue how to get there so we had to use mountain project and route find to get here. But after about 3 or 4 hours he was waiting on us with cold refreshments. It was about an hour outside of the city. I didn’t want to carry a 10 lb rope over there but it came in pretty handy.
we managed to catch the mass inside the beautiful cathedral.
this was inside the beautiful cathedral at Tlachichuca. Those flowers just hit you with the smell from outside the building. So inviting.
we had to do one more acclimatization height before heading over to Citlateptl, aka Orizaba. That’s where we hooked up with my old friend Danny Rios. He picked us up and took us to the National Park where we waited through the pilgrims and got to Izztacciuatl. I think we hiked about 8 Miles that day and climbed about 2500 ft. Both Jeff and Xenon were suffering from stomach issues. Which made their hike a little more challenging. Then when we got to our stopping point a pretty good hail storm came in.
we enjoyed the usual hospitality of the Cancholas family.
it was really organized chaos once you got to their compound.. they were hosting more climbers than I have ever seen in all my years of coming down here. But so gracious were Meribel and Joaquin. This was my fifth visit as their guest. They are like a Mexican family to me.
Joaquin, the Orizaba legend
Very thankful for all the pleasant experiences I had and the great teamwork of Kurt ,Jeff and Xenon. We had some challenges but we also had a lot of opportunities. I’m proud that everyone made the summit of all three peaks.
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