Training – 25 pound pack – fire staircase at work at lunch. I own that staircase.
Well, our plane tickets are bought. Our hike of five days along the Whisky Trail in the Scottish Highlands is booked – basically meaning we have pre-made reservations at BnBs for various small villages along the Speyside Way. Daughters have been duly informed that the last day’s hike is 17 miles – oops, sorry, only told oldest daughter that fact. If the other one reads this blog she now knows it.
It’s a bit odd, since I don’t feel the same necessity of super duper training we’ve needed on some of our other mountain adventures. But since we’re still planning on some more high altitude peaks out there, I can’t just sit back on my laurels (however miniscule they are anyway). But without a very high mountain peering down at me, and with the distractions of work ever present, it’s harder and harder to feel the pressure to train. It was over 80 degrees today – the first day of spring – and when I ran back him from yoga at the Y, it felt more like a slog.
The title for this post was work gets in the way. Perhaps that’s a cop out. I like to believe that if I didn’t have to get up tomorrow and be a fully functioning plus individual, my day would be open to write, draw, remodel rooms of my house, recycle more and work on my vegetable garden. Is that really what would happen? Would I actually just putter around in pajamas and wrestle my Westie to be the first to look at the junk mail pushed through the the mail slot? Somewhere and somehow I still need to know that 20,000 foot goal is there. When it’s in the mid-80s and hot – that’s the only thing that keeps you running the extra mile.
So the leaping and springing forward of the last two weeks took their toll, and left me unable to complete the post I’d planned yesterday. Blame it on that extra day and one less hour. Funny how the extra day didn’t compensate for the one less hour.
This week we’re taking a brief detour from treks and summits to explore urban hiking combined with public transportation in downtown Orlando – a city not renowned for its pedestrian friendly nature.
Being fortunate enough to to live a mere 2 1/2 miles from work, walking is always a option for me. And on Friday, as is frequently my wont, I went ahead and took the 45 minute stroll into the office. See Urban Hiking in Orlando – Art in Odd Places. (There’s actually another post somewhere in this blog about urban hiking that I couldn’t even find – the risks of writing almost every week.)
But this time I’d planned a transportation challenge for the way back. Yes, I could have taken Sunrail – our new uber light rail that goes from my office to Florida Hospital, just a 20 minute walk from my house.
Or I could take the Lymmo.
I still remember a client looking at me aghast when I said I would take a lymmo to the courthouse.
Here in Orlando the lymmo is our free circulating bus. Several routes have just been added, one of which goes almost to the edge of the lake I live by. So at just past 6 on Friday I ventured out, dodging the Orlando City soccer fans who were all taking express lymmo buses to the soccer stadium, to wait for about 8 minutes for my bus up to the courthouse, the site to change for bus number 2. The bus on the first leg of my journey was fairly crowded. Most prominent was a young woman with a toddler carrying a bag smelling decidedly of seafood. The woman carried the bag, not the toddler. After she and said toddler (in stroller) plopped themselved down she pulled out a crab leg from her plastic bag. “No eating on the bus,” boomed the driver. Back went the crab leg. She unstrapped said toddler from the stroller and hoisted her up onto her lap, swishing away the milky stains from said toddler’s face, neck and arms. The smell of seafood started to dissipate.
By the time we reached the courthouse, the location to pick up bus number 2, pretty much everyone was off. One poor soul was still trying to figure out how to get to the soccer game. That left me and two others. As I studied my map for the next leg of my journey, up to the senior center in Marks Street, which would leave me a more 20 minutes walk from my house, one of my fellow travelers asked me if I needed help.
I love traveling incognito. At this point I was just one of the weary trying to get home on free transportation – little resemblance to the lawyer I spend my days disguised as.
I explained where I was headed and she told me to make sure to watch for the bus swinging around the corner, because that would be the one I needed. The other gentlemen on the bus was quite talkative – he was headed up to Park Lake to meet friends, carrying a plastic bag filled with what appeared to a liquid and potato chip picnic. We all commiserated on the sad state of Orlando’s roads, wrought by the Ultimate I4 construction project, and enjoyed one of those moments of kinship that crosses all racial, economic and educational bounds.
I disembarked in front of the Senior Center, the only passenger left before the bus made its next loop back to the courthouse. The driver had another two or three hours to go. The already warm evening made a little warmer by the warmth generated by the shared community of free bus riders. Like one of those fleeting moments in New York – when people on the subway all make eye contact. Not always clear why – just a moment everyone’s worlds and perceptions collide.
Where it all began – Summit of Kilimanjaro, July 2011
I couldn’t miss at least one allusion in the title to that rarest of days last week – leap day! One does wonder if anything that happens on that day really counts – or perhaps all the events of leap day fall into some alternate universe that contains only four days each year, or that takes four years to create a year….but enough of such ruminations.
It’s time for a brief retrospective and for a glimpse into future trips. It will be five years ago July that J and I summited Mt. Kilimanjaro – an experience that, as cliched as it sounds, changed our lives forever. Call it mountain fever – or as a friend puts it – mountain head, we couldn’t wait to reach another summit. That trip led to Mt. Hood, the Grand Canyon, the Inca Trail, Mauna Kea, Mt. Elbrus, Mount Washington, the Ecuador volcanoes including Cotopaxi, Pico de Orizaba, and even the little known Puzzle Mountain in Maine.
And a lot of these trips remain to be written about, especially Kilimanjaro. This blog was born when we decided to go to Russia to climb Mt. Elbrus in 2014 and I thought it would be a convenient way to update friends and family. Little did I know that two years later I’d still be blogging.
So what’s on the horizon, both near and far? Well, in the short term, we have a visit to the swamp coming up in about three weeks – that is, a weekend in New Orleans. It’s only one of my favorite places of all time, and of course is home to daughter S (who has wholly rebelled against being referred to as daughter #2, Dr. Seuss allusions notwithstanding). And we follow that with a trip to Boston, more specifically Cambridge and Somerville, where daughter A and a 30th year law school reunion await. Ironically, we were preparing to climb Kilimanjaro when we attended the last reunion and I still remember our visit to Eastern Mountain Sports.
The mid horizon reveals the Whisky Trail in the Scottish Highlands, and there will be much more to come on that. We’ll see if I develop a taste for scotch as part of the training for that hike. It may not be a “summit” per se, but the last day is an ambitious 17 miles. And that will be followed by a week in Scarborough.
As for the distant future – I think there are still more mountains in me. Perhaps another attempt in the Cascades – Rainier may have my name on it.
Malcolm, our 15 year old West Highland white terrier, showed up at just the right time. He’s older than the scotch.
I’m finding it increasingly hard to keep up my training regime without the threat of a large mountain looming over me. And even though it looks as though this summer’s adventure is going to be more of the hill and dale variety, it’s getting imperative to make it definite so I at least have the goal of making sure I’m ready for several days of intense hiking. I’m also beginning to think that maybe an intensive course in single malt scotches is needed.
So far the logistics of the trip are presenting some of their own summits. Husband J has become enamored with the idea of hiking the Speyside Way in the Scottish Highlands, also known as the Whisky Trail. I pointed out to him that I am not a scotch lover (I like my Irish whisky better), but he contends that four or five days of hiking along a beautiful river with stops at distilleries along the way will change my mind. And daughters A and S and respective boyfriends, who are to accompany us on this trip, seem to feel a whisky trail in Scotland is eminently appropriate for young Millenials. Even our travel with friends friends, M and S, are interested so we may form quite a merry band of pilgrims.
But that’s just one aspect of the trip. It will start with J and me flying with my parents from Orlando to Manchester, where they will visit with friends while the remainder of the group goes off on the whisky pilgrimage. Then the idea is to rent a house, perhaps AirBnB, in Scarborough or somewhere else on the North Yorkshire coast for a week before returning to Florida. I grew up spending time either on the North Yorkshire or North Carolina coast (rather a stark contrast), so it’s going to be a throwback for me. We last took the girls to the North Yorkshire coast in 2000.
So, the plans now entail planes, trains and automobiles and everything else along the way. We have to obtain plane tickets, figure out multiple modes of transporting ourselves from Manchester to the highlands (some combination of train and bus and I’m just hoping we can avoid hitch hiking), find a vacation rental house for one specific week that can accommodate at least 8 people, rent a car, and identify a tour company that will provide 6 or 8 people with guest house reservations and luggage transport as we toddle along between distilleries.
I think it may be easier to attempt an 18,000 foot mountain.
I want to go back! While we may not have made it all the way to the very top of Pico de Orizaba, Mexico City was its own sort of summit.
The day before we left for Mexico City – when we were attempting to scale the mountain – all the corn that had been drying on the rooves of the village houses had been fed into some monstrous and loud machine that stripped off the kernels. Now, burlap bags of corn were stacked in front of each house, apparently waiting to be picked up for market.
We had a several hour drive back toward Mexico City. More and more fields being plowed, with nary a tractor in site. Corn was being stored in strange concrete pyramids – agricultural homage to the great pyramids of Teotihuacan, perhaps?
Eventually our time travel back into the ancient means of corn production ceased, and we fast forwarded into the heavy traffic approaching Mexico City. So unusual to look across the modern interstate and see the volcanoes towering over, one quite actively puffing smoke. They reminded me of a gathering of old men observing the neighborhood from a high up vantage point, having a contemplative cigar as they looked down.
We said farewell to our guides and our fellow climber, and were dropped off at the eminently reasonably priced Hotel Marie Cristina. J still remembered the Anthropological Museum from his trip to Mexico City with his brothers in the 1970s (his parents actually entrusted their two youngest sons to the care of a slightly older brother for a bus trip from Mexico City to Guatamala; we still have the machetes they brought back with them on the airplanes in that more innocent world). Anyway, that’s a story for a different day.
Suffice it to say that we hopped into a taxi to go to what is effectively a museum row. A tree lined boulevard with parks on either side which houses all the major museums. The Anthropological Museum is spectacular. Oriented around various geographical areas of Mexico, each part of the museum flows into the next. There’s a courtyard in the center of the square structure with a large water feature.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and we had lunch outdoors at the museum cafe. The wood platforms of Orizaba’s hut felt a thousand miles away.
We made our any back to the hotel and somehow managed to fit all our climbing gear back into our duffels. It remains a mystery of physics how the same items take up more space after they have been used on a trip.
In any event, we finally masterd our packing and made our way to Porfirio’s in the Polanca area, a restaurant highly recommended by G. He had told us that 8 pm was the earliest we should arrive – and sure enough, people were only just starting to venture into restaurants. We walked around for about 30 minute before, looking into windows of elegant shops and it was clear that we were in a lull before the evening got underway. By the time we left – stuffed with chicken mole and steak – it was a crowded lively street scene.
I would have loved to have seen the Freida Kahlo house, and so much more, but 24 hours wasn’t enough. But the dollar is strong; it’s not a long plane flight – and we will go back.
The swamp was especially wet this week as a very beautiful morning morphed into a grey day of drizzle, thanks to El Niño. Yes, this post is a detour from adventures in Mexico, the conclusion of which will be forthcoming. A few twists are always needed here and there.
Orlando’s Dinky Line Urban Trail is part of my running routine. But I’d always wondered about the part of the trail that on the map consisted mostly of orange dots, which is apparently code for sidewalk as opposed to trail. In any event, the cool weather proved tempting and instead of a run followed by Bikram, husband J and I found ourselves on what turned out to be an 11 mile loop to and around Orlando’s in-the-process-of-being-renovated and turned into something else entirely Fashion Square Mall.
We started off accompanied by one of Lake Ivanhoe’s many resident and, to me, unidentifiable water birds. He looked a lot more enthusiastic about the drizzle than we were. Shortly after, still on the part of the trail I knew, we passed what I am convinced is a haunted radio station. It’s been empty since we’ve lived here, yet it’s right next to a popular hotel. Just one of those urban ruins. A few other urban ruins in our journey – an abandoned sushi restaurant and a bank that looked as though it had never recovered from a heist.
Finally we reach d the orange dot part of the trail and we were off! First up was a tour of in-fill development in an area called Colonialtown. Small townhouses and fourplexes, built in the style of the original small houses. Surprisingly attractive, even in the rain that started to fall more heavily.
To my surprise, we then discovered that what I had always thought was the beginning of the Cady Way Trail wasn’t. The trail head is actually located at Lake Druid Park – a lake and a park I’d never heard of despite 25 plus years in Orlando. Shortly after, we finally reached the mall and it was time for a lunch break at Noodle Co. – a first for us. At least it rained hardest while we were inside.
The Executive Airport is across the street from the mall, and after some difficulty with urban route finding, we got ourselves back on the orange dots. Next to the airport is a party supply store selling themed party goods for any type of celebration you could imagine. Who knew there were so many types of princess tiaras. Not to mention sizes and shapes of plastic trays or colors of napkins. And there was even a room filled with nothing but janitorial supplies.
A little bit of FaceTime with daughter S entertained us for the next mile or so. Nothing like getting to watch a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade in real time. That was followed up by the Orlando Chili Cook Off – if we’d known we wouldn’t have had lunch!
After passing the landmark Colonial Lanes Bowling alley – what could be better than cocktails and bowling – we finally made our way back toward downtown and along what I can only describe as Memory Lane. There was the girls’ daycare center. And the orthodontist’s office, where I spent many an hour in the waiting room.
Mile 11 of our loop brought us back to Lake Ivanhoe. We bookended our hike with another bird – a serious grey heron who looked as though he might charge us admission for passage around the lake.
There was no snow, no ice, and no altitude. But there were a lot of things and places I’d never noticed before in the few miles right around my house – and that’s an exploration in itself.
What goes up must come down. And after our guide R put the kabosh on my secret plan to snail my way ever so slowly up the glacier to the top, timing be damned, the down is what faced us. We started off at a good clip. Ever since my way too long climb down Mt. Elbrus in 2014, I’ve focused on descents, with some modicum of success. R put me at the front of the rope on the way down the canalone – it’s certainly the safest place to be, but it’s also the spot where you get to pick out the route and match all the mixed up steps in front of you to create some semblance of a path down. I could tell I hadn’t acclimatized well because as I descended I felt more and more energetic – and we moved much better as a team than we had at any point on the way up.
We finally made our way back to the scree field, and R went on ahead of us. J and I managed to pick our on way down, albeit with some wrong turns that increased the difficulty of the route. At one point we found ourselves on an 18 inch ledge with a sheer drop on one side. I’m sure that is not exactly the trail we were supposed to be taking. But at least the 18 inch ledge didn’t coincide with the increasingly high wind gusts. Two separate times I was literally knocked off my feet. There was a steady 30 plus mile an hour wind with gusts blowing harder. I didn’t slip – I was simply slapped down.
Finally we made it back to the strange stone aqueduct that led to the hut. Apparently at one point there had been a grandiose plan to work with water and drainage on Orizaba, leading to the construction of a now defunct aqueduct feature that forms the first part of the trail up the mountain.
And, how, you may wonder, were the other teams doing? Well, as mentioned, the Italian hadn’t even made it to the glacier before altitude overcame him. When we left the edge of the glacier, we could see three teams of two each inching their way up its stark white. They were no more than little black doodles on a white sheet of paper. It was hard to tell who was who, and it wasn’t until we were back at the hut and the two Russian teams showed back up without reaching the summit that we realized the top most team battling the high high winds was our own teammate G and our guide D!
I wanted to wait to greet them when they returned, hopefully after a successful summit, but after we’d packed up and they still weren’t down, it was clear it was going to be a lot longer. We’d already been climbing for about 8 or 9 hours, and the green of the forest below was starting to seem inviting.
And this is where the people part of the trip became bizarre enough to rival the uniqueness of our natural surroundings. We’d heard rumors that the Russian team included a high ranking politician and others – but how high ranking we didn’t realize until R arranged for us to hitch a ride down the mountain to the village in their two jeeps while he waited for G and D. There was one free spot in each van. J went with the politician and his fiancée; she hadn’t climbed but still looked pretty wind blown. When we say high ranking, we are talking cabinet level. I know; I figured out names and Googled everyone. Google images helped confirm I’d locate the right bios. Who expects to spend a night sleeping in the freezing cold on wooden platforms in a hut in remotest Mexico with government officials from Russia.
My jeep mates were equally illustrious in Russian political and academic ranks. Perhaps even more so for a would be mountaineer, as one of them had been a professional climber who had summited Everest in 1992 (where he and Scott Fisher of Mountain Madness fame had argued about placement of fixed ropes) and climbed K2 in 1996. He was also a snow leopard – meaning he had summited all of the highest peaks in Russia, no mean feat. (I found that last bit out through Google.) Anyway, we had a fascinating conversation on the way down, and it certainly added an international flair to the trip.
Luxury accommodations compared to the hut
Back at the hostel, we read and had a very late lunch. Eventually G and D showed up, with the glow of the summit still surrounding them and only a few bruises and battle scars to show. They had battled unbelievably high winds, and even though they couldn’t even stand upright on the summit, had the glory of being the only two climbers to make it to the the top that day. I just kept hoping a little of that karma would wear off on me.
We had one more night in the hostel. A whirlwind of Mexico City comes next.
Pico de Orizaba. From the steep scree slope that starts the climb to the glacier to our multi-national companions in the Piedra Grande refuge – this trip had enough twists and turns for any best selling novel.
After our day of rest at the Hacienda Santa Barbara, we packed up and drove a couple of hours through farmland and small villages into the heart of rural Mexico. We were aiming for the Orizaba Mountain Guides hostel, located in, I believe, Tlachichuca. It’s a very small village. One gigantic house, protected by an elaborate gate and wall, dominates the streetscape. We understood it to be a vacation house owned by people from Mexico City. Corn was drying on the rooves of many of the village houses, which a couple of days later was being fed into a machine that stripped off the kernels. A lot of houses had large gates leading into courtyards not visible from the road. Again, I was struck by the interior nature of life here – little looks out on the street. Everything is directed toward the private family life behind the walls.
G, our team mate, husband J and I had a room with two sets of bunk beds, perfectly adequate, but cold. My light weight down jacket was practically glued to my body by then. We all went out and took a look at the mountain when it appeared between clouds – and it looked steep! No two ways around it.
Lunch was late – and filling. Pasta with a cheese sauce, followed by chicken breasts stuffed with ham and cheese. I decided we were just carbo loading. The afternoon was for rest and a few hours later it was time to eat again – this time steak. My mountain reading this trip was the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan novels quartet, and My Brilliant Friend was a good companion in the freezing room.
The trusty 4×4
Next morning we changed vehicles from the van to a beat up 4 wheel drive jeep that is de rigueur for the drive up to the mountain hut. Through an old growth forest to the tree line, continuing on a rutted road to the hut at about 14,000 feet. We were well aware that the wind forecast was very high.
Outhouses around the world
The hut contained three levels of simple wood platforms and two counters for cooking and meal preparation for whatever teams had shown up. The outhouses were rivalled those at Mt. Elbrus in the Cacausus Mountains in Russia. These had even fewer walls, but an equally commanding view. We commandeered a lower level platform as soon as we arrived, and immediately afterwards were sent up on an acclimatization hike to high camp. We’d had a lot of conversation beforehand about whether to spend the night at high camp – which would have meant starting off with heavy packs and trying to sleep in tents – or whether to have a day with more altitude gain – but sleep in the hut and be better rested for summit day. In light of the wind forecast, we opted for the acclimatization hike to high camp and sleeping in the hut.
Made it to high camp
Our guide, R, decided to take everyone’s pulse ox (measures oxygen saturation) in the hut. Except for one time on Kilimanjaro at 16,000 feet, I’ve never had that done before. It’s not really clear what the measurements mean, and it can freak you out a bit. As it did me. G, our ironman companion, was well in the 90s; J was about 89; and I registered a whopping 84. Nope; not acclimatized.
But after our acclimatization hike scrambling up the scree field to high camp for a couple of hours, I could tell I was breathing better and better the more elevation I gained. Sure enough, by the the time we descended and were eating dinner and ready for our paltry hours of sleep before summit attempt, I was back up to 90. I think even our guides were surprised. But the fact is, I think the extra days of altitude I’d had in in Ecuador really helped me Eachieve that Cotopaxi summit.
Here are the players in the hut: our team: G, whom you’ve already met through this blog – Ironman triathlete and corporate executive, J, me, and our guides D and R. Next was an Italian climber, athletic, into snow boarding, with a Mexican guide. He read a paperback novel much of the afternoon before our summit attempt. A German woman with her American friend who walked from the hostel to the hut, arriving in late afternoon. We’d helped out by taking their wheeled suitcases from the hostel in our jeep and they were going for the summit the day after us. Possibly the first wheeled suitcases the hut had ever seen. I kept envisioning them pulling the suitcases up that rutted road. Then there was the group of Russians and their guides. More on them later. For you mountaineers out there – suffice it to say – Snow Leopard.
We had whatever hours of sleep could be snatched between the howls of the wind and arose at 2 am. You sleep pretty much in what you’re going to climb in so base layers were already on. For some reason, R thought we should hold off on putting on our climbing harnesses until we needed them higher up – never again will I do that. I’ve always put my harness on before starting a climb and that’s a lot easier than fighting with it in the side of a mountain.
It was unbelievably windy as we started, and the night stars glowed like sparklers. We headed up the same steep scree slope we’d just climbed that afternoon. But it felt even steeper and more exposed at night, and I also quickly realized that my resistance to putting new batteries in my headlamp (they were fine in Malinche? they are lithium?) was just dumb. It was definitely dimmer than everyone else’s and that makes a difference on a mountain, at night.
It was clear from the start that we were at a different pace than G, and not long after we began he and D, one of our two guides, took off up the mountain.
Finally, trudging away, we passed high camp, where we’d been just a few hours before, and kept going along a slightly less steep area to the canalone (spelling unknown), fighting wind every inch of the way. We knew in advance we weren’t going to attempt the Labyrinth, a steep outcropping of rock. It was too icy, and the canalone, a smooth flow of snow, was accessible. Only at that point did I start to feel that smooth movement where you are just putting one foot in front of the other and your breathing falls into rhythm.
By then we’d roped up and were in crampons – and I had been way too over confident in my ability to don crampons without practice, relying only on my success in July with them. Some things you just need to do over and over. At some point the Italian climber and his guide headed down. Apparently he’d had altitude issues and didn’t make it to the top of the canalone. The smooth slope up of the canalone quickly changed and we were back to rock and ice and deep steep snow up toward the glacier.
Sunrise over Orizaba
By then the winds were increasing even beyond what they had been, and it was pretty clear a summit attempt was not a realistic possibility. We were just too slow. I wasn’t properly acclimatized, and while small steps were manageable and I could get a rhythm, each time big step up required a real effort that then wiped me out for the next few steps. The wind was blowing; the sun glinting.
But you know, I probably would have kept plowing away forever, at whatever snail’s pace I was going. And I think R, our guide, realized that, because when we finally reached the glacier at about 16,000 feet he simply announced that was all for the day. I think he thought otherwise I would just keep putting one foot in front of the other, however many hours it was going to take. The glacier was beautiful. A steep field of snow, the summit peering down. Way up on that steep white meadow we could see the others on the mountain who’d passed us. There was G and D, from our team, and two groups of the Russians. All in all, we had reached the glacier, the Italian team had returned, and there were six climbers left on the mountain.
Next up – how we battled winds on the way down, hitching a ride to the village, and who got to the top of the mountain.
According to one of our guides, the mountain of Malinche, officially 14,636 feet but higher when measured by GPS, is home to one of the world’s highest forests. It’s a mix of tree and rocky trail, shielded forest glades and exposed ridges. Almost a metaphor for our entire trip to Mexico. The name given he mountains by the Tlaxcaltecs was Matlalcueyetl, which means “lady of the green skirts,” a goddess of rain and wind.
After our visit to the Teotihuacan pyramids, we drove several hours further, southeast toward Malinche, located in the state of Tlaxcala. On the way, stopped for lunch at restaurant where lamb tacos and rabbit were high on the list of menu choices. Venturing further and further into rural Mexico was a time machine experience. We soon left behind the truck stops – rows and rows of non chain cafes (except for the ubiquitous Oxxo – the Mexican version of 7-11) – and were driving through fields of nopales – the cactus that is the base for incredible salads.
There wasn’t a tractor to be seen. Men were plowing the land with horses and donkeys. Each small village had several shrines on the side of the road occupied by ornately dressed saints. And there were similar smaller shrines adorning the gates of many houses.
Eventually we reached the IMSS cabins in the park surrounding Malinche, at an altitude of about 10,000 feet. As I understand it, they are operated by the ministry of health or some other equally unlikely branch of government. They are two room cabins with a bathroom, nice tile but some unusual features. A refrigerator, but no stove? The bathroom leading off of the bedroom, railroad car style? One electrical outlet? No heat of course, and we were all wearing our lightweight down jackets (which had become like a second skin by the end of the trip).
We had quesadillas made with Oaxaca cheese for dinner, and went to bed early in preparation for a before dawn start up Malinche.
We started walking about 6, accompanied by three dogs who were our travel companions all the way to the summit. They clearly did this everyday, and seemed to be in excellent shape, so their presence didn’t cause my animal loving heart any angst. The first part of the Malinche hike is through beautiful forest that we could just make out by the glow of our headlamps. As the sun rose, the trail got progressively steeper. There had been frost, and drops of water sparkled on the grasses and bluebells still blooming here and there.
Eventually we reached the tree line, crossed a brief grassy section and moved onto steep rock and scree. Close to the top, you traverse a ridge, narrow in some points, and finally up a steep rocky section to the summit.
The wind died down just a bit so we, together with our dog companions and a couple of other climbers, could enjoy the partial views we got when the sun briefly appeared. It was surprisingly comfortable in the grey cloud at the summit – as if we were in a nest of cotton, safe at the top of our mountaintop tree. The dogs scratched the snow away and made beds for themselves on the warmer dirt. They were getting ready for the long trek down.
It took us about 5 hours to reach the summit – appoximately 4500 feet of elevation gain. We came down fast, running at times, in just under three hours.
Once down, we drove a short distance to the Hacienda Santa Barbara. Built in the 1600s, the hacienda is huge, yet only a few rooms are available for guests. J and I were in a large room, high ceilings and a small bathroom inserted into one corner. Heated by only a very small stove, we definitely needed all the blankets from the two beds. The floor was stone, and the window – which locked by way of a giant beam that slid across it – looked out in more ruins of outbuildings. Meals were in a dining room occupied by one large long table. And in the morning we had atole, as well as coffee, a hot drink made from corn and tasting like chocolate. Dinner was chiles rellenos, hot enough to warm us up even in that frigid dining room.
It was now Tuesday night. We knew Pico de Orizaba awaited.
On this grey sad day – where we all awakened to the news of the death of Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, or whatever persona the talented Mr. Bowie was currently assuming – the world I returned from yesterday in Mexico seems as far away as Mars. 1930s techniques of corn production – that sums up the village life we experienced. Steep harsh terrain and 35 mph winds – that sums up the slopes of Pico de Orizaba we attempted to scale.
But to begin at the beginning. After a four hour flight from Orlando to Mexico City on AeroMexico – again enjoying the amenities that U.S. airlines seem to have completely dispensed with – we found ourselves in an extremely long customs line. But we did get to meet an interesting young woman who was on her way to spend six months in Veracruz counting raptors and doing bird research. Interesting folks were a theme of this trip. Wait til I get to the part about our Russian hut mates on Orizaba.
We finally emerged from customs to find we were the last to pick up our luggage – our duffels were off to the side of the conveyor belt but all contents safe and sound. And the gorilla tape used for tear repair was still holding.
We must have looked like lost American tourists because it took no time for R and D, our guides, to recognize us. They drove us to the Hotel Marie Christina in downtown Mexico City, and within a few minutes we were already undergoing a gear check. We passed! The hotel is an old Colonial building with a feel of faded glory.
That evening we met up with G, our fellow climber and excellent travel companion, and had dinner with R and D at a nearby shopping area. Somehow grilled octopus seems just right for the occasion. It was close to the Feast of the Three Kings; the Christmas lights were blazing; and children were having their photos taken with the three kings who had somehow found themselves in a high end Mexican shopping center, apparently sidetracked from their journey to the manger.
The next day we had a breakfast of frijoles and fried eggs at the hotel, and then took off for the pyramids at Teotihuacan, en route to Malinche, our first acclimatization hike.
Pyramid of the Sun
Two thousand years old, the pyramids loom over the landscape like alien beings keeping tabs on the mortals below. As you walk along the long Avenue of the Dead the massive Pyramid of the Sun peers down on your right. Experts guess it’s the pyramid of the sun simply because it faces west (which did not seem a particularly scholarly rationale to me, but I guess it’s difficult to reach conclusions when there’s no written language). At the end of the avenue is the smaller, but somehow more graceful Pyramid of the Moon. G, J and I clambered to the top of each of them, figuring they were our first summits of the trip. To the left of the Pyramid of the Moon stands the Palace of Quetzalpapalotl, with multiple pillars emblazoned with owl iconography. Apparently owl imagery is found throughout Teotihuacan.
On the way into the pyramids we saw several men high up on a pole, tethered by ropes, wearing masks and costumes. All of a sudden, playing instruments, they fanned out from the pole, whirling in circles round and down in a gradual descent. An apt analogy for our next days of mountain climbing?
Next up – the IMSS cabins and an ascent of Malinche, accompanied by three dogs.
FromSwamptoSummit 