Pico de Orizaba (Summit)

Summary

My summit of Pico de Orizaba, Mexico's highest peak at 18,500 ft, on Thanksgiving of 2006.

 

Pico de Orizaba - It's ass-smackin' good!

I did it! I did it! I did it! I summited Pico de Orizaba! Yeeeeeaaaahhhh!!!!!!!

Let me first give due credit to my guide Octavio, without whom I would not have summited. (Or had quite as many laughs.)

Which brings us to the subject title of this email. I WISH I had a photo, but unfortunately I missed the moment. Picture a burly Mexican mountain guide smackin' his own ass like he's urging a horse to a gallop and you'll have an image that haunted me thoughout the climb. haha

Now I really wanted to make this an adventure so I decided to fly out of Tijuana airport. For my foreign friends, Tijuana is immediately accross the border and has the reputation of being a dirty city where American high schoolers and college students go to get drunk and get ripped off by Mexican taxi drivers. There is also the infamous "donkey show". If you don't know what that is, google it. I'm not explaining it.

I'll go ahead and be honest. I was nervous as hell about this trip. Literally from the minute my friend dropped me off at the border and I had to walk across carrying about 60 pounds of gear, I started hyperventilating and my heart was racing. I'm thinking to myself, how the hell am I gonna make it to 18,500ft when I can barely breathe at sea level??? I really don't know what it was about this trip that had me so nervous. I've traveled on my own in developing countries all the time with far less preparation (for Egypt I didn't really open my travel book till I was in the plane and I spent all of 20 minutes packing - thanks for breakfast that day Ele!). I suppose it was the combination of being my biggest climbing undertaking ever, the fact that I had mostly arranged it on my own, and it was in a developing country where I wouldn't be speaking English (and I ended speaking Spanish most of the trip, especially with my guide). Regardless, I was on edge.

Here's how it went down:

Day 1 I checked into TJ airport with no problems, and the airline was actually pretty good (no old bitter stewardesses like we have on a lot of US airlines), and even my $10 hotel room in Mexico City was pretty good. (Ok, ok, I literally chose the cheapest hotel in my guide book, but it was fine and was even on a really good street in the historic district.) So anyway, despite eating only packaged food prior to arrival at the climbing compound, I pretty much immediately got diarrhea. (Let's be honest, I have really traveled in a country till I've gotten sick there.) The problem was...I had it for the ENTIRE trip. Despite taking antibiotics. Altitude: 7400 ft (1.5 vertical miles).

Day 2 I hopped from metro to bus to bus en route to Tlachichuca, where the Reyes family has their climbing compound where I met up with my guide, hung out with other climbers, and found out information about the climb that made me seriously consider whether I had the experience to climb this mountain. (I later learned I did!) The Reyes family has owned their compound for about 100 years, though it is only within the last few decades that they've guided. And I have to say their operation is pretty slick. It's a very nice though spartan building. Cooking is good and everyone is very friendly. They also act as the local Red Cross and the guy running the whole affair is a doctor. After arriving at the compound in the middle of a storm (as luck would have it there was a hurricane nearby), I sat down in front of the little pot-bellied stove in the main room and talked with another group of Americans from Los Angeles that I ended up hanging out with who were a lot of fun. Altitude: 8500 ft.

Day 3 I did an acclimatization hike, while Team LA headed up to the mountain hut. Octavio and I hiked through local farmland to get to a valley where we hiked in the mist. It was very pretty and surprisingly warm with a temperature of about 60F at 12500ft. I sat around in shorts and a long sleeved shirt. Then we went back and Octavio and I went through my gear and we talked about how the climb would go. He was a nice guy and told me had summitted with clients 28 times. He said he was confident we could make the summit. Altitude 8500 ft.

Day 4 we took a truck up to the mountain hut where I met up with half of Team LA (the other half went up 1000 ft higher to the first high camp instead of staying in the hut). I unpacked my gear, and went for a short hike with a girl from Team LA who had been showing initial sypmtoms of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) since arriving the previous day. We hiked for about an hour then spent the rest of the day talking with the other people in the hut. Octavio cooked dinner which was the most bangin' mac and cheese I've ever had! Unfortunately he shared with other people, which unleashed a wave of farting I've never experienced before. Basically what happened is, one person farted loudly and everyone shouted gross, but Octavio said no it's ok, it means he's acclimatizing. This pretty much opened the flood gates for about 10 people to fart nonstop without an ounce of guilt, stately simply they were "acclimatizing" and therefore acting in the team's best interest. Awesome! Further, since there is so little to do in the hut, people usually grab a stack of magazines from the Reyes compound to bring up. While Octavio was grabbing some, he picked up the Mexican equivalent of a trashy women's magazine with "101 Tips para sentirse sexi!" (101 tips to feel sexy), which had a girl on the cover bent over sticking her ass out. Figuring we could use a laugh during our 36 hours in the hut, I told him to bring it so we could learn how feel sexier. This became the joke of the trip, with Octavio taking everyone occassion to stick his ass out (from which I learned a spanish phrase for when your pants ride up your ass, which translates literally to "ass eats pants", which is the same in German). So the bulk of the day was spent "acclimatizing" and feeling sexy. Altitude: 13940 ft. (2.5 vertical miles).

Day 5 After spending the night listening to people "acclimatize", Octavio and I hiked up to the first high camp at 15000 ft (just under 3 vertical miles). I felt absolutely fantastic and the weather had completely cleared to leave us with fresh snow and a beautiful blue sky. I was convinced if I felt like this the next day I would summit with no problems. We hiked back down, ate dinner, and I braved the "outhouse". Now a perfectly reasonable question is, in a mountain hut with no toilet, where do you go? The people who built the hut planned ahead and built an outhouse outside...right in front of the window with the toliet facing the hut. So needless to say, no one used it. Except me. Honestly, why should a frozen plastic toliet seat surrounded by snow in plain view of all the other climbers prevent me from evacuating my bowels to the most beautiful mountain scenery ever? The folks who built the hut were even nice enough to plan the equivalent of a toilet plunger (a cement hole with a stick) to be used for keeping the contents of the toilet from "summitting" the toilet. Well, I grabbed the stick and tried to knock over the poo-cano that had formed over the years, but it was frozen solid. So walked back to the hut and immediately learned that everyone knew i had used the outhouse. When asked how I could go in front of everyone I simply explained they were overlooking the obvious. If you shit somewhere public, you are absolutely guaranteed that anyone that can see will turn their head away. (I learned this from my friend Jed on Outward Bound. Everyone else walked half a mile from camp in a barren plain before going to the bathroom. Jed walked 50 ft and squatted and as soon as everyone saw, they all turned away and shouted "Dude, that's gross! Tell us when you're done!!!!". He had the same privacy with much less effort. Thanks for the tip Jed. It has changed my life.)  Anyway, the next day was summit day, so we all went to bed early at 7PM so we could wake up 4 hours later to start the climb...

Day 5 at 11PM we all got up and started gearing up and eating breakfast. The girl who had been feeling sick was doing very badly and had to be evacuated. Shortly after 12AM on Day 6, 3 teams headed out from the hut. For convenience we all stayed together initially. After an hour, I was feeling like shit (I hadn't slept at all, because Homer who was sleeping next to me, though a nice guy, literally vibrated my earplugs with his snoring) and I was feeling the combined effects of no sleep and 5 days of diarrhea (which means a serious lack of nutrition). I was almost certain I would not summit if I continued to feel like that. Everyone stopped to put our crampons on. Then a short while later, Octavio and I stopped to let the other team go head so we could maintain a constant pace instead of the stop and start which we were doing behind 6 other people. I took this opportunity to put on my fleece pants which I had thrown in my bag as an afterthought. Now Octavio had told me he felt I should bring them, but I was comparing the temperature to Mont Blanc and Mt Baker, both of which were colder and I had not needed fleece (in fact, I probably could not have used them I would have been so hot). If I hadn't brought them, we would have eventually had to stop, because of the cold. Anyway, after putting the fleece pants on, I immediately felt better. It seemed my body had been using a lot of energy to warm my legs, and after it no longer needed to, I had a lot more spare energy available. We continued on and soon I noticed the toes of my right foot were starting to chill. I asked Octavio how long toes could be numb before they were a serious issue. He said no longer than 3 hours. It was only 2AM, the sun would not be up for another 4.5 hours, and it was only going to get colder as we ascended. This was the second time I believed my climb was over before it started. If I only had 3 hours and the whole climb was estimated at 8 hours (to the summit), I would cause permanent damage to my toes before we summitted. I have always said I love climbing, but I will not ruin my life or my body for it. If it meant turning around to keep my toes, I was fully ready to do it. But I found that if I wiggled my toes while hiking and occassionally swung my leg hard to force blood down, it was manageable, but I was still concerned.

By 5AM, we had reached the glacier, which was covered in fresh snow due to the recent storms - perfect conditions for climbing. Without the storms, it would have been ice, and therefore both more tiring and more difficult. Further, despite a constant slow wind, there were no clouds. Just a beautiful starry sky slowly giving way to morning. The base of the glacier was about 16500 ft., leaving 2000 vertical feet to ascend to reach the summit. Here we could see all the other teams from the other camps. Octavio and I continued hiking up the glacier roped up in case one of us fell in crevasse (though this was unlikely). Octavio kicked steps in the snow and I followed. My toes had been bothering me on and off for hours. At about 17500 ft, dawn was barely beginning to break and the shadow that the mountain cast over the plains below was unlike anything I've ever seen before. It was simply immense. Pico de Orizaba towers over the surrounding area and when the sun strikes it in the morning, the view from above is breathtaking. Unfortunately, so was the altitude, so although everyone wanted to take a picture, no one gave a second thought to halting their team's progress to grab a camera from their bag. It was also about this time that teams first came into contact with one another. Everyone was moving unbelievably slowly. Altitude was starting to affect everyone. Some very seriously. I saw a few things going on with one team that concerned me. One man was sitting though appeared coherent. This may sound fine, but anytime a climber that is part of a group is sitting by themselves you should start paying attention. The one that really got my attention was drifting behind the others and seemed to be trying to decide which group to follow, though he was so lethargic he couldn't really keep up even with our slow pace. I had been sucking down Gu (an energy gel) every 30 - 60 minutes as a rule I had set for myself at the beginning of the climb. For a period of about 5 - 10 minutes, I felt very strongly the affects of altitude. I felt drunk. Then suddenly it lifted. It seemed to come and go, until I realized it was the Gu that was clearing it. I was amazed at how quickly and dramatically it affected me. Anyway, I spoke with one of his team members I had met earlier and voiced my concerns that her team was drifting apart and some seemed to be acting strangely. Octavio and I continued and I turned around to see that she had turned back. A short while later, the whole team had turned back. Meanwhile, I was so devoid of energy, I was using all my mental strength to place steps carefully enough that they would not slide back at all and force me to lift them again. Octavio was much stronger than I was, but he was clearly tired too.

We continued climbing. Having figured out how desparately I need the Gu to continue, I had starting calculating the number I had left vs the altitude left. I needed one immediately and took it. Then with 1000 ft left, I determined I had to make it to 18000 ft before taking my last Gu. It was agonizing looking at my altimeter every few minutes waiting to reach the altitude. I'd be convinced we had to have made progress, only to learn it was about 40 feet. I would occassionally take a swig of water that had not yet crystalized in my pack to keep hydrated. Meanwhile, my toes were really starting to hurt in my leather boots. But at this point, it made more sense to aim for the summit where there would be sunlight, so turning around wasn't really an option. By this point I was wearing every piece of clothing I had brought, including my 800-fill down parka, which was intended solely for stops. It should have been much too warm to climb in. It wasn't. Although the temperature was not bad (averaging 10 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit) and winds were mild, I had never felt so cold climbing before. Dr. Reyes later explained to me that the body functions much less efficiently at altitude and that was why it was so cold. Additionally, for reference, there is only half the air pressure at 18000 ft that there is at sea level, so each breath takes in only half as much oxygen.

Finally, we saw people stopped up ahead. They were shouted that they had reached it. My spirits soared as I finally saw the summit within reach. It wasn't far. We trudged on and met up with them and I was overjoyed. But then I saw something further up. We weren't done. It was a false summit. In climbing a false summit is a raised area that you must pass over to reach the real summit. It gives the appearance of being the highest point, but only appears so from the position below. I was so pissed. Why had these guys shouted and said they were done when they clearly were not? I later decided either my guide misunderstood them, or I misunderstood him when he repeated their words. (I guess the climbers could have simply decided that counted as being done, but no climber would accept that.) So everyone took a break at the false summit, which was only a few hundred feet below the summit. My toes really hurt and I sat and wrapped my down parka around my boots and just wiggled my toes for 10 minutes. Eventually they warmed up. The cold was due mainly to contact with the snow, not the surrounding air temperature, so simply not standing on them helped a lot. Then I sucked down my last Gu and we pushed for the summit. It went quickly and we soon found ourselves on the summit, which is about 18500 ft (3.5 vertical miles). I was stunned. I never actually believed I would make the summit. Literally at no point on the climb did I believe I would reach the summit until within 500 ft. But suddenly here I was. I gave Octavio a huge hug and told him he was amazing for getting us up there. I knelt down and screamed, I felt so good. I honestly would have cried had there not been other people there. We took some photos, drank water, and I listened to my favorite song "Futures" by Jimmy Eat World on my iPod Nano. It was exhilirating, in a way that no other climb ever had been for me. When I summited Mont Blanc I had expected to feel this way, but didn't. But on this mountain, I was blown away. After 9 hours of climbing, we had made it!!!!

Slowly other teams made their way up, so we made room and ultimately geared up for the descent. We went over the back, down a different route, straight down the glacier. It went quickly, taking about 10% of the time and even less energy. It was slow and getting hot (we had to strip layers). We finally made it back to the mountain hut around 1PM. The total climb had taken 13 hours. The guides and Homer and I were laughing and celebrating when the high camp team that had turned back came into the hut. One member was doing badly. Really badly. He was incoherent and vomiting randomly without cause. Everyone packed up quickly, and when the last team came in, we all threw our gear in the trucks and headed down. When we got back to the Reyes compound, Dr. Reyes diagnosed him as having cerebral edema. Basically, your brain swells, but since it's inside your skull, there's no where for it to swell to, which causes your body to do all kinds of freaky stuff. It's very serious. They hooked him up to oxygen and gave him a shot of medication that helps deal with altitude. He had pills for this, but due to his vomiting he couldn't have kept them down. His team took turns watching him throughout the night. The next day he was slowly recovering and was able to think somewhat more clearly. As of writing this, I haven't yet heard back from them, but I am assuming he recovered without further complications. If they hadn't taken him back down when they did, it would have been much worse.

Day 7 I packed up my gear and bussed it back to Mexico City where I checked into my cheap hotel again. I figured I'd had diarrhea so long, I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted and do no further harm to my body. So I ate a late lunch at a rotisserie chicken place and then had tacos al pastor (little street tacos) for dinner. Soooo goooood!!!! I am firmly convinced that in the Christian creation story Genesis, they left out the part where God gave Mexican food to Adam and Eve. Anyway, I bummed around the city a bit, but was generally so wiped out and useless that I fell asleep around 7. I woke up early the next morning and caught a cab to the airport and flew back to Tijuana. I had books to read, but didn't feel like doing anything but listening to music the entire day. (Genesis also seems to have left out the part where God gave the Adam and Eve iPod's.) When I got to Tijuana, I grabbed a cab to drop me off at the border, and then hopped in a bus that took 45 minutes to move 500 ft which then let us out to walk across the border. (Useless.) My parents picked me up and took me back to their place. I then proceeded to scarf down most of a large pizza and then soak my toes, which had been bothering me still, in a long hot bath.

That night I met up with my brother to watch a movie but very quickly became incoherent and he had to drive me back to my place and I fell asleep immediately and slept for 10 hours. I am slowly managing to stay awake later, though my toes still feel a bit strange. I had a lingering cough that the doctor explained was due to my lungs being filled with extremely dry air, but it's mostly gone. I lost 8 pounds in one week. I did capoeira again last night, the first exercise I've done since the climb, and it was really tough. I kept getting dizzy and my feet hurt.

Anyway, it was a good climb. It thorougly kicked my butt, which is saying a lot because I had trained and I handle acclimatization well. But I do feel really proud. So much so, I had to fight back tears the entire trip back to the US. I never thought I would summit, but somehow it happened. Which has left one thought running around my mind since the climb. When did we give up too soon? And when would holding out a little bit longer against all feelings to the contrary mean we would achieve something that we'll have the rest of our lives...?

Take care,
Matt

PS Photos are on my website:
http://ilivenow.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=5730