Iztaccíhuatl

Mexico City

: Here’s where I sat in the airport waiting for my girl Jurgena to come walking through those doors after having arrived on her flight. She and I were meeting up for a week south of the border with the plan of climbing some volcanoes together. The idea was to start off by climbing a couple smaller ones before taking on Iztaccíhuatl which, at 5220 meters, is the third tallest peak in the country behind Popocatépetl (5393m) and Pico de Orizaba (5636m).

: Catedral Metropolitana de La Asunción de María. On my way from the airport, this was the first sight I saw when stepping up and out of the metro stop nearest our accommodation in the center of Mexico City

: Breakfast with Jurgi in the open-air patio of our hostel – a place called Viajero CDMX

: I was kinda skeptical of this white liquid soap shown in the dispenser here in my bathroom at Viajero CDMX. I figured that any old joker coulda spunked in there and I’d be none the wiser as I washed my hands and wiped my ass with some random perv’s baby batter

: To pass the time in CDMX, Jurgi and I went to visit Torre Latinoamericana for an aerial view of the downtown area. While in the lobby waiting in line to buy tickets and take the elevator upwards, hung on all the walls they got a bunch of plaques showing famous skyscrapers from all over the world. Here’s one showing a Chicago building I’ll always know as the Sears Tower, but has officially been renamed the Willis Tower and apparently in Mexico – as evidenced here – is known as Willies Tower

: Weird t-shirts that I was seeing in stores all around the center of CDMX that depict Erik Per Sullivan – the kid that played Dewey in Malcolm in the Middle from 2000 to 2006 before disappearing from the public eye – with this goofy shit drawn all over his face

: Se bajó por los chescos y regresó con un sidral

: One more thing we did while in the capital was attend a lucha libre match

: I think we were good sports and did our best to get into the whole spirit of the performance…

: …but by about an hour into the thing, we were both kinda falling asleep. I guess neither of us are as into watching sweaty jacked guys beat the shit out of each other as we thought we might be.

El Ajusco

: About halfway up the mountain. Here’s Jurgi alongside her new little doggy friend who accompanied us throughout the majority of the ascent and pretty much all of the descent on this mountain know as El Ajusco (3930m), officially the highest point in Mexico City. The Uber driver that took us here told us that the pine forests surrounding the mountain are where a lot of families from the capital drive to every holiday season to pick out a Christmas tree

: Jurgi’s photo of me as we near the top of Ajusco. There was no clear path to walk in this area and we had to scramble over a lot of those rough-lookin boulders that lie ahead of us. To make it additionally exciting, as we’d been doing the aforementioned scrambling, there was a pretty steep drop-off on both sides of us

: Here we are at the top, enjoying the view from a spot known as Pico del Águila (Eagle’s Peak). The climb to the pico was easy enough to reach without a guide. There were a few boulders just before the top that we had to scramble over, but nothing technical that required special equipment. There are some signs here and there indicating (sometimes dubiously) which way to go, but when in doubt I double-checked using maps.me to navigate the route to the top, as well as back down.

: To get to the mountain we took an Uber from the city center which was very cheap and easy, but as we began to get close to our drop-off point we came to the realization that neither of us had any cell service and wouldn’t be able to get an Uber back to the city once we’d finished hiking. We asked the driver what he recommend we do. He said there should be some people near the trailhead when we’re finished that could radio down the mountain and call us a taxi. When we arrived to the trailhead, said people were there and let us know it’d be no problem to help us out upon our return several hours later. This made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but in the end it didn’t quite work out that way. When we got back to the trailhead all the people that were there when we’d started had gone away. There was no one there to assist us. So, not knowing what else to do, we began to walk back towards the city via the road on which we’d arrived. After a few kilometers, we came across a restaurant and wandered inside. There was a group of like fifteen people sitting at an elongated table. It was some kind of family celebration. We asked the waitress if she could contact a taxi for us. She said she couldn’t, but one of the guys who’d been eating dinner offered – for a small fee – to drive us far enough down the mountain to a point where there was known to be cell service so we could catch an Uber back to the center. We agreed and were left at a convenient store about a fifteen-minute ride downhill from the restaurant. As promised, we were able to get wireless service from that point and used it to arrange our transportation back to Viajero.

Nevado de Toluca

: The day after having climbed El Ajusco, we arranged to be picked up by a guide to take us over to a slightly more difficult mountain known as Nevado de Toluca. At 4680m, Nevado is listed as the fourth highest peak in Mexico and is often done as an acclimatization hike before climbers take on Izta – as’d been our plan – or have plans of heading to Orizaba. Here we are at the very beginning of the hike.

: Maybe half an hour later on. Looking back at where we’d come from. And from that same vantage point…

: …there’s Jurgena and our guide Pedro looking towards where we’ll be going. From that point we’d have to go down maybe a hundred meters or so into the crater there and then walk along a lake before reaching the other side of the crater and climbing up that really steep, intimidating-looking mountain.

: Jurgi walking along the crater lake. Them hills behind her there are where we came down from

: Una rosa de las nieves

: Me right behind Pedro goin up some steep stuff. Pedro had extensive experience on the mountains all around Mexico City and had climbed them all dozens of times over the years, so we felt like we were in good hands

: A shot of me and Jurgi hiking up the steep section mentioned in the previous caption

: Here we are at a relatively flat point after having spent the last couple hours slipping and sliding our way up the loose scree between Jurgena in the center and the crater lake on the right-hand side of the photo

: Me literally chillin where the photo previous had been taken. Was pretty windy and cold up there at that pass so I had to throw on another layer

: There’s a theory that says Nevado de Toluca had once upon a time been as tall as Popocatépetl but that a massive volcanic eruption twenty-something-thousand years ago blew its top off, reducing the mountain’s height by some 900 meters and forming that massive crater area down there that we’d just traversed

: Just like that one little guy on Ajusco, Nevado had a group of dogs that stuck with us throughout the climb and descent. I was really quite impressed that none of these dogs showed any sign of altitude sickness whatsoever. Guess they’re used to it from living up there. That said, their following us paid off in the end because I indeed had been feeling the altitude on this day and had too big of a headache to eat all of the sandwich that Pedro had prepared for me, so the majority of it ended up goin through these guys’ crap factories

: Pedro leading the charge in the final push

: Ain’t no mountain high enough – me and Jurgena at the pinnacle of Nevado de Toluca

: This is the dinner that Pedro took us out for after having summited Nevado. The food was really quite good but the bathroom at this place was so god damn disgusting. Someone had blasted diarrhea the same color as this soup all over the toilet, wall and floor. I didn’t have any hand sanitizer on me, but thankfully Jurgi hooked me up after returning from those nightmarish facilities

Teotihuacan

: After reaching those two peaks on consecutive days, we had a rest day scheduled – a day on which we’d take a little flight in one of these puppies. I don’t know what the fuck I’d been thinking that morning, but my dumb ass left my jacket back at the hotel and it was F’n cold out there. Thankfully, Pedro – who’d given us a ride there – was nice enough to lend me his jacket before he proceeded to take a nap in the car while we went floating away

: Among other flight-related songs that I can’t remember offhand, the soundtrack played by the captain of our balloon (a former fighter pilot from the Mexican military) had included “Higher and Higher” by Jackie Wilson and “Come Fly With Me” by Frank Sinatra

: Later on in the day, I’d asked Jurgena if she thought anyone had ever killed themselves by jumping off a hot air balloon. If I recall correctly, she didn’t think they had. She said first of all it’s too much work – like, who’d go through the trouble of flying themselves up there just to jump off? And on top of that, if someone did go that far with the intention of ending it all, it’s too happy of an activity to follow through with it. They’d be too inspired by the beautiful views as they peacefully float along to do something as ugly as that.

: Bunch of balloons flying over the pyramid complex of Teotihuacan

: Pretty sure that that’s the Pyramid of the Sun as seen from much closer than where we were in the previous photo

: I’ve heard of food porn, sure…but what the deuce is Porn food?

: After the balloon ride there was a mariachi performance and a complimentary breakfast being served back at the launching pad. By the time that we got our food the spots at all the tables had been taken, so…

: …Jurgi and I ate our fart-brewing breakfast by the edge of this empty pool.

: We then spent a few hours exploring the pyramids of Teotihuacan by foot before ending up at this place for lunch where a giant fan kept blowing Jurgena’s hair all over the place as if she were in a shampoo commercial

: Iztaccíhuatl as seen from a small ranger station where we’d be spending the night. In Spanish, this mountain is sometimes referred to as “La Mujer Dormida” or “The Sleeping Woman” because that’s what the ridges at the top are said to resemble. Do you see it?

: For this hike we’d be using the same guide we’d used two days beforehand on Nevado. The plan was to wake up at midnight, eat a light breakfast, drive to the trailhead and then start climbing that mofo in pitch blackness. Here we are an hour or two into the hike looking back down on some city lights. I remember it being so quiet at this point that – as Iceberg Slim would put it – you could’ve practically “heard a mosquito crapping on the moon.”

: Popocatépetl as seen from the side of Izta. Climbing of El Popo is not allowed because it is a highly active volcano that persistently belches clouds of ash and toxic fumes. In fact, in the local language Nahuatl, Popocatépetl means “Smoking Mountain.” Pedro told us that the year beforehand, someone died trying to climb it but that her hiking companions survived and it’s just a stupid thing to do because not only did they put their own lives at risk, but also the lives of the rescue team that had to go get ‘em out

: Sign saying “this is not a bathroom” posted on the outside of a mouse-infested hut where we stopped to have a meal just before daybreak

: After eating said meal, I walked up to the top of that ridge on the left side of the photo and took a poopoo while watching the sun rise next to Popo

: Still chuggin along

: Photo of Jurgena and I taken by Pedro

: Pedro didn’t sleep at all the night before because he said the sound of coyotes kept him up, so he was pretty cranky. This is the part of the hike where he totally lost patience with us and started acting like a big dickhead, saying that we’re going too slow and then not helping me put my crampons on properly before going over the glacier, so they were hanging off my feet and I kept tripping on them and…I dunno – just making things unnecessarily unpleasant. Our pace wasn’t really THAT bad. Before going up on Izta he’d told us he’d been stuck up there with some jokers that took 17 hours to do this hike. We weren’t going anywhere near that slow. Like, if we were truly taking too long, it was his right to say calmly and confidently that we needed to exit the mountain right away and we would’ve obeyed. It was not cool or professional of him to have us continue and act passive aggressively like we were forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do. It didn’t have to be like that. It really didn’t.

: Once we’d made it past the glacier and’d taken off the crampons, the peak was in sight. And like…after Pedro had gotten all pissy-ass on us, my mood was shot. I too had lost my patience and felt this need to put him in his place. Like, as a guide, of course he knows way more than me when it comes to technical climbing and all that shit and I’d never challenge his expertise, but with him complaining about how slow we are, I wanted to show him that when it comes to endurance, he couldn’t fuckin keep up with me if he tried. So I decided to leave him and Jurgena behind and blasted off towards the peak. I was where I am when I took this photo when I heard Pedro yelling after me to stop and wait for them. Jurgi ended up deciding she would stay there in the photo where Pedro and her are talking. Apparently Pedro tried to convince her to keep going, telling her that we’re really close now, but she said she didn’t want to hold us back anymore. He acquiesced and told her we’d be gone for like twenty minutes while making a quick summit then would meet up with her again in the same spot before taking a different route down.

: After Pedro gave me the go-ahead to continue on, I got back to my breakneck pace until I reached the top. Seen here are two hikers enjoying the view from the summit as Pedro (on the left) walks over to meet me where I’d been chillin

: At the top. Up here I had to confront Pedro and let him know that I didn’t appreciate him losing his patience back there. I said that guides aren’t supposed to do that. I said that I’m just trying to show my girlfriend a good time by taking her to do something she wouldn’t normally do on her own and that it’s not her fault she’s not as fast as us because she’s still learning. Of course, it wasn’t lost on me how big of a hypocrite douchebag I am in saying that. Because running ahead and leaving her behind like that just to spite this guy and to preserve my ego makes me an even bigger dickhead than he is.

: Bajando after reuniting with Jurgena. One other thing about Pedro that really turned me off was that – as we were going down here – any of the cairns (little pile of stones) that we saw along the way that other hikers had built-up to mark the trail, he went out of his way to kick over. He said that if you don’t know your way around and have to rely on cairns to make it to the top or bottom, you got no business being on the mountain.

: Photo of me and Jurgi taken by Pedro as we return to the area where we started climbing about twelve or thirteen hours beforehand

: Following the climb, we spent a nice relaxing evening in the nearby town of Cholula.

: The next day, on the bus back to Mexico City, it was your mom’s favorite temperature outside – SIXTY-NINE degrees!!!