El Pico de Orizaba

St. Elias Alpine Guide Miles Clark recounts his recent adventures on 18,490 ft El Pico de Orizaba in Mexico.  When he’s not climbing mountains in Mexico, Miles can be found strapped into a pair of skis, making ski films for Adventure Film Works……

I just got back from my Mexico climbing trip yesterday.  It ended up being a pretty intense-at-times/very-mellow-at-times trip.

The intensity was on day two on El Pico de Orizaba (18,701 ft.).  At around 15,700 feet, I had a client start feeling sick.  We were on a training hike and once we got back to camp, 14,000 feet, he felt worse.  I was monitoring his pulse, breathing rate, heart rate, and overall look and feeling closely.  Around 10pm at night I got confirmation that he had High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE)(The #1 killer at high altitude).  Emergency evacuation!

We ended up ridiculously lucky that a Mexican guide was at a nearby hut with his 4×4 truck.  Within 10 minutes of confirming my client’s HAPE we were in that truck and headed down the mountain.  Descent is the only medicine against HAPE and during the two hour descent from 14,000 ft to 9,000 ft my client improved markedly.  He continued to improve during the following days as we charged around checking out the fun, cultural side of Mexico.

Festival bull-whippers

The trip turned into a road trip.  Initially we stayed in the town of Tlachichua, at the base of the mountain, and went to an unreal revolution anniversary festival.  It blew my mind with guys in scary costumes having bull-whip fights, harassing the Mariachi band, and then ending it all with a amazing firework fight that involved a fake bull they held over there head that was burning with fireworks as they butted each other with it and ran around like crazy people!

The next morning we dropped 8,000 feet from Orizaba to Veracruz and the Gulf of Mexico.  Beers on the beach and body surfing were something completely unplanned on the trip but very welcome after our scare on the mountain.

Mariachi band at Veracruz

From the beach we cruised back up the to the plateau and stayed in Puebla.  Puebla may be the most gorgeous, interesting city that I’ve ever been to.  We had dinner on the beautiful central square under fancy umbrellas listening to a live saxophonist playing Frank Sinatra.

The next morning we jammed over and saw the Pyramids of Teotihuacan.  These pyramids are impressively huge and although we didn’t have much time we were able to charge up to the top of both pyramids and check out the surrounding temples.

We then spent our last night on the central square in Mexico City

Protesters in Mexico City

and enjoyed a military parade and the funky social aftermath.  Our final morning was comic with a 100,000 person protest and us having to carry all our gear through the crowd with a police escort 4 blocks just to get a cab to the airport.

It was an amazing trip, yet entirely not what I’d expected!