I’ve just returned from an hallucinating ascent of Pico de Orizaba with Armando.
Güero gave me a ride from Xico to Tlalchichuca on Saturday’s early morning. The plan was to meet Armando at Joaquín’s place at about 11 a.m. Armando arrived very late (by mid-day) because he stayed with his clients at some hotel in Amecameca, so they took things very calm. Cristóbal was driving the van and the client’s names were Frank and Ben, they were from Oregon.
Frank and Ben decided to sleep at Joaquín’s place, since they wanted to recover some energy after climbing Malinche and Iztaccíhuatl the days before. Cristóbal returned to México City soon after. We stayed the whole afternoon with Joaquín telling stories and having a lot of fun.
The next morning we had an abundant breakfast made by Maribel. After that, we loaded the truck with the necessary gear for 2 days in the mountain. By mid-day we rode the truck and headed to Piedra Grande hut.
As soon as we arrived to the hut we had some lunch and quickly prepared everything for going up, we wanted to make a high camp below the glacier for attacking the summit the next day. Armando and I carried heavy packs because of all the necessary water for the clients. While hiking up (and having fun of Armando’s flu) we met Mario, Idalí and Jorge as they were coming down from the glacier. We had some short talk and continued our way up.
An hour later, we found that all the camp sites were being used by other climbers, so we decided to stay a bit lower and at a good spot for camping. We quickly set up the tent for the clients and started cooking some pasta.
In the meantime, I started to search for a good place to bivy. Armando and I didn’t brought a tent for us, so we would be sleeping as dogs on the floor. I found a perfect place behind a big boulder (almost no wind), the problem was that the floor was totally covered with big irregular sharp flakes. Armando said it would be impossible to lay down on that place, I told him that I’d fix it…
I started to move all of the ledges. Carrying… pulling… pushing them until I made a nice (not so comfortable) bed of rocks. Armando tried to help me, but… how can I say it? He’s just not big enough for this brutal force tasks… he returned to cooking 
The pasta was ready, as well as the bivy site. We ate and drank a lot, then prepared the essentials for next day’s summit push. Frank and Ben went to sleep in the tent, Armando and I went to “sleep” in the freezer… Temperature got down as the sky cleared and showed us a beautiful set of stars
I spent most of the night awake. I didn’t got any acclimatization so I was like an owl in the middle of the night. Also, I had a terrible headache. Our spine was splitted in 2 by the hard sharpy floor and the weather was very cold (-14°C). I had so many clothes on that I couldn’t even move inside my sleeping bag (which was inside my bivy sack, whose legs were inside Armando’s haulbag).
The alarm ticked for the Nth time (we haven’t heard it before…) and we “quickly” woke up just to see that Frank and Ben were already awake and preparing breakfast for all (what kind of guides are we?). We stood up and prepared everything in a matter of minutes.
After breakfast, we left the camp and headed to the base of the glacier. It was about 4 a.m. 1 ½ hour later, we arrived to the glacier and started to put on the crampons. At this point, I still had that terrible headache and seriously considered getting down the mountain before getting worse. But no… as stubborn as always, I clipped my crampons, took the ice axe and began climbing the glacier. I was going unroped, while Armando roped with Frank and Ben. I quickly started to gain advantage, my pack was very light.
While gaining altitude I felt like my head was going to explode. I could feel the blood pumping from the back of my eyes. I simply turned the music to full volume and continued climbing. Now I was determined to get the summit and come down to finish the whole issue. Meanwhile, I tried to shoot some photographs, but my camera got frozen and the shutter began to make weird things, so I had to forget the subject… The only pic I was able to shoot was this:
I decided to climb the direct route to the summit, avoiding the crater’s walkaround. 100 meters below the crater’s rim, the glacier began to disappear and the sand was totally frozen; it became a perfect (and very dangerous) carpet of 50° black ice. I was very close to the summit, so the wind was getting very strong (as strong as in Patagonia and without a storm, believe me). I had to be cautious…
As I slowly crawled through that torturing scene I had a close encounter with death. The black ice was so damn hard that my crampons and ice axe were useless. I got to a point where I was like climbing a granite slab with boots and crampons! The obvious happened… I slipped. Fortunately, I’m good at slab climbing, so I could regain my balance and stopped immediately.
I ran out to reach the rim and touched the summit. The wind continued to hit very strong, so I downclimbed a bit and took shelter behind a big boulder. I began to rehydrate while waiting for Armando, Frank and Ben. In the meantime, I could spot some American climbers that were having trouble at the rim’s traverse. As I took the direct route, I was a bit more “protected” from the wind than them. Only one of them managed to climb up to the summit, the other 2 remained in their place. The summit wasn’t for just anyone that day…
About 1 hour later than I arrived, Armando, Frank and Ben appeared. They saw me taking the direct route, so they went on following me. They said that they also had a tense moment while climbing up that slabby black ice down there, that even though they were roped it couldn’t be protected. Despite all the struggle, we were now at the summit and having a very nice moment, enjoying the view and making jokes.
The climb down was also very tricky since we had to downclimb the insecure section of black ice. I was worried of the clients potentially slipping above above and pushing me downwards the steep glacier. I went down faster than they did. Once I reached moderate terrain I slowed down and waited for Armando, Frank and Ben. A couple of hours later we were back at our high camp, we had a snack then packed everything to get down to the hut.
Joaquín was already in Piedra Grande waiting for us. As soon as we got there, we put things inside the truck and headed towards Tlalchichuca. Back at Joaquín’s place we had a warm shower and put some clean clothes. The clients were really tired but very happy of their successful trip. We had a great dinner made by Maribel and had lots of fun while celebrating. We stayed one more night at Joaquín’s.
This morning Cristóbal arrived back to Tlalchichuca to pick us and return to Mexico City. I was back home after a few hours. Tonight Betty is joining us to celebrate our adventure with a nice dinner and some tequila! 
