After my quick 12 km morning run near home, Judith and I went back to the mountain this Saturday. This time we opted to climb Iztaccíhuatl since she hadn’t climbed it before and also because I’m in some sort of taper mode (yeah, sure…).
We arrived in the afternoon and spent the night in Altzomoni station. We woke up at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, had some quick breakfast and drove to La Joya to start walking by 5:30 a.m.; the weather was very cold (-10°C) and cloudy.
Around 7 a.m. the clouds dissipated a little bit and the sun started to warm up the place. It was just in time for us to walk across the shortcut between La Guglia and Cruz de Rosas. Every rock in the mountain was completely frozen, it was one of those very cold days.
After a short time we passed along Ayoloco hut and followed on to the glacier, we had such a steady pace despite the cold. The glacier had melted a little bit more than it was a month ago, so we had to be more careful while scrambling through its lower ice funnels. After that, everything was joy once we were high up the glacier because of the beautiful cloudy but shiny landscape.
We got to the summit by 12 p.m., Judith was more than happy because of her first time there, I was happy because of the quick & safe ascent. We shot a couple of pics, drank some water, ate some cereal bars and went down the mountain as fast as possible. By 4 p.m. we were back in
La Joya, ate some quesadillas and drove back home. It was another of those great weekends
The rest of the pictures are here.
