In early 2012, my brother Steven and I decided to attempt the summit of Pico de Orizaba. At ~5636m/18491ft, Pico de Orizaba, also known as Citlaltepetl, is the third highest mountain in North America (only Logan in Canada and Denali/McKinley in Alaska are higher). It's also the second most prominent volcano in the world, bested only by Kilimanjaro.

Neither of us had been over 17,600 feet before (that height reached nearly 13 years ago in the Andes, no summits), nor had we done any major summits in several years. I also had only minimal crampon/ice axe experience, and Steven had none. So this was going to be a serious attempt unlike anything we'd done before.

We flew into Mexico City and took the awesome bus system to the small town of Tlachichuca (~9000ft) at the foot of the mountain. It really towers above the city as you'll see from the photos below. The next day we were driven via 4x4 on a very rough road up to the Piedra Grande hut, which serves as base camp for the peak, and is at ~14000ft in altitude. We spent the day acclimatizing and resting.

The next day, after we'd both slept poorly due to the altitude, we got up early and went on an acclimatization hike up to ~16000ft. At this altitude it was seriously difficult to keep your breath while hiking, but fortunately our guide Javier took us up at a very reasonable pace with frequent short breaks. Steven felt okay, but I got a slight headache which got worse until we were back down at the hut a couple hours later. That hike accomplished, we went to bed at 7pm in preparation for our early start the next day and hoped for a good night's rest...

When the alarms went off around 1am, I had actually slept pretty well, though Steven said he hadn't slept very well at all. We got up, had a quick breakfast, and hit the trail at almost exactly 2am on the dot. Hiking by headlamp and moonlight in the cold, thin air was absolutely spectacular and made for a wonderful climb. After about three and a half hours, we'd reached the base of Jamapa Glacier. Our guides told us it would be about 3.5-4.5 hours from there, which seemed hard to believe given how it really didn't look that far away. They were, however, exactly right, as it wasn't until just before 9am that we finally reached the summit.

We'd struggled up the glacier for nearly four hours and there many points at which both Steven and I thought we weren't going to make it. All sorts of weird things start happening to your body at that altitude and I think we both suffered almost all of them! But we had made it. We spent about half an hour on the summit, which was supposed to be for rest and food, but I couldn't stomach anything (again the altitude at work), and was too busy snapping photos and video to really rest. Then we began the grueling descent.

It took us four hours to descend, and, just as the guides had warned us, the glacier seemed to go on forever while we were descending. Finally, we reached the end of the glacier and were able to remove the crampons, which were causing Steven major toe pain and had no doubt contributed to some minor frostbite I had gotten on my right big toe. The rest of the hike went well and we exhaustedly arrived back at base camp around 1:30pm. We were driven back down to Tlachichuca almost immediately and went to bed early, utterly beat.

The next day, our guide generously offered to take us to Cantona, which is a wonderful (and gigantic) site of pre-Hispanic ruins near Pico de Orizaba. We spent a few hours there and then hopped on a bus back to Mexico City. It was a relaxing end to a truly excellent trip. I hope you enjoy the photos!