Mexicos Volcanoes: Hoch and Team Reach 15,500 ft on Ixtaccihuatl
Friday, October 11, 2024
After our rainy summit of Volcan La Malinche, our team was pretty excited to see sun pop up in the forecast. We headed toward Volcan Iztaccihuatl (Ixta) excited for our next summit.
At our regular food and water pit stop in Amecameca (my favorite word) our local guide Allan had some bad news. The rains from Hurricane Milton had caused the park service to close the road, and we would have a 9 kilometer hike to our normal parking/basecamp area. This was sad to hear, as it made a summit of Ixta a hard proposition. But we quickly brainstormed and decided we would trek to basecamp, then get as far up Ixta as possible. This would give us great altitude training for our biggest goal, Orizaba at 18,500’.
The next day we hiked through pleasant tall grass meadows and pine trees and camped at our normal basecamp at 13,000’. In the morning we woke to a ‘practice’ alpine start at 3:00am, and were finally greeted by stars and the moon.
On our climb to 15,500’ we watched a colorful sunrise and Volcan Popocatepetl puffing away across the valley. All in all a spectacular altitude training day.
Trekking back through the pine tree meadows, everyone was excited to get to Puebla for pizza, a nice night in a hotel, then to our final volcano, Pico de Orizaba!
RMI Guide Joe Hoch
