Hiking on Popocatépetl: The dumb way

 I also enjoy hiking, remember, this blog was supposed to be about "the places I go", big ideas with minimal follow through. Well, that has to change.
So, I've been in Mexico for the majority of the past year with a giant excursion in Canada (there will be posts about that eventually, maybe on a different blog), and a few stints back into the US. My life has been a mix of boring/not-so-boring, promise.

Well, I finally had the opportunity to go with a friend here in Mexico, Javier, (a fellow I met while I was picking fruit in Canada) to make an attempt at hiking to the top of Popocatépetl, the 2nd tallest Mt in Mexico. It is an active Volcano, last erupted in 1994 and it's peak is 17,802ft over sea level. For me the idea of hiking up to a monster like this is very appealing. Turns out, it's illegal to hike on it, exactly where the point of no entry is, I really don't know. Why? Because Javier doesn't pay attention to details or plan accordingly. So, hopefully el Gobvierno de Mexico isn't reading this! 😉 But don't worry, spoiler, we didn't get too far past the tree line anyway, so I'll say technically we did nothing wrong or too dangerous.

So, to start out this misadventure, Javier didn't explain time frames well. He also packed no food or water for himself, I expected to have to supply us with some things, but seriously the guy brought NOTHING! I can't say the precise reason(s) why he thinks I was going to supply all things for him, seriously even water, but that's what happened. Coupled with the fact that he suggested a friend in the town of Tetela de Volcan take us to a trailhead, which meant we had to pay him; which Javier didn't tell me until we were already there and I couldn't get extra cash for that. The deal was supposed to be, we leave my car at Poncho's house and he drops us off and picks us up the next day at 4pm (that's what Javier told me).

traffic along the way to the "trailhead", riding in Pancho's bucket o' bolts

 Ok, so after we ran to an ATM for Javier to get some cash to pay Poncho for his services...it was raining, and again Javier didn't suggest "bring a rain cover for your backpack", and he didn't have one for himself either (no surprise), so we waited for about 30mins and decided that we didn't have enough time to hike to the "galactic cabin" near the top of the Mt, and it would be difficult hiking through the rain up a steep grade on narrow cow paths. So, we walked about 5mins to a small hut and proceeded to build a fire. Building that fire took us probably 3hrs until it reached a point that we didn't need to continue blowing on it continuously. We had a machete and did a lot of chopping to get wood chips and slivers that were dry enough to burn. With a little music from Javier's phone and the task of getting a fire going the time passed quickly and we ate our dinner and had a beer. (lesson learned, pack whiskey instead, beer takes up too much space and weight).

Random view from the Mt looking to the East I think

 

Now, he told me, it's about 15k total distance up and down the Mt, I have since decided that Javier is full of shit and doesn't know what the heck he is talking about. He also got misdirected along the way up the Mt. about 10-12 times as I recall, which I find incredible because he said he was there 8 days prior having led 2 other friends up there.

I like Javier, he is a good fellow, but seriously one of the least organized people I have ever met and I don't care if he ever reads this, I'm not letting him be the lead on a hike ever again. Point of fact, again this is an active Volcano and there is no actual trail for leisure hikes up and down this Mt. There are some roads and cow paths, but really none of this is in place for tourists. So, large parts of this hike were simply a nuisance and we were dodging piles of cow dung often.

But take it back a step to actually starting the hike the next morning, I woke up around 7/7:30am and told Javier, "wake up, let's start our day", I asked him if we had time for me to heat water over the fire to make coffee with my Aeropress, he said "if you want, sure, no problem". We finally started the hike by about 9am having spent some time to leave unneeded items in the hut since we were now just doing a day hike. So, Javier asks me to bring my bluetooth speaker up the Mt, I agree and then of course we didn't use it at all, awesome, the guy that doesn't bring water asks me to carry a speaker that we don't use while moving up to 4100m over sea level?!

Why didn't we use it? Because he didn't make sure his phone was charged before we were dropped off and he burned it up that night while we were camping, so the following day as we realize that we probably won't make it back by 4pm, he can't even get Pancho's # to call from my phone. Brilliant, the trailhead is about 6-7miles from Pancho's house and Javier then tells me at this point that we are all the way near the top of the Mt, that sometimes Pancho doesn't come because he works as a mechanic... solo en Mexico. People making deals they can't follow through on. I love Mexico, but this kind of BS I do not enjoy.

So, jumping back on the timeline again, we start hiking through dense/wet forest at 9am, we take a break in a clearing at about 11:05am to eat some Mangoes that we brought along, Javier warns me that we should turn back in 1hr because maybe it will rain. This makes little sense because by this math, even if we had started at 5am and arrived at the "Galactic Cabin" by 12pm, we still would have had no time according to Javier to attempt to go to the summit and Crater. The whole point of going up there was to make it to the penultimate point and this clown waits to tell me when we are already hiking for 2hrs that we don't have enough time from where we started. I calculate that we can push to get to the "Galactic Cabin" at least and get a view from there. Think, if we turned back then, we would have been sitting by the roadside waiting for 2-3hrs doing nothing. Again, there is no sense in what Javier says or does.

We moved out of the tall trees and walked along a road for about 1k, then cut into an area that had a broken barbed wire fence where cows roam freely, then onto another path that might have been a trail long ago but is now badly washed out from Cattle being herded up and down through here. The altitude was a challenge with the sun breaking through the clouds over 11,000ft already. We finally got a glimpse of the top of the Volcano! 

The first moment I could see the top of the Volcano, a week prior there was no snow on it

We arrived at the "Galactic Cabin", which was truly just a shack with a wooden table inside it and a few rusty pots and pans, Javier told me "they have all things for cooking up there", yea, if I wanted to get dysentery or some other equator-based mountain disease, sure. Good thing we didn't need to use that stuff, the place was filled with random food garbage and discarded plastic bottles from the cattle herders. So, it was now 1pm and the Summit was probably still 2miles up a steeper and steeper climb, I knew we wouldn't surely make it without dropping our bags and carrying only water in hand. There just wasn't time and again, Javier didn't map this out for us at all because he is basically stoned all the time. We enjoyed the view and hiked just another 400m or so further onto the volcanic sands, clouds were rolling in and out. We had a beer and enjoyed the silence and views up and down the Mt. We decided to run back down as much as we could without breaking our legs. The way down took us only 2hrs and we arrived at 3:45pm, the hike up was maybe 4.5hrs. And wouldn't you know it, Pancho wasn't there waiting! Javier said he told him "Come at 3 and wait for 1hr", apparently the guy agreed to this, but he wasn't there.

Past the tree line on Volcanic sands, 3 Amigos

 

We started walking, hitched a ride in the back of one pickup truck for about 2k, walked another 2-3k and after eating leftover tortillas, tomato and avocado, we were lucky enough to hitch another ride back to town. We still had to walk for about 45mins after that to get back to my car.

 All in all I'm glad we went, glad we were up over 4000m, but with even the slightest bit of intelligence and correct planning and we would have been able to reach the summit. Oh well, thems the breaks. 

looking West, very cloudy day up there

 Running down the Mt with approx. 20lbs on my back didn't help my quads and IT bands for the following days, but we survived. If I ever come back to the area, I'm going with a legit GPS tracker or maybe start from a place that leads to an easier approach; much better preparation, and a harness for Rocco to carry his own food!

 Live and learn. Enjoy the photos, I'll add some short videos if I can figure out why they won't upload here.

"None shall pass!"

Next to the "Galactic Cabin", not worth a photo, the Volcano in the clouds was more impressive

some briefs moment without full cloud cover