If you’ve ever flown into Mexico City, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the striking peaks of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl volcanoes on your ascent. While you may think of Mexico as the land of beaches, rainforest, desert, and massive cities, it also has quite a few very tall volcanoes! The tallest is Pico de Orizaba (3rd highest peak in North America, 5636 m), then Popocatépetl (5426 m), then Iztaccíhuatl (5230 m). On these extreme altitudes, you can still find snow and glaciers although they are disappearing fast due to rising temperatures :(
Having lived in Mexico for 1.5 years, we had our sites set on summiting the dormant Iztaccíhuatl (Izta) volcano pretty early on. We had already climbed Nevado de Toluca twice, and we were drawn to Izta because it has a striking shape and incredible views of the Valley of Mexico and neighboring Popocatépetl volcano (Popo). Popo cannot be summited because it has been active since it re-awoke in the 1990s. Luckily, Izta is almost just as high and it is just across the Paso de Cortes in the same national park.
AS THE LEGEND GOES...
In Nahuatl lore, Iztaccíhuatl was a beautiful princess that met her love, the young warrior, Popo. When Popo went off to fight in war, the princess was falsely told that he passed away in combat. Struck by grief, the princess Izta passed away. When Popo returned alive and well, he was so saddened to find the princess had died that he laid her down to sleep in eternity, and he became a fuming volcano represented today by the active Popocatépetl.
And so, behind the impressive volcanic giants, it's really just another love story....
SHOULD YOU TRY FOR THE SUMMIT?
If you have or have not been to high altitudes, I would recommend Izta as your first 5000 meter mountain! It only takes one night of camping and one day, and if you go with a trusted mountain guide, they should take care of a lot of the details. (Frankly, the guide we went with was unprofessional and overlooked some key safety concerns I had, so I will not recommend them. However, I'm happy to share a more trusted contact if you are searching...)
You can hike Izta alone, but need to bring your own crampons, helmet, rope, harness, hiking poles, backpack, tent, clothing, food, etc. etc. This is not a day hike for the average hiker, it is a serious mountain so if you don't already have solo experience I would not recommend it.
WHAT TO BRING
For this hike, if you are summiting from La Joya base camp in one day, you need to bring the proper food, water, and gear. If you are hiking in little to now snow, you NEED at minimum
4 layers of top clothes (1 thermal, 1 fleece, 1 large jacket, 1 waterproof layer)
2 layers of pants (1 thermal and 1 water proof)
1 pair of long socks
hiking boots already broken in
1 or 2 hiking poles
2 buffs / fleece scarf
Helmet
Gloves
Battery powered head lamp (charged devices will die in the cold)
Harness + rope
Crampons!!!!!!
sunblock AND sun protecting lip balm
sunglasses
Ibuprofen
If your tour company doesn't provide food (like ours), you need to also bring at least 2 liters of water, with ideally some of that being electrolytes. For food, you should pack salty snacks, sugary snacks like chocolates, sandwiches with nutella or PBJ, fruits, and protein bars or granola bars. In total, bring like 10 servings of snacks because you likely won't have a proper meal the whole time. Optionally, you can also bring an energy drink, which has been a tried trick for me to get an extra boost mid-hike and help rid the altitude headaches.
DAY BEFORE THE HIKE
Just like a lot of trekking companies, we were picked up midday in Mexico City and driven two hours to the town of Amecameca, considered the gateway to Izta- Popo Parque Nacional. Along the way, the CDMX smog disappeared and gave way to the striking views of the mountains ahead of us, including the gorgeous snow that still remained in the month of March. I had been very nervous about the heightened volcanic activity coming out of Popo, but we didn't even see or smell any ash when we were in Amecameca, which was a green light for me to feel good about the conditions.
We enjoyed one last hearty meal at the market in Amecameca and got to bond with the other hikers in our group. Since we went with an entirely Spanish-speaking group, we were the only foreigners and it was lovely to share our passion for the outdoors! After eating, we were driven up through the national park to Paso de Cortes, where we registered for the climb and it all started to get very real! If you come visit for the day, there is a small visitor center here and day-hikes.
From Paso de Cortes, it was another 20 minutes of dusty roads to arrive to La Joyita base camp, where we were greeted by a few hundred other campers that already pitched their tents. With just enough time to take pictures, set up camp, and eat a light dinner at the food stalls at the camp, we headed to bed by 7pm to be up at midnight to hike.
SUMMIT DAY
And here is a breakdown of the 14- 15 hours that it took to get up and down:
12:00 AM: I pretended not to hear the other hikers get up and gave myself an extra 5 minutes of rest, not because I was actually tired but because I was nervous. After you've done a handful of these high mountains, you kinda know the kind of pain and mental challenge you are getting into. That being said, Ransom and I felt fantastic coming into this hike because we had been working out regularly for several weeks, and we both live above 2000 meters which helps us mitigate the increase in altitude.
1:00 AM: After a little too much dilly dallying and checking our gear, we set off for the mountain! Our group started as 12 hikers and 3 guides, but we literally lost 3 hikers in the first hour and a half :( which was not the best outlook for the rest of us! We did get a good price on our tour (2850 pesos/person) because it was a big group, but the standard guide to hiker ratio should be about 1: 3. That left the rest of us with one guide and the pace was as fast as the slowest link.
At this point, my most favorite backpack, my trusty Billabong 30L bag, decided that the zipper would give way! This certainly was not ideal as I had to carry all my stuff with an open bag that I kind-of shut with a carabiner. It's always an adventure! Although we were wearing lots of layers and it was freezing out, we quickly warmed up from the movement. The problem was, we stopped so frequently and took long stops for the rest of the group to catch up, that it was a lot of unnecessary exposure to the cold. It was definitely unfortunate circumstances but our guide did the best he could to keep everyone safe and trudged uphill.
5:00 AM: We arrived at the Refugio. Here was the real checkpoint, as the majority of the group stayed in the small, cold hut to recover and rest. This was the lowest morale we had on the whole hike, since we had been going at a slow pace with the whole group, it appeared the summit may not be even in reach anymore (and that's the only reason we really wanted to hike to begin with!) Luckily, enough hikers decided to refuge in the hut that it allowed five of us, the fastest ones, to make up a lot of our pace.
Physically, the next portion from the Refugio up the Rodilla was probably the most challenging portion of the hike, lasting about 1.5 hours and a pretty vertical climb. I still felt really great throughout and when I got a bit dizzy and tired, I just sat down to have a sandwich and energy drink and felt fine again! As we did this challenging section, we got to catch one of the most beautiful sunrises I will ever witness, over the profile of the fuming Popo volcano, Mexico City, and Puebla down below.
It wasn't entirely painless, as this section had a lot of loose boulders and scree. Ransom had a small boulder hit his foot when it fell from above, and our lips and nose totally froze from the chilly wind in this section. I was really surprised to be feeling so good but I think it helped to have an awesome climbing partner!
6:30 -7:00 AM: We passed the Cruz de Guadalajara and summited La Rodilla - "the knees". The cruz is a memorial to a group of young mountaineers from Guadalajara that unfortunately passed away on the mountain, and today is also an important landmark as you work your way up the ridge of Izta. From the Cruz, the hike gets a little more flat and you work up to the Rodilla, which is marked by the remnants of a hut that flew off the mountain! We rested for 30 minutes at La Rodilla (too much time for me!) and then we got linked up with another guide, which allowed us to continue forward.
This next part was really cold and windy, as we were now on the ridge at over 5000 meters but had to hike up and down and up and down to get closer to the summit, on the "chest" of Izta. We were given a 10 AM turn around time to reach the summit and begin our descent, and it was looking tight.
We got really irked by the slow pace of hikers in front that wouldn't make room for us to pass, and the trail was too thin to find another way around. I mostly just remember these couple of hours being very cold, but also enjoying the views of a little ice, snow, and the volcanic craters below us. Also, seeing the shadow of Izta was dope!
9:00 AM: We got to the last peak before crossing the glacier on El Pecho- "the chest" -- of the sleeping woman. I was ready to turn around and call it. We were informed that our guides didn't pack the crampons necessary to cross the glacier, so it seemed like summiting was now out of our hands. I was also really cold. But alas, Ransom committed to hiking ahead just him and one guide, and I sucked it up and came along for the ride! And so, from our group of 12 hikers, we two trudged onward towards the summit, looking down at a small glacier we would have to cross with merely ropes and harnesses.
I did have a bit of a freakout crossing the glaciers with just rope and harness, but at the end of the day it wasn't bad at all and we only had to traverse about 50 meters of ice. The rest was pretty walkable with just our waterproof hiking boots, and then we had to hike one more ridge, very slowly, because the oxygen is limited up there!
10:05 AM: Just 5 minutes after our mandated turn around time, we made it! We actually hiked this last part really fast and I think if we had a private guide the whole time, we could have even summited 2-3 hours earlier. By the time we got to the summit at 5230 m, it was such a relief, and we actually got it to ourselves! The summit isn't particularly memorable (other than being the tallest point), because the views along the whole ridge were all amazing. We took some photos with our awesome guide, Luis, observed the different tall peaks of Mexico all around us, and then began our long, long descent.
Once again we had to cross the glaciers with our ropes and harnesses, and I was a little traumatized, but we were fine.
12:30 PM: Back to the Refugio. Because the Izta hike is up and down and up and down the whole time, our guide took us on a shortcut through a boulder field to skip one of the uphill sections. Unfortunately, a boulder started sliding and almost landed on me or Ransom, but we made it out alive. Needless to say, I would have preferred to just stay on the trail!
3:00 PM: We were bonking. At this point, it was just downhill on a dirt path but the knees were aching, we were feeling the exhaustion from being on foot for so many hours, and not even the energy drinks were working anymore. We hiked in silence, one foot in front of the other. I will take uphill over downhill any day! The sun was strong and bright and we were super sweaty, but there was no stopping to rest or put away layers at this point with the base camp in sight.
4:00 PM: El fin! We made it, up and down in about 15 hours. I thought all the other hikers and guides in our group would be upset that we took so long, but they were actually so kind and supportive of us reaching the summit, and we got to eat a light meal at the food stands before taking the long road back to Mexico City. I didn't allow my body to rest at all the following week and headed straight to work on Monday morning, but I did have super burned lips, sore legs, and awesome stories to share.
WE DID IT!
All in all, I think we were so pleased with our physical condition and how well our bodies responded to the mountain conditions. The guide and group situation wasn't ideal in points, but we gotta give a shoutout to Luis who made the summit happen for us on a time crunch. We didn't feel that Izta tested us to our full potential, so the tallest mountain in Mexico - Pico de Orizaba- might just have to be our next quest! This was our 25th birthday gift to ourselves, and it was a memorable one at that! Thank you to Ransom for being the reason that we got to the summit, it was a team effort and can't wait for more physical challenges as a duo.
