"One of my best achievements as an excursionist "
How I did it: Right before the Popocatepetl volcano became active again, I had a chance to climb it and reach the crater, it was a very interesting expedition, and it took me only 7.5 hrs!
The expedition started on Saturday, you arrive to touristic center to get used to the height, and on Sunday at 4:00AM you start the excursion to the volcano. At 6:00AM we reached the "Tres Cruces" point in the Northeast face which in this volcano is the easy path.
From there you start the "attack" to the crater, in a very steep climb with an inclination of around 50 degrees. I guess the distance to the crater must be of around 2 kilometers, but I took five hours to complete it. The most difficult part is the beginning with the volcanic sand, you go 3 steps and get back one. But once you reach the ice, using the spikes, and the steps of other climbers (much faster than me), is just like go through a very long iced stair, and at the end I decide to go for a "sprint" of around 10 meters, which was a bad decision, it took me around 30 minutes to recover me from that little sprint and then be able to enjoy the view and walk around the crater to the "Anahuac Peak" the highest point at 8848 meters (just over 29,000 feet). And after that hurry up to get down before 2:00PM, when the wind start to get stronger. The descend just took like 2.5 hours, much faster.
At the end, during that evening, you earn this mix feeling of exhaustion and satisfaction, which honestly I haven't experienced again; mount climbing is a totally different category that I have the chance to experience once at least in a small scale, and it was great!
Lessons & tips: - Fast the previous day.
- Carry out sweet things, power bars are a good choice, but just one or two. Save one for the crater
- I took a couple of sodas as well.
- To avoid sickness take a sip of lemon juice, so one or two lemons help a lot.
May 03, 09:35PM PDT
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