Greg Kempers

Nov 14 and 16, 2024

Crew: Leslie Nelson, Chaz Hogenauer and Natalie Cross

I’ve had the Pico de Orizaba ski trip on my radar for a year, ever since I climbed and skied Cayambe, Ecuador in 2023. Eventually I convinced my girlfriend, Leslie and our friends Chaz and Natalie to join me for tacos, pyramids and some icy ski turns.

While this was my second time above 18,000ft, the rest of the crew would be in new territory, as the jump from summiting Colorado 14ers to starting your climb at 14,000ft is a rough one.

On November 12, we flew into CDMX and grabbed a well used Toyota Sienna. The plan was to drive from Mexico City to the La Joya campground for our acclimation hike up Iztaccihuatl (17,159ft) on the 13th. From there, we would spend a night in Tlachichuca before being driven to the Piedra Grande hut for our Pico de Orizaba (18,491ft) summit day on the 16th. It was going to be a very busy few days, but we had 3 days of eating and sightseeing in Puebla and Mexico City afterwards to look forward to!

Iztaccihuatl

Iztaccihuatl was a rough start to the trip, Leslie came into the country with a bit of a cough that only got worse, and two more of us developed one on the climb. We left La Joya just before 4am and got to the hut just after sunrise where we were greeted by two apparently stray dogs. Our new buddies tried to follow us a ways, but when they realized we were done handing out treats, they headed back to the hut.

The ridge past the Primera Rodilla was great training, keeping us above 16,000ft for quite some time. The San Augustin and Atzintli Glaciers had a few very short skiable bits of snow and ice that, while would have been a huge waste of time and energy, made me wish we brought skis on Izta.

Unfortunately, due to a slower than expected pace, we started to run out of time right before the Glaciar del Vientre. I saw some trip reports saying microspikes would be fine for Izta, but we saw a steepish section of black ice on the trail that could result in a bit of a slide into rocks below without actual crampons, so we decided we had enough of a day. I’ll be back sometime with proper traction (and maybe some skis). While we didn’t summit, we got the group to a little under 17kft, so we felt we had a solid acclimation effort.

Pico de Orizaba

We left our accommodations at Tlachichuca in some 4×4 vehicles driven by the wonderful folks at Summit Orizaba all the way up to the Piedra Grande hut to start our summit push. We made some lunch/dinner and got tucked into our sleeping bags at about 7pm. I got zero sleep, just several hours with my thoughts. Chaz and Natalie got a few hours by my estimate, based on the snoring, while Leslie managed a solid 5 somehow, pretty unusual for sleeping at that high of elevation.

We were the last to leave the hut at 1 in the morning. We assumed we could stay longer since we were skiing down, cutting off time from our day. We choked down some sweet milk and oats, still full from dinner just hours before, grabbed our bags and started our summit push. All was well until about 15,700ft, when we hit The Labyrinth, which is known to be the main routefinding problem on the mountain. One of the guides mentioned there was a left hand route they took guests on the way up, and a steeper, right hand route they choose to take on the way down. So we kept left and followed the tracks in the dark. I’m not sure where we messed up, but we ended up at a high camp on the northeast side of the mountain, a fair ways off the main trail. Not a huge issue, we soon found a snowy path up that got us onto the Jamapa Glacier. At this point, me and Chaz felt pretty good for being up close to 17kft, while Leslie and Natalie were definitely feeling the altitude. Leslie had actually puked a little before, so we were keeping a close eye on her.

We transitioned to skins and ski crampons once we got onto the glacier and trudged up the very firm snow. At this point, the sun was out and we had not noticed a great deal of softening of the snow, so at 17,800ish feet we had a team meeting and decided some of the group wasn’t entirely comfortable skiing down the steeper terrain from the summit, given the very firm conditions. Had it been softer, it would have been a green light, but we played it safe and stashed our skis while continuing on foot.

At close to 18,000ft, Leslie got a wild second wind and we had to ask her to slow down, Natalie was getting more and more fatigued, and Chaz was fine (I’ve never seen him tired). We were the last group to make it to the north side of the crater and spoke to one of the guides up there. He mentioned his concerns with some clouds rolling in. We had a team meeting about it. Me, having some flashbacks from Cayambe about skiing down in zero-visibility, was absolutely cool with not getting to the true summit and much of the team was feeling the same way. So we spent some more time taking in this amazing view into an active volcano, and headed back down to our skis.

The ski back down to The Labyrinth gave us some solid turns, dodging rocks and bits of glacial ice. Me and Chaz really enjoy technical skiing in terrain like this, had it just been us, we think we could have made it most of the way down to where the hiking trail ends. But partway down The Labyrinth the group transitioned back to crampons to exit.

We made it back down to the hut and celebrated with some leftover mango juice in our packs. We gathered the rest of our gear and threw it into one of the 4x4s to get back down to our hotel in Tlachichuca. The lady that runs Summit Orizaba hotel makes fantastic, homestyle food, especially her breakfasts. When we got back there, we wolfed down her dinner and went straight to bed.

At the end of the trip, we were amazed at how good of a ski vacation Mexico could offer! I’ll definitely be back someday to do the rest of Iztaccihuatl and some more of the surrounding volcanoes. I think Pico got Chaz interested in some more high-elevation ski trips, so we’ll be planning more in the coming years.