Walking Mexico’s volcanoes

There are a lot of volcanoes in Mexico. The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, running east-west across southern-central Mexico, has formed over millions of years at the edge of the North American plate, where it meets and drags beneath it the Rivera and Cocos plates. As these plates undergo subduction (where the more dense of two converging plates dives beneath the other) rock melts and becomes magma. The proximity of this magma to the Earth’s surface, creates the perfect conditions for volcanic activity. Depending on how you define them and who you ask, Mexico has between thirteen and thirty-five Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) volcanoes (tending to be lower owing to their enormous age). There are a further thirty-three volcanoes that emerged during the Holocene epoch, or since the end of the last ice age. Twenty-six of Mexico’s Holocene volcanoes have a prominence of over 1,500 metres.

The Smithsonian Institute identifies five-hundred and sixty active volcanoes in the world today, forty-eight of which are found in Mexico

I had always wanted to see an active, smoking volcano up close, and the three-month trip to Mexico I was planning seemed the perfect opportunity. A few searches online revealed that this was something eminently doable, that one didn’t need to be an expert mountaineer to get up a Mexican volcano. The volcanoes were easily accessible from major cities. All the travel bloggers were doing it. They made it sound rather easy actually. At an overpriced brewery on Blackhorse Road in Walthamstow, on a torrential, October night, I recruited Farhan. Farhan seemed a good hiking partner: someone who prefers to be led by the evidence, at least as fit as me, and perhaps most importantly, a cool head if we got into a difficult situation.

Given the sheer number of earth-rumbling, fire-breathing volcanoes in the region it is unsurprising that pre-Hispanic cultures in Mesoamerica equated the mountains with gods, and were quite sensible to identify them with the natural forces that determined to a great extent their survival.

For the many Mesoamerican peoples that lived in and under the Aztec empire until 1521 AD, volcanoes held great spiritual and cosmological significance. In a dry climate, volcanoes were seen to control the vital element of water. As such, prayers and offerings were made at volcanoes associated with either Matlalcueye, the goddess of water, rivers and the sea, or Tlaloc, the god of rain and fertility. If today you go to the slopes of Tetlalmanche, a Pleistocene volcano on the outskirts of Mexico City, you can still see sacred rites being performed in request of rain. You may also see teams of men cutting back vegetation to prevent the fires that are becoming increasingly common and threaten the hastily constructed neighbourhoods that lap the foot of the mountain.

View from the cable car that takes you to the foot of Tetlalmanche Volcano, Iztapalapa (Mexico City)

Catching a lift 2 hours out of Mexico City, I met Farhan in the zócalo (central plaza) of Puebla de Zaragoza. We would use the colonial city as the base from which to attempt two volcanoes: first an acclimatization hike up La Malinche (4,461 metres) before attempting the more challenging Iztaccíhuatl (5,230 metres). Farhan had consulted two local doctors about the advisability of high altitude trekking whilst carrying an ear infection and had been given two contradictory opinions, so La Malinche would also have to decide for us which doctor was correct.  

La Malinche emerges from the plain like a great, angry pimple 35 km to the north-east of Puebla

When Hernán Cortés defeated the Mayan Chontals and their obsidian arrows and axes at the Battle of Centla on Mexico’s Gulf Coast in 1519 AD, he received a tribute of nineteen enslaved women. The volcano known as La Malinche takes its name from one of these women. Cortés, a down at heel nobleman from the driest, most forgotten corner of Castile, had defied the orders of the Spanish crown, to desist his incursions into the mainland, and was harnessing incredible ambition, cunning and greed, on his way to a rapid and improbable victory over the brutal and feared empire of the Mejica, more commonly known as the Aztecs. Malinche, also known as Malintzin, or sometimes Doña Marina, had a gift for languages and intrigue.  She quickly rose to become Cortés’ mistress, translator, a mediator with the Aztecs, a strategist and a spy whose contributions would determine the course of his campaign against the imperial city of Tenochtitlan.  

View from La Malinche. Cortés passed La Malinche volcano on its north side while travelling through the land of the fierce Tlaxcalans, one of the few tribes not to have been subjugated by Moctezuma’s Aztecs

In the suburbs of modern-day Puebla, the ancient city of Cholula claims to be home to the largest pyramid in the world as measured by mass, though the pyramid is covered in earth and only 20th century archaeological intervention revealed that it was more than just a hill. At Cholula, Cortés inflicted the first of several massacres that would deliver the collapse of the hierarchical societies that predominated in pre-Colombian Mesoamerica. After a tip off from Malinche, who claimed to have been warned to leave town to avoid an ambush by Aztec forces, Cortés planned an ambush of his own. Inviting the local chieftains into the central square, at a given signal Cortés had them all killed. He then withdrew from the city and allowed the Tonantzin warriors who had been accompanying his force since Veracruz to destroy the city and carry off its inhabitants into slavery. It is quite credible that the Aztecs might have been planning an ambush with the help of the Cholulans, but it seems equally likely that Cortés fabricated the information to have a pretext to do away with his untrustrworthy hosts and send a strong message to Moctezuma before his march on the imperial capital. It is also worth considering that Malinche may have had her own motives to want the Cholulan booty transferred into the hands of her kinsmen whilst also burnishing her own reputation with the Spanish. Mexican art has often interpreted Malinche as the ultimate temptress and the embodiment of treachery, but more recent analysis has helped us to see Malinche as a woman twice colonised and enslaved, faced with a set of impossible choices, who nevertheless, with tenacity and phenomenal talent, managed to leave a huge mark on the history of her continent

These days many Mexicans enjoy taking a day’s walk up her volcano. Several major cities in Mexico lying at over 2,000 metres above sea level, this is something many Mexicans are acclimated to. In this they are accompanied by mountain dogs who stretch themselves out after frosty nights on the hillside and then chaperone their humans up and down ensuring that no-one comes to any harm.

A Mexican mountain mutt

We set of before dawn. On the bus to Apinzaco, a dry, little staging-post on the road to Veracruz, Farhan gave up his seat to a cauldron-shaped old lady with a full set of silver teeth who gave a knowing laugh when I told her we were planning to climb the volcano. We teamed up with a French couple to hire a private van to reach the start of the trail as the sun was getting up into the sky. Marching through pine forest over frosty ground, but were soon pulling off layers. We stopped to watch a white-eared hummingbird flit and then sit in a bush by the path. Having kitted ourselves out with proper boots, waterproofs, quick-drying underlayers and a camelbak ‘3-litre reservoir’ for the hike, we were affronted to see Mexican teens jogging up the hill in jeans and hoodies and not apparently carrying any water. As we neared the treeline, we looked behind us and saw the great green carpet of pine below us and beyond it the yellow plain. Cortés and his band of 300 soldiers of fortune, plus an escort of Tlaxcalan and Tonantzin warriors eager to contribute to the downfall of their hated adversaries the Mejica, came this way on their march to Tizatlán and then to Cholula. Perhaps the Spaniards walked in thick pine forest, constantly fearing ambush from hostile tribes or betrayal by their chaperones, occasionally glimpsing the snowy peak through the canopy as it rose imperiously two kilometres above them.

Cortes exploited the hatred of subjugated tribes to destabilise the Aztec Empire

Farhan, having arrived in Mexico more recently, was less acclimatised than I was and perhaps a bit alarmed by how hard it was for him to breathe once we got over 4,000 metres, or even before that. We achieved the false peak after 3 hours, but the final three hundred metres to the true peak, over a field of boulders festooned with snow and ice took us another hour and a half. Diego, a hiker from Pachuca, Hidalgo, declared on summitting, to his smartphone, “This is my spiritual home, where I feel most alive.” The peak, when we finally reached it gave a toe-tingling view down the baroque southern face as well as a smoky outline of Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl in the west. After slip-sliding down the loose volcanic sands we had managed to avoid on the way up, we raced to the carpark for the last bus back to Apinzaco. The next day, my thighs were as heavy and stiff as tree trunks, but Farhan’s ear had unblocked itself.

Mexico’s most emblematic volcanoes, Popocatépetl (Popo-ca-TE-pet-ul) and Iztaccíhuatl (Ist-a-SEE-wat-ul) stand, or lie, or kneel, side by side, 45 miles to the south-east of Mexico City, the site of Tenochtitlan, and almost as far to the north-west of Puebla. After a day of rest and carb-loading, it was to the Izta-Popo National Park that we headed for our next challenge.

Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl are the 2nd and 3rd highest volcanoes in Mexico

We had hired two guides for the two-day trip: the softly-spoken Santiago, the leader, a small and wiry guy of 30-odd with a decidedly lopsided face that sprouted thick, short hairs at random; and Misael, apparently an experienced mountain guide, described by Santiago as his “mountain father.” To be honest, Misael did not look like he was necessarily going to be able to get up to 5,230 metres. He looked about 60 and like he was used to spending a lot of time on the sofa. He smiled constantly and barely spoke, though when he did he mumbled through his teeth in Spanish I could barely understand, and squinted as though he were suffering from snow-blindness.

Before driving to the National Park, we made a stop at the site of Cortés famous massacre of the probably-scheming Cholulans. Fifty-five years after the slaughter, the Spanish colonisers, as was their wont, began to build a church atop the temple mound of the vanquished city. The Church of Our Lady of Remedies, which is decorated with 24-carat gold leaf inside and painted sunflower yellow outside, affords some decent views, but our volcanoes were lost in smog. Farhan and I bought postcards, Santiago bought some chapulines (grasshoppers deep-fried with garlic and spices) for a mountain snack. We got in the stifling hot car and set off.

Cortés climbed to over 3000 metres to pass between the two volcanoes

After leaving the paved road it is a 2-hour drive on a dirt track to reach Paso Cortés, these days a car park. We hop out of the car and stand in the thin air peering into the mist at the faint outline of Popocatepetl. We can feel its massive presence, but can barely see it. Little grey birds with bright-yellow eyes nip and bob on the wind around our feet as we stand around discussing the likelihood we’ll see a coyote, an eagle or a volcano rabbit. In this cold and desolate car park a mile above the valley floor, a women and a man are having a party in the cab of a truck. There is a blanket thrown over the back of the cab, perhaps to prevent anyone from seeing what they are up to in there (we are the only other people around). Suddenly, the car stereo is blasting Killer by Michael Jackson and the man jumps out of the passenger door trailed by howls of laughter. In the chill west wind the man begins to dance, using a pine sapling as a pole. Hitching his left leg it seems for a moment that he intends to climb the pole (it clearly will not bear his weight). His leg comes down and he compromises by stripping his tight, nylon t-shirt to reveal a broad, round belly. He laughs, but his expression is plaintive as he slaps his chest in a Tarzan routine. His dare, or penance, apparently completed, he disappears back into the cab, slams the door, and MJ’s voice is lost in the rippling wind. I wonder, did Malinche ever exercise this kind power over Cortés?

For fear of an ambush, Cortés and his bloodthirsty gang chose to ignore the directions they had been given to reach Tenochtitlan

Owing to the continual eruptions and emissions of dangerous gases, increasing after 1994, there is a strict prohibition on attempting to climb Popocatepetl. During his march to conquer the Valley of Mexico in 1519, Cortés, sent ten brave men to do just that, “charging them to use every endeavour to ascend the mountain and find out the cause of that smoke, whence and how it was produced.” His men turned back owing to “the whirlwinds of ashes that swept over it, and also because they found the cold above insupportable.” Cortés and his miniature army passed right between the two stratovolcanoes on his way to meet the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma and has given his name to the saddle that joins the volcanoes at 3,400 metres elevation.

Iztaccíhuatl, rising at the northern end of the Paso Cortés, is composed of six cones produced by eruptions throughout its active period. These cones produce the silhouette that is said to resemble a reclining woman: the feet, the knees, the breast, the neck, the ear, and the head. We planned to go around the feet and ascend the knees, then cross the glacier (the belly) to the highest summit, the breast.

Iztaccíhuatl is also known as La Mujer Dormida (the sleeping woman)

It's a further half hour drive along a sandy track to La Joyita, the campsite with views of both summits, though Iztaccíhuatl is lost in the clouds when we arrive. As we build our tents, then take lessons on crampons, ice-axes and how to dig a poo-hole, Popocatepetl grumbles several times and then coughs. A plume of grey-white, like goose down, spills into the pale blue dusk and drifts, expanding as it reaches out, and stretching into a noodle in the sky. We have already put on all of our layers just to stand outside and watch the sunset, so the news from Misael that he expects -16 degrees centigrade on the summit fills me with some trepidation. Farhan, meanwhile, has been doing some googling and begins to explain, “There is an altitude at which the oxygen pressure is insufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span.” I am beginning to have doubts. He goes on, “At high altitude, in order to increase the concentration of red blood cells in the blood, your body will reduce the volume of blood in circulation, sometimes by up to 20%, and your resting heart rate will increase by up to 30%.” We eat several pot noodles to try and get warm before we climb into our sleeping bags and lay down to sleep at the unusual hour of 7.30pm.

Farhan looks for Iztaccíhuatl in the mist

I don't sleep more than half an hour in the hot squish of the tent, where I listen to mice skittering around outside. I lie on my arms and imagine the volume of my blood draining away by 20% and thickening, coagulating. On the wind I think I hear a howl, and then another, until there must be five or six. I imagine coyotes catching our scent on the stiff breeze. I listen to my heart-beat. I listen to someone retching outside.

I am awake and ready to go before my alarm rings at midnight and coffee is boiled by half-past midnight. We set off at 1am, in the light of a half-moon, tramping down paths of frosted dune grass and frozen thistles. For three hours we walk in a secret world of harsh beauty: the blue-black sky and against it silhouetted sharp crags and fells, and the moonlit streaks of purplish-white snow; the purple mountain Popocatepetl wreathed in cloud and attended by expectant stars; and, far below, Puebla and Amecameca on the valley floor. We have the eagle's view and I an eagle-like sense of power.

Popocatepetl before dawn

As we pass el pie (the foot), the wind becomes incisive but we keep warm by moving forward and the walking is a joy. Until it isn't. The downhill stretch between the 4th and 5th rest-stop exposes us to a new wind that rifles through our layers with alarming ease. Banging our hands and feet together is simply not working any longer. Thus, we are relieved to reach the mountain refuge at about 4.30am, containing several cold-bitten walkers, and some rather bold, big-eared mice. We find that the water in our bottles has turned to slushy ice while the tube to my camelbak is frozen stiff. The next stretch of the walk will be the most brutal and also the most sublime, a turning point where the reality of the physical challenge asserts itself and we push ourselves to new limits.

The Aztecs told a charming story about how these volcanoes came to be. Iztaccíhuatl was an Aztec princess who fell in love with a warrior in her father’s army named Popoca. Her father opposed the match and then sent Popoca away to war in Oaxaca, suggesting that they could marry when Popoca returned. Enemies of Popoca then sent a message to the king that Popoca had died in battle. When she heard the news, Iztaccíhuatl lay down and died of grief. Popoca returned alive, however, and finding his beloved dead he carried her body outside the city and laid it down on a burial mound he had had built. He knelt beside her with a torch keeping watch. The gods were moved by Popoca’s devotion and they turned the lovers into mountains, covering each with snow. The flames and ash that come from Popocatepetl show that the warrior is still watching over the body of his lover. In another version of the story, Popoca got into an argument over Iztaccíhuatl with the warrior Xinantecatl (represented by the volcano more commonly known as Nevado de Toluca). Popoca became so angry that he beheaded Xinantecatl with a piece of ice, explaining the flat crater rim of that volcano.

I advise taking a guide to avoid getting lost in the mist, as I did, at the flat-ish crater rim of Nevado de Toluca

There is not much resembling a trail for the ascent to la rodilla (the knee), more a sand-rubble slope, what our guides describe as arenal (sandpit) and Farhan calls choss. I am full of energy, but we find ourselves stopping more regularly to catch our breath at this altitude while the temperature continues to drop. Knowing that this is the most challenging section of the ascent, I am driving forwards, almost manic in my determination to reach the next checkpoint, get to a level patch or some shelter from the wind. Yet Santiago, our guide, keeps reminding us that we'll need half of our energy for the way down. The other guide, Misael, has been lagging behind for some time, and since he is not using his head torch several times we almost or totally lose sight of his black silhouette in the cascades of black boulders.

"Misa! Misa!" calls Santiago into the whistling dark, and always Misa picks his way forward and reaches us again before we keep moving. It becomes necessary to drink the slushy electrolytes that we are carrying and also to get some sugar in our blood, but this comes at the high price of exposing cheeks and lips to the freezing cold air, followed by brain freeze. It is small consolation that our guides don’t seem to be finding the going much easier than we are. The whistling and the dark become cruel and my thoughts land unkindly; I struggle to focus on my surroundings and began reliving past humiliations and failures. Dawn is near, but not nearly near enough. I long for the sun, but it seems too far away from this moment.

The only thing to do is to keep moving forward. And moving forward brings rewards with some fun scrambling as we pass a cross that marks 5,000 metres above sea level. When we look behind and see both the climb we have just achieved and Popocatepetl squatting in the pre-dawn, I feel a surge of amazement and pride, and yet I realise that I am struggling to stay calm. In hindsight, I think I was on the edge of shock or panic from the cold. Though my extremities were no longer numb, my core temperature seemed to be dropping. In that moment, I stop to scan the world below me, above me. In the west, the sky refracts and splits the light into ribbons of blue, purple, pink, the faintest mossy green. To our left, an inch of radioactive yellow, tragically bright it seems to me, a colour I have never seen before, separates the dull earth from the icy blue above. The sense of expectation is almost unbearable. Slowly, into this inch of yellow, a drop of the purest orange pushes its way and soon became a whole disk sailing upwards through a veil of yellow. When it reaches the outer edge of the blue sky, it breaks and leaks through like sand falling upwards through an hourglass.

"Sick!" cries out Farhan.

"Fuck that's cool!" I crow.

And then, both together, "Woooow!"

At the same moment that the world is being raked by this long-awaited light, the volcano spumes a billowing, grey-brown cloud, which seems to grow and evolve as it rises hundreds of metres in the air.

Farhan, who has the knack of taking photos without removing his gloves, gets out his phone. Every contour of this terrible fist of particulate matter is lit from below and revealed to us in high definition. And even as I howl in delight and coo in appreciation of this wonder, I feel my body is reaching its limits. The wind is savagely whipping around us, and I am hopping around increasingly manic and desperate for the sun to find me and warm me, but it is still too weak. My head feels light. My bowels assert that an evacuation is necessary. This does not suit me and I breathe deeply to try to regain control of my body which seems to be going haywire.

For several long moments we stare. The cloud rising from the volcano drifts north-east and transforms from a fist to a great, blind snake opening its mouth to swallow the sun. After a few precious moments, the sun is consumed in the now-black cloud. Darkness returns. The only thing to do is to keep moving forward along the ridge towards the glacier.

Popocatepetl after dawn

For the next two hours I feel I am battling to regain control of my body. Aided by the sun’s warmth, I slowly re-enter myself and recover some of my calm. Yet, several times I seem to have regained my composure only to find once again that my body was collapsing on me, or was it my mind? I knew I could keep going, but because of adrenaline rather than determination. I know that I needed to go slow in order to acclimatise, but I want to move fast in the hope of warming up. Around 8am, we reach the glacier. I somehow muster the concentration and strength to secure my crampons and this feels like the hardest thing I have done so far, an incredible achievement. Mind over matter. I looked at Farhan.

He looks broken, but his spirit is undimmed, “This next bit will be easy!”

Taking it all in

I have regained enough composure after the initial shock of altitude and cold to notice that Santiago seems to be struggling even more than we are. He confesses that he was sick in the night (now I remember hearing retching between all the other sounds that ruined my sleep), but says he is okay to go on for now.

We crunch our way down the glittering glacier with our crampons and piolets, each grimly focused on his own breathing. At the bottom, Santiago begins to retch again. In between gasps, he seems to be muttering something, “g-g-grass-hoppers!”

Misael, the barrel-chested sexagenarian who had been holding us up all morning, takes the lead and now reveals his stamina. We would let Santiago rest and pick him up again on the way back past. We cross the bottom of the glacier and ascend another sand-rubble track to attain the ridge below the peak. For the first time since 3am it is getting warm inside my jacket, but at this moment, a half-hour from the summit, I realise with awful certainty that there is a limit to mind over matter. I grab some tissues from Farhan and ran off down a loose stony slope, La Malinche standing up out of the haze 60 miles in front of me, and not having time to reach cover, let alone dig a poo hole, have to relieve myself rather publicly. (Apologies to the one or two walkers who were behind me and probably didn’t expect to walk for 8 hours into the wilderness to see a man defecating on a pile of stones.)

Is this what the death zone feels like?

After this incident, relieved but reduced, I continue towards the summit. I can see Farhan and Misael up on la pechuga (the breast): little miniatures striding around in attitudes of triumph. Another 30 minutes trudging forward on a crumbling and rather ambiguous track, with hundreds of feet to fall, I join them at 5,230 metres. We take our photos and share our high-fives, amazed at how much we have suffered in a few short hours to reach this square of ground. It having taken 9 hours to reach the peak and there being only 8 hours left of daylight, we don’t hang about too long up there.

Victory! But at what cost?

Indeed, even our sense of victory didn’t last long. Scuttling back down the ridge where an hour earlier we had left Santiago, Farhan went over on his ankle. Now we had two walking wounded. Farhan was ginger on his left foot and it was clear the slippery downhill sections would be treacherous for him. Meanwhile, Santiago leant so close to the ground as he walked that it was as if here were looking for lost jewellery. We emptied Santi’s bags and divided the contents. The handful of other walkers on the mountain soon left us behind. Most of the next six hours of walking were purgatorial. The sun went away again; wet, cold cloud assailed us; Farhan bravely shuffled forward on his ruined ankle. Luckily, as we lost some altitude, Santiago recovered a little. We needed almost all of the daylight available to get back to our dusty, disconsolate campground and packed up the tents in silence. Despite the relief of making it back and the pride at having achieved our mission and overcome challenges in the process, in that moment, I just wanted to get as far away from the mountain as possible. Unfortunately, we had another 2-hour drive down the atrocious dirt road.