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Monday, February 26, 2024 - 5:20 pm PT

A long evening in La Malinche Parque Nationale cabins, late breakfast, and improved air quality revived the group, following what Dom had sold us as a “nothing conditioning stroll” on La Malinche volcano. We boarded our Sprinter van for the drive to Amecameca’s central plaza where we grazed the food stalls for lunch, and our guides bought huge jugs of water for our tent site at Ixta base camp.  The Sprinter took us to our next Parque National, Ixta-Popo, where we let Hecter drive our bags up to our base camp at 13,000 feet.  The couple hour walk up a trail was, this time, indeed a “stroll”.  Our local guide Allen, along with our cook, Rudolpho, and porters, Ali and Alejandro, greeted us happily, and then we focused on an intense gear check and pack planning session, followed by instructions in erecting the Trango tents.  Spaghetti for dinner, and several layers of down wrapped up our day.  Everyone is excited to carry our heavy packs up to Ixta’s High Camp tomorrow.

RMI Climber Katherine Jankaew 

The guides got up at 11:30 pm to head up onto the ridge where you can see any approaching storms for the East and West. There was a low lying blanket of clouds and west wind of 5-10 mph. Hoping not to get into a similar lightning and thunder storm from previous years we waited 45 minutes before waking up the climbers. The approaching cold front kept the clouds low through the night which afforded us a great temperature to go climbing. The first stretch takes you through the “knees” of Ixta and is a steep scree slope with some scrambling straight out of high camp.

Once on the ridge we began the up and down of what seems like 7 false summits. As we crossed the rapidly receding Ayoloco Glacier, the trail begins to narrow and we were close to the summit crater. At 17,160’ it was still dark and the teams began their descent with increasing winds and cold/damp clouds started rolling over from the West. The descent back to high camp was smooth and we enjoyed an amazing sunrise with the dark silhouette of Pico de Orizaba in the East.

The Team is in Puebla now for a rest day and tomorrow we will head for our last climb of the trip on North America’s third highest mountain, Orizaba.

RMI Guide Mike King

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Machame camp! The day was perfect for our hike to camp just below 10,000'. As the giant Heather replaced the canopy of the rain forest, the sun turned. We have great weather here with a view of the summit of Kili we rarely see through the clouds.

Our chefs worked their magic and beautifully replaced the energy we burned getting here. Now it's time for bed. We're all sleepy from our early start.

Good night!

RMI Guide Brent Okita and Team

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