In 1971, with no mountaineering experience, no partner, no real mountaineering gear such as crampons, ice axe or warm boots, I took a bus from San Miguel Allende in central Mexico with a vague plan to climb Popocatepetl, a 17,802 foot, snow capped volcano visible on a clear day from the megapolis of Mexico City.

At nineteen years of age and at the virtual insistence of my parents, I had just finished my first semester at Earlham College, a small, liberal arts, Quaker institution in Indiana. Instead of returning to Earlham after Christmas break, I wanted to exercise some control over my destiny and spend the next three months in Estes Park attending a course taught my Maharishi Maheshi Yogi - to become a teacher of transcendental meditation, a practice I'd taken up the previous year. Father, a very kind and gentle Quaker, was appalled at this prospect and unable to understand my resistance to returning to Earlham. He thus proposed a typical parental "compromise" to try to keep me under control and on the straight and narrow path. "Terry, how about going to San Miguel Allende in Mexico. You can live with your Aunt Jean and study Spanish."

I never knew why this idea made one wit more sense than going to study T.M. with the Maharishi, but one thing was clear. Dad would pay for the trip to Mexico, but not to Estes Park.

I sojourned restlessly in San Miguel de Allende, taking Spanish class with desultory interest and making trivial progress toward literacy. Seeds were percolating and ready to come forth, having been planted in my brain from reading the heroic tale of the American success in 1963 on Mt. Everest when Unsoeld and Hornbein pioneered the new West Ridge route and made the first major traverse of the Himalayan giant. A desire to become a "mountaineer" resulted from this armchair mountaineering (plus reading “Annapurna” and Tenzing’s biography).

By the time I took a bus from San Miguel with visions of Popo dancing in my head, my mountaineering experience consisted of one day at Exum School followed by a guided ascent (with a team of nine) to the summit of Grand Teton in September 1969. My book knowledge of mountaineering consisted of reading, "Everest: The West Ridge" and maybe "Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills" so I knew that crampon and ice axes existed but had never made use of same. My knowledge of how to climb Popo consisted of a question to my Spanish teacher, "How does one go about climbing Popo?" To which he answered, "Take a bus to Amecameca then take a taxi to the refugio at the base of the mountain."

The five-hour bus ride from San Miguel to Mexico City deposited me I know not where inside Mexico City, but this was when I learned an important assumption I'd made was false. One did not simply find the bus to Amecameca when my bus stopped. There were countless "bus stations" each serving its own group of private bus lines going off in all directions. Where was my bus to Amecameca?

With my limited Spanish, I realized I could ask, "Where is the bus going to Amecameca" but I could not understand a single word of the explanation. However, I could begin in the right direction by seeing which way my informant pointed. With this feeble approach, I started walking the streets of Mexico, asking at intervals, "Where is the bus station to Amecameca?"

Miracle number one. It worked. After walking for not an overly long period of time - maybe not more than one mile - I got to a station where someone would sell me a bus ticket when I said, "I want to go to Amecameca."

About 9 P.M. the bus stopped long enough on its route to who-knows-where so passengers to Amecameca could stumble off into the incredible darkness of a tiny, backwater village with nothing going on.

Time to buy provisions for my ascent. I had no idea how long I would be gone on this venture, so I really laid in thick on the provisions. I bought six beef tacos at a nightstand and one bottle of beer - to open in celebration on the summit. “Isn’t that what mountaineers do when they get to the top,” I reasoned.

Finding a taxi willing to drive me to “El Refugio” - for this is all I knew to tell the driver - required no more than my agreement to pay $30 for the favor. We were off into the unknown, one driver and one passenger. An old American sedan ascended many miles of dirt road, gaining impressive elevation, the temperatures outside falling steadily. Near midnight we arrived. The sound of the approaching vehicle amidst the mountain’s empty silence meant we were greeted with warm welcome by three men, one in particular extremely outgoing and friendly, Angel, the major de of this lodging. Angel knew how to communicate with minimal English facility yet quickly learned I had no plan, no partner, no crampons and no ice axe. His smiles and goodwill never lessoned. With logical expediency, he asked if I’d like to join another party, already present, who planned to climb Popo the next morning. Ice axe and crampons he pulled from some corner and loaned them to me gratis.

Angel introduced me to the party of three: a Mexican alpinista, Cesar Rubio Ochoa, who was guiding a Swiss couple: both doctors. Frau Swiss was about 50 and an attractive, shapely blond; her husband was far older, at least middle 70s and looked frail and decrepit to my youthful eye. Amazingly, Cesar immediately warmed to the idea once presented by Angel and extended an open invitation. Cesar even seemed glad to have another person along, I suspected because of the dubious physical condition of Herr Doctor.

So off to bed with a plan to depart early.

Several hours before sunrise I came to grips with the character of the lower slopes of this volcanic monster I still had never seen. It was one giant pile of black pumice, ground as fine as talcum powder. We were climbing a huge black sand dune! With each step up, one kicked hard, only to have the foot slide half way back to point of beginning before the grip underfoot consolidated even to hold body weight.
The coldness of the night left my feet cold. I easily outpaced the party behind, so took the opportunity near to sunrise to remove my vibram soled hiking boot and rub my feet to bring back warmth. I don’t believe I had so much as a proper wind shell, certainly nothing warmer than a few layers of an any day, workday shirt, sweater, coat and jeans and a single pair of socks. After sunrise, I never remember suffering from cold.

Thankfully, Popo’s lower slopes of black sand quickly gave way to the infinitely superior footing of firm snow. Now progress was easy, kick stepping all the way to the top.

My summit memories bring back visions of a massive inner caldera of chaos, crumbling slopes and walls, and great clouds of volcanic smoke - - a witch’s caldron worthy of McBethian nightmares.

Ascent and descent proved utterly uneventful, even casual – about ten hours? The Swiss couple was most pleased with their success and physical performance. Cesar and I had hit it off. We were a most pleased group. No matter we could scarcely converse! Cesar proved the only person able to bridge the language barriers at all - and his English was halting, slow, unsure and tentative. Nonetheless, this facility far exceeded either my German or Spanish or the Swiss pair’s English. So Cesar was our translator as well as guide.

After the climb, Cesar told me the Swiss couple next planned a ten-day tour of archeological sites and a climb of Pico de Orizaba. Would I care to join? Gratis, of course.

I accepted my good fortune with calm grace while inside my spirits burst into “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music.”

The plan for further climbing and exploring included a short window before we took to the field while the Swiss couple recuperated. So when next day a group of three young California climbers showed up at El Refugio, I quickly decided to join their ascent effort and make a repeat trip to Popo’s summit. This trio of California dreamers regularly commuted from their recreational equipment sales jobs in LA for weekends of climbing in Yosemite. They were well-equipped: down jackets, crampons, ice axes, ropes, real packs - an exact opposite side of the coin to my gear-impoverished status.

Team Cali put forth a half-hearted, desultory, weak attempt and turned around mid-morning, thousands of feet from the summit, with vague complains of headache and low energy - but grand promises to the ethers they would return someday and summit the beast - so I didn’t bag Popo twice. I rendezvoused several days later with Team Swiss in Puebla where Cesar lived.

(Since I am posting to a climbing forum, I’ll skip the archeological and tourism components of our tour and end with an account of climbing Pico de Orizaba.)

Cesar’s Ford pickup truck delivered us miles and miles upward on dirt roads leading to the jumping off spot to climb Pico de Orizaba, also known by its indigenous name of Citlaltepl, meaning “Star Mountain,” perhaps so named because its visibility for hundreds of kilometers in all directions.

Citlaltepl is big: the third highest peak in North America at 18,491 feet of elevation and with a topographic prominence of 16,148 feet, 7th in the world. It is the second most prominent volcanic peak in the world after Mount Kilimanjaro and 16th in the world for topographic isolation.

The route to Citlaltepl passed through hills inhabited by campesinos living precariously on meager plots with a few animals. As always, the mountain inhabitants living on the slopes of Citlaltepl seem the hardest pressed economically in any given population. The sheer scale of the single volcanic pyramid constituting this peak pressed home onto me as I sat in the pickup, bounced rudely like a sack of spuds by the rough, steep and narrow road. The long shadows of the peak itself traced a huge imprint upon the countryside as the sun set, giving a second reference to the size of our objective.

We unloaded before darkness fell. Cesar impressed upon us - in spite of language barriers - that Citlaltepl was a far more ambitious and dangerous objective than Popo. Many climbers lost their lives when sudden storms arose with little warning on Citlaltepl, laying a mere 68 miles from the Caribbean coastline. We watched the night sky for signs of impending weather. Seeing no adverse signs when we awoke to check at midnight, we set out in darkness, estimating that 8 - 10 hours would be required to reach the summit. The climb seemed slow and tedious in the dark and cold but I don’t remember suffering. Perhaps Cesar had augmented my meager clothing from his own stock; he certainly was the source of my crampons and ice axe.

I recall real objective danger when we crossed a crevasse relatively high on the slopes. With no discussion and little thought or exploration of alternatives, we simply accepted our fate and walked across a thin ice bridge which lay at an awkward, tilted angle as it spanned a small but nonetheless potentially fatal crevasse if the bridge collapsed (a possibility not outside the realm of reason) or a climber slipped and stumbled making the traverse (perhaps the greater risk). Considering our options, Cesar opened his pack and pulled out a rope which theoretically could have been deployed for safety making the crossing. Cesar’s sloppy coil of rope looked exactly like a clothes lines. Nylon strands of blue and white were loosely woven into a think cord. Not a climbing rope by any stretch of imagination. Sight of the rope sealed our decision to trust fate and leave the rope in Cesar’s pack.

We passed the crevasse at the same place on ascent and descent. Ascent went well enough. On descent however, Herr Swiss showed exhaustion. Frau Swiss gave him a shot of some stimulant but it didn’t work any magic. By the time we came to the crevasse, all eyes anxiously followed Herr Doctor - who took an awkward step and looked on the brink of falling in, but recovered his balance and regained purchase on two feet. Heavy signs of relief. The entire trip took about 18 hours for the Swiss couple and many less for me.

Having thus enjoyed complete success in Mexico, reaching the two highest summits with no plan, no support and no gear, I ventured forth later that same year to Colombia, with visions of climbing its intriguing and even higher volcanoes a mere 22 miles from the Caribbean! As good as my luck had been in Mexico, Colombia proved frustrating, fruitless and dangerous. But as is often said, that’s another story.