I’m being escorted out of the airport by security who say “no bikes”, even though I just spent over an hour putting mine together outside Starbucks between sips of latte. Now, however, it’s “no bikes” but that’s convenient because it’s time for me to leave the airport and face the whirlwind that is Mexico City.
We step outside and the first thing I notice is heat, not sounds or smells or traffic or tacos. There is a sun here, and it’s hot compared to the cold, dark place I just came from. I push my bike over to the curb to roll a cigarette. I’m staring into the sun, sweltering, wishing I’d put on shorts before getting kicked out of the airport.
I’ve returned to Mexico in an attempt to link up three of its highest mountains using human power alone, and the capital city is the starting point. Not only that, but I’ve elected to start in the deepest part of the city, the centro zocalo, and fight my way out from there. The urban chaos is part of the adventure.
But before that, I have to reach my hostel in the zocalo, in one piece.
I must be getting close, because there are so many people that I have to get off my bike and walk. It’s Sunday: vendors are out, indigenous Nahuatl dancers are putting on a show, and people of all walks throng about, eating street food and taking pictures of everything.
With jugs of water and snacks to sustain me over the next few days, I migrate from 7-11 to the massive cathedral across the street that dominates the central square.
It’s no wonder I didn’t latch on to Christianity as a kid, I think as I wander inside. Catholic iconography is scary. I gaze up at the blood and the thorns and the cross and all the ornateness, and shiver. It’s psychedelic, but like an acid trip gone bad.
But the architecture is impressive, the ceilings are high, mass is being performed and the whole experience is powerful. The gravity of what I’ve come to do here wells up inside of me. I’ve spent months planning, fretting, doubting myself, encouraging myself, and ultimately forcing myself to do this. Now here I am, at a church in Mexico City on the eve of my trip, clutching a straw cowboy hat and feeling very emotional.
Birth and death and exorcism and transcendence, all rolled into one.
Day 1 – Mexico City to Amecameca
After breakfast, I make a quick pit-stop to pick up gas for my stove, then circle back to the zocalo to start the trip proper.
Rewind to my first trip to Mexico, two years prior: I’m thinking of the foolhardy but Instagram-worthy idea of renting a motorcycle and riding it around to climb the various peaks. Never mind that I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, let alone in another country — it’s going to look great on the ‘Gram. It’s good that never materialized, for I surely would’ve died in traffic long before ever seeing a mountain in Mexico.
Picture me, selfie-stick style, riding across the open plains on a motorcycle, towards some distant peak — leather jacket and all. Now here I am, doing pretty much the same thing on a bicycle.
Heads up, eyes peeled. Fugazi is blasting in my headphones as I mash at the pedals, darting in and out of lanes and drafting in the wake of colectivos. Traffic isn’t heavy, but it’s fast, and it’s exhilarating to ride around the way most Mexico City drivers do — by not giving a fuck.
See, on my first trip, I learned the rules of the road in Mexico City: do whatever you want, and everyone else simply deals with it.
After a few blocks of high-octane bike karate, everything suddenly stops. I’m being funneled into a tighter and more congested alleyway, which is technically a road, but today it’s a market, so deal with it.
I hop off my bike and try to squeeze through: first past a guy pulling a dolly stacked with teetering crates; then a three-wheeled bicycle just as precariously overloaded. Pedestrians zip every which way and vehicles moored in the chaos idly sit there, resigned to their fate.
“I’m going to make great progress at this rate,” I moan, but in this moment of hesitation, someone half my size with a barrel of horchata twice as big as me has already cut in front, and is off like a bullet and out of sight. I can only shrug: Mexico City rules.
Arriving in Amecameca, I embrace a lukewarm shower and a huge sandwich at the torta shop. Altzomoni Hut is closed, according to the woman at the national park headquarters, but it only puts a minor kink in my plans to climb Iztaccihuatl. The black stormcloud hanging overtop of Izta threatens to pose another.
I take a bite of my gargantuan sandwich, the cubana, loaded with everything in the sandwich shop. Between the hill that appeared sadistically at the end of the day, and sheer anxiety that’s been consuming me calorically for weeks, God knows there aren’t enough cubanas in the world to make me comfortable with what I’ve taken on here. But at least the crux of the trip is over — I made it out of Mexico City alive.
Day 2 – Amecameca to Paso de Cortes
With only twenty five kilometers ahead of me today, I feel fine to lounge, probing the mysteries contained in my breakfast burrito and the curious sauce in which it is steeped. Those twenty-five kilometers, of course, contain 1200 meters of elevation gain — the height of most mountains around Banff. So I’ll be climbing a mountain on my bike today, just to get to the base of a real one.
I roll out of Amecameca and start granny-gearing towards the pass. The scene seems quintessentially Mexican: mountains, cornfields, donkeys tied up by the side of the road, and dudes siesta-ing around a pickup truck even though it’s only, like, ten in the morning. This is something I’d looked forward to seeing from my open-air cockpit, at this snail’s pace, not the back seat of a taxi whipping along at mach speed.
The route turns left and with it comes a sharp increase in steepness, the concerted climb to the pass. I pedal past the last village, maintaining some measure of dignity, then hop off and resort to pushing my bike up the hill. Still, small roadside tiendas beckon me to come sample whatever they’re cooking.
The road is paved and meanders in wide switchbacks, granting increasingly wider views of the valley below. The foreground scenery is also noticeably green and verdant. The going is tough but not impossible, and my performance is enhanced by a warm Fanta from one of the spartan snack shacks along the way.
Rain starts with a sputter, then like someone’s turned on a tap. I look at my watch, it’s three PM: precisely as forecasted. Lucky for me, I’ve happened upon a vacant shack at just this moment, beneath which to shelter from the elements. If you don’t like the weather in the mountains, just wait five minutes, I say.
One hour later, the elements show no sign of stopping. I’m bundled in all my layers. I already drank one Nescafe, but I’m starting to shiver, and thinking about brewing up another. But in my periphery, I see movement.
A man is walking up the road in a t-shirt and shorts, obviously undeterred by the drenching rain. He walks over to my shack and we make conversation that quickly surpassesmy limited grasp of Spanish. He is, as far as I can tell, a man with nothing walking somewhere.
He opens a plastic bag and produces an enormous mushroom, presumably plucked from the forest. He shoves it my way, seeming to suggest I should eat some. Now I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to foreign food, but I don’t wish to be poisoned, or have a hallucinogenic experience right now, no gracias.
He shrugs and devours almost the whole huge mushroom in one big bite before sticking it back in his sack. Next is the pelt of some small animal which he’s pulling out to show me. Cool, right? But then he demonstrates his real intent: he’s going to wear it on his ballcap, Davy Crockett-style. But for the moment, it just looks grotesque.
It’s almost dark, and the red light is flashing furiously on the back of my bike. The pass has got to be close. I leapfrogged in front of Davy Crockett and he’s following somewhere behind me. My mind is reeling: If he likes to skin animals, maybe he wants to skin a gringo… So I’m pushing my bike real fast up this hill now.
At last, I get to Paso de Cortes and go into the park office to try to find a place to sleep. It’s obvious I’m not going to reach La Joya before dark, and I don’t have ambitions to get there tonight anyhow. I’m pooped. They say I can camp right here, and point towards some trees where there are apparently campsites.
A little doggie accompanys me. It’s cold, and I’m rushing to set up the tent and boil a package of ramen noodles — habanero flavor I discover, upon taking the first sip. I need to recover at least 1000 calories, and they all sear on the way down.
I lay down in my sleeping bag and try to identify the sound I’m hearing, like distant thunder. It could be a number of things: the sound could be fiery lava-balls ejected from the top of Popocatepetl. Or the ubiquitous use of dynamite for mining, which across Mexico sounds like the continuous refrain of artillery fire.
In this case, it’s actually thunder, and as it rises in intensity, I wonder what sort of scene I’ll wake up to in the morning.
Day 3 – Paso de Cortes to Cholula
I’m gripping the brakes, descending down a washboard dirt road for at least the last hour. My bags are threatened of being shaken off my bike, and I readjust my helmet which has sunken over my eyes, in an effort to squint through the fog.
I woke up at Paso de Cortes in the clouds and wrote off an ascent of Izta. There didn’t seem much hope of clear visibility on a snow-covered mountain, plus I was a bit frazzled from the day before. I wanted warm eggs and coffee, but breakfast consisted of a smoke and thimbleful of Nescafe, tasting vaguely of habanero seasoning, while standing in the damp Scottish pall.
I should be in Cholula in no time, I say, expecting a thousand-meter descent on smooth pavement to deliver me to a steaming plate of eggs and coffee. But here I am, white-knuckled and weaving between massive rocks on a road that is, “at least sometimes passable by 4-wheel-drive vehicles,” as per the most cursory of sources on the Internet. Trip research fail.
Eventually I’m back on blessed pavement and pushing my bike through a small town with the ambiance of a huge carnival, looking for someplace to eat. I sit down at one establishment and coffee is doled out of a huge vat on the stove, then microwaved until molten. Coffee Mate is added to produce a potently noxious elixir. Tacos are consumed by the plateful as kids zip underneath tables and marching bands contribute to the relaxing atmosphere.
Day 6 – La Malinche
Finally, a mountain. Just a mountain. I’m not fighting my way out of a city, or pushing my bike up endless switchbacks, or lost on some God-forsaken backroad. I’m simply walking up a mountain, an easy one, and one I’ve walked up before: La Malinche.
For the first time, I actually feel comfortable on this trip, but clearly other people around me do not. Groups are halted on the steep, sandy embankment like frozen congo lines, struggling to catch their breath. One guy is throwing up on the side of the trail, though we’re not even out of the trees yet.
I crest the ridge as tendrils of cloud are uplifted by the mountain, standing alone in the landscape for a hundred kilometers in every direction. Arriving at the summit, I face a veritable party dominated by… Germans? But the views from this “easy” mountain have me transfixed. You actually can’t see much because of the clouds, but through brief glimpses of crumbling rock in the caldera, I’m given a vision of heaven and hell.
Day 7 – La Malinche to Ciudad Serdán
It’s early, I’ve got a hundred kilometers to get to Ciudad Serdán, and already have two complications: a swollen ankle from miscalculating my descent while hurtling down La Malinche at Kilian Jornet pace, and a headache from drinking a few too many with Marco and Pepe ’round the campfire last night. I bundle up and prepare for a chilly descent into Huamantla in search of food and coffee.
After breakfast, the day begins innocuously. I’m riding mostly downhill, against the grain of some kind of festive parade involving decorated trucks, combined with a relay race with bikes and on foot. The vista opens up as I ride across the wide salt lake, Totolcingo, mashing the big ring across the flats towards the snowcapped summit of Orizaba.
With ninety degrees’ change of direction comes a 180° reversal of luck. I’ve hit a headwind that batters every effort to make forward progress, and still have 40 kilometers to go. The road’s definitely no longer downhill. It looks flat, but it feels like I’m riding up a mountain.
After a long, bonky crusade against the wind and exhaustion, I arrive at the Hotel Montecarlo, a true refuge for the mountaineer in this part of Mexico, compared to the crude shipping crates which pass for huts up high. It feels surreal to be here again but with my bike as means of transport.
It’s my second time in Serdán, so I know all the good torta shops. I plop down at my favourite one, order una cubana y cerveza, demolish both, and order another round. My legs are in pain from the day’s effort, and any attempt to move them results in protests of agony.
With good weather coming on Orizaba three days hence, I decide a rest day is in order. A glorious day to wake up late, linger over espressos, wander the streets and see the sights, eat tacos, take pictures and — best of all — not ride my bike!
Day 9 – Up to Orizaba
After a rejuvenating day doing nothing, I’m riding down the street in Ciudad Serdán on my fully loaded bike, en route to my final mountain. But one coffee wasn’t enough, so I’m pulling over to nurse another. Besides, I’ve got an easy day today: 25kms and 1500m of elevation gain — been there, done that — and climbing Orizaba itself doesn’t faze me. I’m finally smelling the barn.
Leaving Serdán, the route is invariably uphill; sometimes riding, sometimes pushing, but I’m comfortable with the process now, doing whatever feels natural. I’m chugging along beside picturesque fields, with flocks of sheep and German Shepherds guarding them, and kids that should be in school but are out in the fresh air pretending to do farm work. For once on this trip, everything sorta feels right.
I poke around the last village in hope of a taco shop or something to satiate my desire for lunch, and realize there’s little more here than a bunch of houses. The sound of artillery fire is atrocious, and my entire body is punctuated by a shockwave when one unexpectedly goes off.
Suddenly I get to the end of the village and there is nothing, just some brush and maybe a dry riverbed. I stare down at my GPS, then at the jumble of rocks and dirt, in confusion. Fortunately there are two boys there, having a conversation about whatever ten and twelve-year-olds talk about in Mexico.
“Pico de Orizaba?” I ask, pointing in the general direction of the mountain.
“Si,” says the older boy, dressed in neat schoolclothes.
“Donde es el camino?” I ask, and the boy proceeds to provide a lengthy discourse upon the local geography, of which I comprehend almost nothing. The gist is: you can go all the way around the long way, otherwise this is it.
He’s not very old, but despite the language barrier, the boy’s breadth of knowledge indicates that he knows what he’s talking about. Before delving onto the dirt path, I ask, one last time, if this is the right way. They assure me it is, but I can’t be certain they aren’t just fucking with a clueless gringo.
“You said you wanted to suffer!” I yell, in between expletives and gasping for oxygen. I can’t deny that I did. And while this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, I’m conscious that this is exactly what I asked for.
I’ve been pushing my bike up this “road” for the past two hours, the same road Google says you can drive up in a car. Ha ha, bullshit. The rocks are sliding under my feet as I push my bike two, three steps upwards before clenching the brakes to stop it from rolling backwards on me. I collapse over the bike in an effort to catch my breath — but I’m not making progress doing nothing, so off I go on another series of fruitless steps.
Altitude I’m cool with. Endurance, sure. But this is like some kind of Herculean punishment, like pushing a rock up a mountain that continually rolls back down.
My watch reads 1500 meters but I’m still climbing, and although the grade is less steep, the air is thinner and it’s not any easier. I break out of the trees and there is blue sky. But a rumbling below betrays some sort of motorized vehicle — in this case, a farm tractor, hauling a contingent of climbers intent on bagging Orizaba.
Our arrival to the pass is a tie, and I even manage to ride the last few meters, but I don’t have the energy to push my bike up to the main climbers’ hut 500 meters higher. I’ll have to camp here and climb Orizaba in a single push tomorrow morning.
Day 10 – Pico de Orizaba
I sensed it, before it happened. I heard the truck pull up, the voices, then bang, bang, bang! They were kicking in the door and firing questions at me in Spanish which I didn’t understand.
“No entiendo,” I say. I don’t have the mental capacity to try and muster a response to the questions they’re asking. It’s three in the morning and I was just asleep in my sleeping bag before these assholes showed up to offer me a wake up call.
I found a place to sleep in the lower albergue, a stone building at the pass divided into two rooms, the inside of which could easily double for a Hollywood dungeon or torture chamber. I heard them examining the adjacent room. Then, “Hey, what’s in here?” Bang, bang, bang!
“No entiendo,” I repeat. They motion that I should go back to sleep. But I have to get up and climb Orizaba anyway.
A half-hour later, I’m out the door. “Maybe I’ll get a headstart on the rest of the climbers,” I say, but can already see a line of twinkling dots scaling what I assume is the Ruta Sur.
Having done this once before, I have the ascent dialed. I traverse off the loose scree early, over to the boulders, and make quick progress using my hands and feet. One climber, a young guy, is coming down, disoriented, with the light of his cellphone to guide him. I point him in the direction of the rifugio and continue on my way.
I reach the wall of steep, loose scree that is mainly a nuisance, but a risk to one’s life in the most inane way: rocks are easily dislodged here and this final stretch is not only slow due to altitude and terrain, but also a shooting gallery of debris kicked down by parties up above.
I don my bike helmet accordingly, and claw my way to the summit of Orizaba, exasperated breath by exasperated breath.
Back at the dungeon, six hours later, I’m being interrogated by two boys who want to know everything about my bike, where I came from, and where I’m going next.
I’m sitting on the stone wall making soup and packing my bike. A little girl is staring at me. This family is out for a day trip, enjoying what fresh air is to be found at four thousand meters above sea level. After soup, I’m rolling up a smoke, and the father comes over to ask, I assume, to have one. I hand him the tobacco.
“Roll two,” I say. But he just wants a few papers so he can roll a joint.
With the help of the boys, I’m done packing my bike and ready to go. The father is leaned up under the shade of a tree, sucking his ganja. I saunter over and ask for “uno puff” and inhale the filthy mota as deeply into my lungs as I can. I walk back to my bike, get on, and say adios. They all say adios to me.
I crank on the drivetrain and, in a cloud of volcanic dust, I’m gone.
After climbing Orizaba, I’ve earned the easy part: a three kilometer descent on my bike. Putting that in perspective, it’s a big drop. Like cycling down two Banff mountains stacked on top of each other, no pedaling required.
I lose vert like nobody’s business, bombing though farming villages, alongside herds of sheep, shepherds nodding as I pass. I cross into the watershed east of Orizaba where wet air from the Atlantic slams into the Sierra Madre and the vegetation appears immediately more lush. I’m going thirty, forty, fifty kilometers an hour, passing trucks on the highway creeping cautiously down the endless decline.
I reach the oasis town of Orizaba, where an intoxicatingly romantic waterway runs through, lined with exotic pets: a panther paces in its cage; another is as dull as a sloth. I don’t care to see the bears. The hills take on the hue of sunset as I walk back beside the river, dragging my hand along the damp and mossy wall.
Day 11 – Orizaba to Soledad de Doblado
I stumble into the taco shop like some sort of zombie and plunk down in the plastic chair. I order two quesadillas, Fanta and lots of water. Beads of sweat have blistered on my arms, and there’s a streak of black dirt across my face. I didn’t expect today to be so hot, baking on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, staring at the last sip of water slosh around the bottom of my Nalgene bottle.
It was my plan to reach Veracruz today but it’s late, and I still have forty kilometers to go. I don’t want to bunker down in this desolate village, so close to being done, but fear I won’t make it to Veracruz until after sundown. Riding my bike after dark in Mexico is something I’m not willing to do.
But there’s a hotel here in Soledad de Doblado, I’m told, and I’m racing through the streets behind an ATV that’s offered to take me there. I go up the steps of Hotel Jardin and an old lady looks at me contemptfully. With a wrinkled nose she takes my 200 pesos and shows me to a dilapidated room. The bed is sunken in the middle and insects scurry when I pull back the sheets. Faded Toy Story curtains round out the decor.
The shower’s hot, however, and I understand why the woman looked at me funny when I look in the mirror and see the black streak across my face.
Day 12 – To Veracruz
Lying in my sagging bed, I’m awakened by gale-force wind shaking the entire building. The windows chatter, something on the roof is clanging away, and that broken sign that made this place seem like even more of a shithole, it makes perfect sense now.
I peer out the window at the flapping flags strung across the street and do some geographical arithmetic: I’m fucked. Today is the last day of my trip and supposed to be the easiest one, but it’s no surprise I’ve been tossed this curveball as if to say, “the sufferfiesta’s not over yet.”
Legs madly spinning into a wall of resistance, I’m growling through clenched teeth. I desperately look at the altitude on my watch, expecting to see it drop towards zero, but the number is going up, not down. Today’s supposed to be a descent to sea level — why am I still climbing then?
In the industrial outskirts of Veracruz, three lanes of gridlocked transport trucks provide solace from the wind. I’m run off the shoulder by one but don’t care, I’m ripping through the dirt and passing the offender. Then I’m in the suburbs, racing towards my goal. Someone steps off the curb while staring at their cellphone. I slam on the brakes and skid around, leaving them petrified in my wake.
I don’t care about any of this. I’m on a mission to get to the ocean. And while the city of Veracruz may hold some casual interest, I’m too focused to care.
I come around the corner of a pastel-colored hotel and see the blue expanse. I’m not sure if there is relief, or just shellshock. I cross the street and there’s a sense of, “Wow, I did it, I’m really here”, as I ride along the waterfront but, honestly, I just feel numb.
I lean my bike against a chair that’s been carved out of stone, looking out over the ocean. The wind still howls and threatens to blow my bike off this solid support. I gaze at the water as the waves crash and the wind blows so loud it’s impossible to think. But I’m not thinking about anything. After a few minutes, I take a couple pictures and scan the oceanside: where’s McDonalds?
Day 14 – Home
“I’m sorry, Mr. Amaral, but we can’t transport your box.”
I’m very civil when they explain about the holiday baggage embargo. Other people might explode like there’s dynamite strapped to their chest. In Veracruz, I’d procured a cardboard box for my bike, loaded it with the accoutrements, purchased a flight home, and sat down contentedly to a seafood dinner. Now the airline’s saying no bueno.
The ticket is refunded and I drag my box over to the next desk. “Cargo,” says the agent and directs me to a building across the parking lot. I lug the box across the parking lot — as arduous as pushing my bike up to Orizaba — expecting to get the problem sorted. But it’s Sunday and the cargo division is closed.
I slump on the curb and roll my last pinch of tobacco. In the past, I’d have a meltdown right now, but I’ve taken so many punches on this trip, I can only laugh.
As I sit beside my giant box repeating the F-word, my guardian angel appears on a white moped. I assault him with questions, assuming he works in cargo. He is very kind with my desperation. He’s actually a ticket agent and suggests we go back to the airport. He wants to know exactly what happened and leaves to speak with his colleagues. After a couple minutes, he comes back and says, “Mr. Amaral, we can transport your box.”
Another adventure complete. I lean back in my seat and am catapulted back to Mexico City. What took me two weeks by bicycle, takes thirty minutes by airplane. But as I stare out the window at Pico de Orizaba, I don’t regret taking the slow, painful, excruciatingly rewarding way to get there.
Summary:
03/12/18 Mexico City to Amecameca – 60km | 329m ↑
04/12/18 Amecameca to Paso de Cortes – 25km | 1249m ↑
05/12/18 Paso de Cortes to Cholula – 37km | 1543m ↓
06/12/18 Cholula to Tlaxala – 45km | 465m ↑
07/12/18 Tlaxala to IMSS La Malinzi – 22km | 854m ↑
08/12/18 La Malinche (4460m) – ~1500m ↑
09/12/18 IMSS La Malinzi to Ciudad Serdan – 103km | 516m ↑
10/12/18 Rest day in Serdan
11/12/18 Ciudad Serdan to Orizaba/S. Negra col – 24km | 1536m ↑
12/12/18 Pico de Orizaba (5636m) + to town of Orizaba – 66km | 1300m ↓
13/12/18 Orizaba to Soledad de Doblado – 94km | 472m ↑
14/12/18 Soledad de Doblado to Veracruz – 43km | 394m ↑
▲
I didn’t want it to go on 
At first, I couldn’t even admit to myself what I was doing. Meanwhile, another part of my mind, somehow divorced from conscious acceptance, dutifully did tasks to get ready for the trip − re-learning Spanish, working on my bike, gathering stuff for the trip, etc. Yet I still couldn’t admit to myself what I was intending to do.
Two weeks left, and the black crow still circled. I had to call my parents. I had to tell them what I was doing, and I knew they’d think it was a bad idea. I already felt a bit disconnected from my family, maybe even seen as aloof. I couldn’t let my parents learn I was riding my bike across Mexico by tuning into Instagram, or from my brother mentioning it offhandedly. This was my vocation, not just a hobby, and I had to call my parents and explain what I intended to do.
One week to go. All the pieces were seemingly in place except I hadn’t truly committed. I thought I’d severed and peeled apart the layers of my discomfort about this trip − by admitting to myself, telling others, telling peers, and telling my family − yet a kernel of reluctance remained. Did I even want to do this? Did I have the mental or physical capability?
It didn’t matter whether I wanted to do this. It didn’t matter if I was strong enough. And it didn’t matter if I was scared. I was being an enormous pussy, and it sickened me.
Five o’clock. The sun hasn’t dawned on the tip of Cascade yet. On goes the espresso maker with a flick of the switch. It’s another morning meeting Chris for a pre-dawn skin up Sunshine or John for a session of climbing ice.
At work, I nag John to see if he wants to go ice climbing. Our relationship is mutually beneficial; I can learn a lot from climbing with John, and he needs a partner to go with, so he agrees. A little something in the backyard of Canmore is arranged for working on skills, not so much a backcountry outing.
Copious breakfast is consumed and workplace politics dissected. We rock up to the Junkyards, “thriftstore alpinists” John calls us. We do a couple laps on Scottish Gully then trade ropes with another party and try their steeper pitch. Lunch is conducted as Kananaskis Public Safety bomb the flanks of East End of Rundle, a very “Apocalypse Now”-ian scene as John surveys the damage while I implore my Bialetti to hurry up and boil.
The day is concluded with a rap down Scottish Gully to bring down our rope, followed with practice lead climbing a moderate pitch. We get back to the car in the dark, John having an eight hour night shift ahead of him that evening.
A stunner day riding the lift to the top of North American at Norquay. It feels like the first taste of spring. I have a pass but yesterday I skinned (read: bootpacked) up here from town for shits and giggles. Today I’m just riding bumps. And steep cruddy crap, even though a few days ago this place was pow-city. Oh well, at least the sun feels nice on my face.
It’s the end of the month and Chris and I are ready for something beyond the whole Sunshine thing. I’m used to riding steep terrain in shitty conditions; the skiing might not be pretty but I can make it down the hill. So obviously I’m ready to ski a couloir in the backcountry. Chester Lake is suggested and although I expect/hope for Chris to talk me out of it, he seems enthusiastic. Fuck.
After a few kilometres of easy skinning, we rock up to the huge fan at the base of the couloir and put our skis on our packs. Out come the ice tools and crampons for eight hundred metres of frontpointing. We make good progress up the slope, alternately taking turns to break trail and kick steps for each other, though it’s hard work.
A short distance below the top, the climbing turns to wallowing in unconsolidated powder so we say “fuck it” and put on our skis. Chris goes first, his first few turns unsuccessful. He navigates down a narrow section, then I go. The same. I might be used to riding steep terrain, but not in powder, and most of my turns leave me resignedly lying like a heap in the snow. I laugh, but it’s frustrating.
Eventually we make a few good turns down the gully. Chris skis down the fan and out of sight. Suddenly the powder turns into ice and my skis are skating down the slope. I’m in an uncontrolled glissade and headed directly for some rocks and/or a cliff. I strike with my ice tool and it’s wrenched out of my hand. I desperately plunge my ski pole into the ice and drive it in with more and more pressure until I slowly and painstakingly come to a stop. My skis dangle from my toe pins, ice tool still planted in the slope fifty metres above me. Otherwise I’m unscathed, save for my dignity. Yeah, so ready to ski a couloir…
The Bialetti sputtered on the stove and I raced over to rescue its contents. A map of Peru’s Cordillera Huayhuash hung on the wall, in a mundane spot beside the fridge so I would look at it every day, committing its lofty passes and peaks to memory.
My dream of two years had been poached. I wasted no time bemoaning the situation or even considering trying to do it faster or unsupported; the whole point was to do a “first ascent” and that possibility was gone.
The self-powered style reached its zenith for me in the context of the Mount Temple Duathlon, in which I cycled 70kms from Banff to Moraine Lake, tagged 3544m Mount Temple, then rode all the way back to Banff. I completed this challenge twice this summer, the second time 
I can’t do a recap of this summer without mentioning my crack at the Temple FKT, which represents to me my sharpest, most refined state as a mountain runner. While the story is told 
I’ll conclude with the last few episodes which come to mind:
Elizabeth Parker and Abbot Pass Huts with Marcy Montgomery. A little different for me as I’ve somehow spent six years in the Rockies avoiding carrying a heavy pack and/or doing overnight trips, but in terms of sheer enjoyment, this was one of my favourite weekends in the mountains, ever. Lake O’Hara was at its peak of golden larch season so the eye-candy was incredible and as for the company, the girl is a fucking riot.
It was mid-September. The mornings were chilly; leaves were turning vibrant yellow; snow had already fallen on the mountaintops. And there I was in my wetsuit about to slip into the freezing-cold lake.
I actually possess a fair bit of experience both as a swimmer and dealing with mild hypothermia. I’ve been a swimmer my entire life, eventually teaching swimming as a young adult, where I shivered for hours in chilly lap pools with zero body fat to keep me warm.
When we awoke, the wind had died but the skies were dismal — you couldn’t even see Aylmer from the window as it was engulfed in dark clouds. We cooked a couple of breakfast wraps and headed out the door around 7:40am. I was already wearing my wetsuit so I wouldn’t have to change when we got to the lake.
As I intended for this trip to be self-supported (i.e. carrying all my own gear), I planned to tow everything behind me in drybags bundled in a PFD. As we approached the water we could see a considerable chop flowing west into the Stewart Canyon outlet. “I’m not very optimistic about this,” I said considering I had yet to test the dynamics of my tow kit.
I stumbled onto the opposite shore amid the beached driftwood grunting like a beast. Even though I was unbelievably cold, I had to change into dry clothes and start hiking immediately. Although the transition was slowed by the numbness of my extremities, once I got into my running gear and started moving, I warmed up quickly.
I traversed along the shoreline, stashed my wetsuit, then bushwacked up through the foliage to find Chris and Jordan.
The trail backtracks a bit before breaking out of the trees and gaining the location of the old lookout, which is no longer present. We gazed in the direction of Aylmer. Chris asked if a pointy peak, pretty far away, was Aylmer. No, I don’t think so, I said. We shifted our view a little. Even further away, behind that summit, was Aylmer.
From the fire lookout, one traverses along the ridge towards its intersection with the avi gulch. This, I thought, would be straightforward, and though it wasn’t difficult, it was more bushwacky and route-findy than expected.
Soon we arrived at the avi gulch to behold the behemoth Mt. Aylmer socked in the clouds. After a snack, we made our assault on the final mass of the mountain, aiming to dash up to the summit and back down to that spot.
We traversed beneath the ridgeline and gained the notch in the ridge which permits views into the Ghost Wilderness on the other side. The final climb through loose rubble is nothing less than a slog, and compounded by relatively thin oxygen. If one consistently bags peaks in the 2500-3000m range (which in the Rockies is easy to do), one can expect to be feeling it at 3100m+.
As we ascended the final hundred meters, clouds rolled in and it started to snow. When I got to the top, I found Chris sitting on the summit grinning with nothing to be seen anywhere around him. I personally tagged the summit at 6h28m after leaving Banff — Chris was a few minutes before me and Jordan a couple minutes after.
We hung around on the summit for only a few minutes, as there was nothing to see. I fixed the piece of lumber usually jammed in the summit cairn. We said, “Peace out, Aylmer,” and headed back down.
The descent went smoothly. We boot-skiied through shitty rock to the notch, traversed along chossy ledges below the ridge, then bombed down the screefield in the avalanche gulch to meet up with the Aylmer Pass trail.
We jogged for a few kilometers until Jordan caught a toe and went down hard. He tumbled into the bushes and was silent. I asked if he was okay. Not really, he said. His tooth was embedded in his lip and blood was pouring down his chin.
Jordan removed his tooth from his lip. Chris cracked open a first-aid kit and we applied pressure to stop the bleeding. Jordan’s teeth seemed to be okay, and he’d probably need a couple stitches, but it became apparent after awhile that he might have a concussion.
In his semi-concussed state, Jordan repetitively asked (among other questions) whether I was planning to swim again. The day was supposed to have two swims, and as the model for the “Picnic” goes, you bike, then swim, then climb, then do it all in reverse.
We reached the parking lot around 9h14m. Chris and Jordan loaded their bikes into Chris’ car and headed down to get Jordan some stitches. I saddled up on the roadie for the downhill rip into town.
Splits:
When I got back from Italy in July, I started running in the mountains like I’d forgotten all about the saga of injuries I’d been dealing with most of the year, and pretty much made the same mistakes I made back in May. I ran the Cory-Edith loop with friends, then tagged Edith a couple days later, then biked and hiked to Egypt Lake a few days after that. I stopped doing physio exercises partway through my trip to Europe — the dorm at Rifugio Lagazuoi was the last time I used a resistance band — so it was little wonder when my tib-post/plantar issues flared up after getting back from Egypt Lake.
One upside to my inability to run has been embracing the bike more wholeheartedly. Last fall I completed an “
Luckily, this summer wasn’t solely restricted to riding my bike, and by mid-August my foot was healthy enough to fathom the prospect of trotting up and down eleveners and stuff:
Jokes about “uphill swimming” were aplenty as our shoes sifted through the fossils beds and we looked for any trilobytes. Eventually we reached the ascent gullies that lead to Atha’s summit ridge: steep, hard-packed, and littered with choss. The scrambling isn’t difficult but managing rockfall is the real hazard. As we all stayed out of each other’s way and were keen to call out falling rocks, we made it to the ridge in no time.
The grind up the ridge to Silverhorn was less technical than the gullies, but dark clouds were hovering, making me uneasy, and I could sense the altitude was starting to tucker out Glenn.
We made it to Silverhorn, Athabasca’s snowy sub-summit, and prepared for the moment of truth: would snow conditions allow us to climb to the summit? This year we were prepared, packing Microspikes, and I had an ice axe, refusing to let any snow climbing stop me. The west side of the ridge leading to the summit was completely bare of snow, allowing us to tread solely on scree. The only detour of any technicality was the need to cross an icy gully by leaping between two rotten, chossy ledges.
At last we were on top. An elevener bagged. The vendetta was resolved; Athabasca and I were on good terms. I kicked steps up the huge fin of snow that sits atop the summit, gazed out at the sea of mountains, and drove the shaft of my ice axe into the snow triumphantly. Only problem was that the jagged pick of the ice axe was embedded in my leg. Still working on this alpinism thing, I guess.
We hung around for a half-hour soaking up the epicness that surrounded us. The Columbia Icefield is a crazy place, giving the impression of a different epoch in Earth’s history. Though the outlet glaciers have dwindled, it is easy to imagine these immense mountains as humble nunataks protruding from the icecap many eons ago.
Temple Duathlon
I left the house at 3:41am and started spinning. The ride went by mostly in the dark which was my wont; not a single car passed me on the 1A until I got to Lake Louise. When I saw the silhouette of Mount Temple, so huge and still so far away, I shuddered and doubts started to creep into my consciousness.
By the time I reached Moraine, my quads were completely pooched and my right foot (the shitty one) was completely numb and felt like a big chunk of ice. I wasn’t sure if Temple was in the cards but the subtle shift in modality from cycling to hiking seemed to infuse a little pep to my legs. I started marching towards Temple anyway. If I didn’t have enough gusto to take on Temple, I could always tag something else like Eiffel Peak instead.
I tagged the top of Temple in 3h20m from Moraine Lake, 7h56m since the start of the day — not my fastest time on this mountain but definitely faster than most. Though the path up the mountain was a highway of hikers and mountaineers, the summit was host to only four other people. After exchanging the favor of taking summit pictures for each other, the group headed down, leaving me alone to bask in the tranquility and power that permeates the alpine zone at 11,000 feet.
I didn’t stick around long, only spending six or seven minutes lingering at a place I practically consider a holy site. For three years I’d been yearning to stand once again on this cold, blustery, barren summit. A big bank of clouds started rolling in and the views weren’t about to improve any. But as usual, Temple didn’t disappoint, truly lending the feeling that one is soaring over the entire Canadian Rockies (save for ten other mountains, that is).
I got back to my bike at Moraine Lake and scarfed down one of the pizza slices I’d been carrying in my bag, then saddled up on my bike for the exhilarating ride down to Lake Louise village.
This first climb eased, we swung a right turn and started traversing below the towering cliffs of Pomagagnon. Soon the singletrack widened and we reentered the forest.
Went to see the Tre Cime. This wasn’t a run, not even a hike; it was a tourist outing with components of both running and hiking.
All this is an aside, because today wasn’t the day such a venture and my only real intention was putting around Tre Cime. I went back to the rifugio for another snack.
I raced back to Auronzo and caught the bus back to town. For the past couple months I’d had this epic picture of the Tre Cime as the background on my phone. I looked at the picture: “The Tre Cime doesn’t look like that,” I said.
The 25th of June was Cortina Trail, a race two friends of mine, Jordan and Mikale, were running. The previous evening was the start of the 119km Lavaredo Ultra-Trail. About an hour before the start, the skies clouded over and unleashed what forecasts suggested for weeks but hadn’t delivered: rain poured; waterfalls cascaded off of roofs and gutters; lightning flashed every minute. One could almost feel the population of the town, bloated by thousands of runners from all over the world, collectively pooping their pants that very moment.
I saw my friends and we ran into the aid station together. They were doing awesome, still feeling fresh and stoked about the course as well. The weather was still looking good too. Who could ask for more?
After waiting for an hour at the finish line, I started thinking my friends had already finished the race while I was putzing around at Falzarego, and were probably crushing beers at the house. I waited a little longer but just as I decided to leave there suddenly appeared Mikale and Jordan, gloriously exhausted and sweaty, Cortina Trail 50K finishers, no small feat. The aura of physical brokenness but complete spiritual awesomeness imbued them.
I thought I had more time to spend in Cortina but realized after coming home from watching the race that I was going to have to leave the next morning. Bummer.
Once it got dark (not cooler, only more humid), I returned to the airport reasoning it would be as comfortable a place to spend the night as a comfy hostel in Venice. Though I found a quiet area and ended up sprawled in my sleeping bag on the floor, I never really got much sleep — the continued lack of which eventually proved to have bizarre effects.
Blood, Sweat & Scree Dust 