A couple of days have gone by, and now it is very clear to me the root cause of my poor performance on this mountain: The lack of sleep that resulted from having done a very poor planning on my part, for this trip. That lack of sleep, combined with my underestimation of this mountain, were the two jabs that knocked me out in this attempt.
The math goes like this: Wednesday the 10th I traveled from San Francisco to Mexico City from almost midnight to 5 am on Thursday the 11th. On that flight I slept maybe 2 and a half hours if that. On Thursday I rested about 3 hours in the refuge, for a total of 5 and a half hours of sleep in the last 41, and right then and there we started to climb the mountain. I imagine that the adrenaline of what was ahead of me prevented me from seeing that my lack of sleep was a very big obstacle for climbing a mountain that is more than 5,000 meters high.
The professionalism of our guide Mauricio was impeccable. I was very motivated by a comment he made to me on the way back, that I had surprised him a little, and in a very good way, the moment I gave up. He told me that it was kind of normal that people wouldn’t say anything until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to think.
«Patting myself in the back», anyone can say, but I did like his words very much at the time.
It is now a simple matter of time before we make our second attempt, which is something that both Alexandra and I are absolutely convinced we must do. I think that next year, early, we will return to Pico Orizaba.
Crónicas de Mao 