Brief report:
Just got back this past Sunday night (Dec. 1, 2002) from Mexico. It was not a successful trip.
My partner mdostby and I had caught the stomach flu the week before we left. We met on Sunday, November 17th, and hiked to the summit of Mount Baden-Powell (9,399 feet) in the Los Angeles National Forest. It turned out that Mike had caught the flu through his son and then passed it to me that Sunday. Regardless, we departed for Mexico on Saturday, November 23, 2002.
I climbed La Malinche (14,640 feet) on Monday, November 25th while Mike sat it out with a return of flu symptoms. After that, we went onto the base of the Pico de Orizaba on Tuesday, November 26th. We spent Tuesday night and Wednesday night sleeping at 14,000 feet on the bigger hut at Piedra Grande. We had planned summit day for Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28th. Unfortunately, we got stormed out on our summit day. It started to rain Wednesday evening and visibility was poor. It rained pretty much all day Thursday 11/28 and it didn't let up. We spent Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, Nov. 28th) in the damp, leaky and crowded Piedra Grande hut. The weather did not seem to be lifting, so at 5:00pm Thursday we made the decision to retreat off the mountain. Bad weather, at the time, forced us to abandon our summit bid. Next day (Friday, 11/29) as we traveled by bus to Puebla, Mexico, we realized we should have been more PATIENT as the weather cleared up on Friday.
While at base camp, we did day hike however to 15,500 feet on Tuesday afternoon, and then day hiked Wednesday morning a little bit beyond the lower glacier up to 15,800 feet.
I am currently planning to go back and attempt Pico de Orizaba solo in February 2003.