By the time we got there three days later, the snow on Perote had melted into big white blotches, but the day it snowed, two and a half inches covered the area above the town of El Conejo at 10,670 feet. In the local paper called La Marcha I found this description of the snow fall by Miguel Ángel Mata Armas, the mayor [titular -- head of might be better to say] of El Conejo.
"At five in the morning the snow began to fall, and over the course of the next three hours it grew heavier and a blanket of snow of at least 5 centimeters fell over the community of El Conejo. We had a temperature of minus six degrees centigrade [21 degrees Fahrenheit]"
The article continued,
As is traditional, dozens of families who became aware of the snowfall came to enjoy themselves in the beautiful white landscape, rarely enjoyed at this time of year.
"Our whole family came when the snow fell," said Amelia Escobar who arrived at 3200 meters with her family.
Other people like Sr. Pedro Cortés Zárate compared the the feeling of a snow fall on Cofre de Perote to what people in other countries of the world might feel.
"One time I saw on television documentaries of Alaska and other countries. Now, with a little imagination we can dream a little and we can seem to transport ourselves to those places," he said, with feeling.
Jim, my brother-in-law John and I headed for Cofre de Perote yesterday to attempt to climb down the mountain from the top to a lake we had seen which had no apparent trail or road to it. Jim and I, more or less accustomed to some of the roads around here were blasé about the drive to the summit where we were going to start. John, however, was amazed at the condition of the road from El Conejo to the top. It took us an hour and five minutes to climb the 6.4 miles in our cars. It's a cobblestone road. Sometimes the spaces between the stones are filled with sand and gravel to smooth the way, but there was no evidence of that yesterday. Below is a photo of John and me part way up. You can see a few patches of snow in the background.
And here's my old man.
The rock up top of the picture is the highest point on the mountain. It is the reason for the Spanish name: Cofre means trunk, as in trunk to carry things. There's a story about it being the trunk of one of the conquistadores accompanying Cortés. On our previous trip, I managed to climb the ladder to the top of it. Looking at it from the perspective of these photos, I can't imagine I had the nerve.
The name in Nahuatl is Naupa-Tecutépetl which means four-sided mountain, referring to the four sides of the huge volcanic plug on the top.
Here's another picture of it from a bit closer.
It doesn't look quite so scary from this perspective.
We drove past the rock to start our decent from the other high point a bit further along the road. Here is a picture from the top where we started of the lake Jim wanted us all to descend to.
We had all our dogs with us: Giaco, Cosi, Happy, Rita and John's dog Duchess. Here's Giaco enjoying being a mountain dog -- maybe his Afghanistan desert mountain dreams were stirring.
Jim got a shot of me descending.
And here I have to make a plug for Keen climbing/hiking boots. Last summer when our son/stepson's friends from Spain visited us, Robert, the guy friend, noticed I was traipsing up and down rocks in shoes with good soles but bad fit: shoes meant for walking, not hiking. He kept telling me to get a good pair of hiking boots: it would make so much difference. I had hated my last pair of hiking boots, so I was pretty resistent. But this last trip to Boston I went to EMI and tried on a bunch and hiked up and down the store's mini-ramp and finally settled on a pair of Keens. I cannot tell you how much difference they make. They are WONDERFUL. Thank you, Robert, thank you Keen.
We were hiking down from around 13,700 feet, and we could definitely feel the altitude. We all had slight headaches and John and I felt a bit lightheaded. Since we were climbing down first and knew we'd have to finish the hike climbing uphill, I decided I'd had enough about a third of the way to the lake. (Actually, Jim says a third. John and I say a half. You could say that Jim knew because he went the whole way, but he might just want to exaggerate his nonetheless-remarkable hike to the lake. On the other hand, John and I had a good view from where we stopped of the rest of the distance...sort of.)*,** Jim had no doubt, however, that the distance John and I went was the steepest part (by far. It was VERY steep. We are all strong sixty-something-year olds!) In any event, I wanted to be sure I had the energy to get back. Jim says it was a good decision. But he was determined to meet his goal. He hardly ever fails to meet his goal! He didn't regret it, but said it was further than he thought and that he realized he wasn't in the greatest shape for such a long trek. But he made it! He will post his segment of the trip on his blog.
Fog always rolls in--or almost always--in the afternoon. Below are some pictures I took after we got back to the top. The first is looking out towards Pico de Orizaba, the tallest mountain in Mexico.
We are looking south to Pico de Orizaba. This next picture is looking more or less west. It is actually almost the same view as the one at the top of this post I put up to show you the lake Jim headed to. That photo was taken around noon, this around five in the afternoon. From Pico to the west and including Cofre de Perote is the Eje Volcánico, or the volcanic belt which crosses from our area to the west coast.
On the way up, we passed a lot of people playing in the snow. At the top, after our hike, we came across a young couple throwing snowballs at each other. On the way down, we encountered a crush of traffic going up: seems there was going to be a big party on cofre last night. Anyway, we were as usual amazed at how nonchalantly other people took the road.
At the start of our hike, at the top of Cofre de Perote, the temperature was 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The effort of the hike kept us quite warm. By the time we reached El Conejo on the trip home, just after sunset, the temperature 41. It had been in the lower fifties at noon. When we got home, it was 65 degrees just outside our house: the altitude effect.
*UPDATE: We looked on Google Earth. Jim is right, John and I went a third. But it really is clearly by far the steepest part.
** SECOND UPDATE: It occurs to me that perhaps John and I had gone more than a third of the way because the steep inclines look like shorter distances than the horizontal distances. What do you think, Jim?