"The mountain, she is not innocent..." Seņor Reyes' voice trailed off as his words hung in the dry air of the climbers' hostel in Tlachichuca. John and I toned down our giddy anticipation and shifted uncomfortably in the sudden graveness of the moment. Reyes was perfect, exactly the type of mountain man you expected to find at the end of the road in charge of a climbing hostel. His intense brown eyes augered straight through us, sizing up two raggedy specimens in front of him as a worthy match for nearby Citlaltepetl, Mexico's highest volcano. We slumped in our chairs, both dusty and strung-out from spending the day jumping busses on rural routes all across Mexico. I suppose we did not inspire a ton of confidence in him.

We had just arrived in the little town at the base of Citlaltepetl, known locally as El Pico de Orizaba, and were settling up with Reyes for lodging and jeep transport the next day to the trail head. Reyes gave us the rundown on his operation and then sent us back to the rack room. As we secured our stuff for the night I wondered if we had passed his test. Did we appear worthy? How exactly do you say 'helicopter rescue' in Spanish? Once again, I wondered if this was still a good idea.

John and I were the only surviving members of a once large Mexico-bound expedition team. Two months before the trip, the others suddenly became quite inspired with the bailout excuses and ultimately we were the only two left. With only a couple of ascents on Cascade volcanoes and a few Colorado fourteeners between us, we weren't exactly seasoned alpine mountaineers. But Orizaba was supposedly a straightforward climb that posed few technical ice challenges, so we reasoned that on a good weather day with perfect snow conditions we would have a decent chance at summiting.

Opting out on the Mexico City smog, from Denver we flew into the Caribbean port town of Vera Cruz. This would enable, we reasoned, a happy margarita on the beach after the climb. The day after we arrived was spent piecing together bus schedules from the coast up into the Cordillera de Anahuac and the tiny town of Tlachichuca. There were no direct busses to Tlachichuca, so the day was spent dragging our expedition duffels from bus to bus, heaving them in and out of various taxis and struggling through many desperate conversations with bus personnel about times, schedules and routes.

We finally arrived at the Reyes compound and met a group of Americans that had just come back from the mountain. They sat around on couches in front of a pot-bellied stove staring blankly at the wall. They were exhausted and sunburned, their faces red and windblown. A few quick conversations revealed that only about half the group made the summit in spite of the good weather. They also revealed that three Russians had died on Orizaba just the week before in a fall on the glacier. We fell asleep that first night in the rack room listening to the snores of the other climbers. Outside, a nearly humorous cacophony of dogs, roosters, burros and car horns continued all night.

After breakfast we joined a second group from Colorado and packed ourselves and the gear into the back of one of the Power Wagons, Reye's fully-restored 1952 model US Army personnel carrier. Two benches run the length of the bed and metal bars have been welded inside the cab that appear to be for desperate grabs to support oneself. John wisely rode shotgun up front. The trip took close to two hours to cover 12 miles. Seven of us sat in back, gripping the metal bars and dodging packs and water bottles dislodged as the truck pitched and lurched through washouts in the roadbed. Dust clouds billowed in the screen windows. Several banged their heads on the metal ceiling and others were bordering on nausea by the time we reached the hut at Piedra Grande. As we unloaded, we were told to sleep with our heads out towards the door (and the activity) so the mice wouldn't bother us as much. Mice? We set ourselves up, chit-chatted with the other guys in our crew and took a quick acclimatization hike up the valley in the general direction of the glacier.

That night, my sleep was intermittent due to the diamox-induced restroom breaks and mouse attack hallucinations. The next thing I knew someone's alarm went off at midnight and bodies and gear began moving around loudly in the hut.

I lay in my bag and weighed, as every climber inevitably does, the attractiveness of staying put. I pondered my options: 1) stay safe and warm. 2) begin a 20 hour day dragging myself towards some objective thousands of feet above me in the frozen darkness. For the moment the confines of the sleeping bag were winning out. But then I remembered what another day of Ramen and tea and acclimatization hikes would be like, and I suddenly found the motivation I needed. Besides, it was anybody's guess if we would survive another night at the hands of the mountain mice.

I began gathering things for breakfast and discovered that mice had torn our roll of toilet paper to shreds. With any number of instant oatmeal packs and a pound of sugar within reach, they had gone for the toilet paper. The poor things were obviously suffering from high-altitude delusions like the rest of us. Others were getting suited up and the comforting hum of butane and Whisperlite burners fought back that of the gusting wind outside. We had all of our stuff on by 1:45 and exited the hut into a dark landscape dwarfed by a sky positively saturated with brilliant starlight.

The scree slope passed slowly and we marked our progress against the clumps of headlamps now coming up below us from the hut. By 3am we had reached the tongue of the glacier and roped up. The next two hours we traversed back and forth across the gradually steepening ice, keeping a prominent rock outcropping to our left until coming out at a relatively flat section at the base of the glacier. We regrouped and downed a liter of water, noting the ice chunks already floating in our Nalgene bottles. John fumbled with putting new batteries in his headlamp, which had burned out on the first ice section coming up.

I then found myself leading the glacier in the dark without any real clue about a proper route up it. To the East we could see the lights of Vera Cruz and other smaller towns on the Caribbean coast. Above, the stars were so clear that they began obscuring the familiar constellations. Orion barely stood out against a field of innumerable twinkling diamonds. The whole way up I kept at bay an uncomfortable sensation that I was on a slope too steep for my ability. I did this by thinking that just on the other side of the current "steep" section there would be a flat spot where we could rest and conduct some route-finding. But this spot never came and we just kept climbing on, zigzagging higher and higher into the darkness.

We found ourselves at the Aguja del Hielo. This marks the lower lip of the crater, which drops about 400 feet and is close to a quarter-mile across. Where it was finally safe to stop for pictures we took a quick rest.

My headlamp had burned out but the sun was high enough now that it lit up the variations in the ice for our placements. And Orizaba threw an incredible shadow to the west, laying down its dark pyramidal shape across 40 miles of the dry plateau. I tracked my eyes from that spectacle and around the crater rim and noted a small rise with a bunch of metal crosses sticking out of the snow: The summit! It looked close. The trail then traversed the steepest section of ice, creating a more intense feeling here than anywhere else on the glacier. We carried on and soon popped over a rise and found a flat section where we took some more water and caught our breath before continuing. The next thing I realized I was stumbling the last few feet to those crosses feeling that undeniable adrenaline surge as you crest that last bit of earth that stands between you and the sky. We took our pictures and then began the descent after spending 15 minutes at 18,700 feet. The descent was a long and agonizing process tempered by picture taking, sub sandwich hallucinations and John and I trading insults about each others alpine mountaineering abilities.

We arrived at the hut at 1:30 pm and the Power Wagon was already there. We hurriedly packed and piled once again into the back of the jeep for the dusty trip down the hill to Tlachichuca.

It was raining in Vera Cruz by the time we returned, so there was to be no margs on the beach. This was not a problem. After all, there were no burst capillaries, frostbitten feet or lost gear. We drank cheap beers in a tired silence, considering contentedly the dangerous potential of this new hobby to lay waste to our next few years' vacation days.

—Jay Boynton, Living the Life with MountainZone.com