Orizaba: descent

 I wanted to lower into the crater to explore, but we had no rope. Don had been trying to get me to climb this mountain for years, and so there we were, at the top of the mountain.

 This is the Whippet, on the way down I stopped to talk with everyone who was still climbing up the mountain. In addition to our party, there was a group of Mexican army mountaineers climbing the mountain below us.  I stopped to talk with them also, to practice my Spanish. I was feeling quite elated, especially since my feet were warming up and I was climbing down. So I decided to start bounding down the mountain, showing off advanced crampon leaping technique. Unfortunately, one of my crampons got caught on my gator, and I was heading head first down the hard icy glacier.  Both my pole and Whippet had flipped out of my hands, and I was sliding with 1500 feet of glacier, then a cliff below me.

Spence at the summit

 I managed to turn around in the self arrest position, but did not dare put my crampons down, which would have caused a back flip and probably a broken leg, so I drove my knees into the snow and ice and somehow came to stop 40 feet below the Mexican army climbers. I am sure they thought...what is he doing!!??
I think the angels saved me again. 

Darren and Jennifer

 We took the same jeep blanco down the trail, our car went first because we had all the altitude sickness sufferers. It is a beautiful landscape. I was so happy when we got down, I took the much needed shower and went out to buy some mole poblano for the dinner that they were making for us. On the way home, the next morning, there was an endless pilgrimage along the freeway and the streets of every city toward the basilica of the Virgin of the Guadalupe. 

People were riding bicycles, families were riding in the back of trucks, there were icons and pick up trucks made into shrines.