A Weekend Of Climbing

First word, amazing. Second word, ow.

Background on Cerro de la Silla... It is the most recognizable mountain that overlooks the city of Monterrey (technically the mountain lies in the municipality of Guadalupe, but most say Monterrey to make it easier). It is in the shape of a W. There are 4 peaks that constitute the main part of Cerro when viewed from the West, looking East. There is Pico Antena (Antenna Peak), towards the North. Pico Antena is somewhere around 1800 meters above sea level (1970 yds, 1.18 miles) while the city of Monterrey is around 540 meters above sea level (590 yds, .34 miles). Then is Pico Norte (tallest at 1820m), then Pico Sur, then Pico la Virgen (shortest at 1750m). That means we climbed approximately 1260 meters vertically (1378 yards, 4134 feet, .783 miles). The trail length is about 5.5km, 3.3 miles.

Friday night, laid low, talked with friends, procrastinated, slept well.
Saturday morning, 7:30AM wake up. By 8 I was on a bus with 30 other Tec students plus 3 guides on our way to the base of Cerro de la Silla in Guadalupe. We arrived, got off the bus and had all of our bags checked for stuff by security guards for a subdivision that we had to walk through to get to the trail. They took my pen and pencil (labeled them so I could retrieve them of course), probably to deter graffiti. So the group of 30+ starts walking up the hill in this sub towards the start of the real trail. The trail up the mountain is about 8 to 10 feet wide the entire way up. Half way up we stopped for about 15 minutes to see the old aerial tramway station that was built to handle a cable car to go up halfway. Sadly, on the opening day this aerial tramway had an accident that killed 5 people, including the design engineer. It never reopened. But the view from atop the platform was amazing! It was a perfect place to get some good photos of the city and get some water, plus oranges. The trail itself consisted of a multitude of surfaces. Mostly it was just the earth with small gravel and leaves but sometimes there were rocks larger than a foot in dimension that made for an up-and-down path that could get very slippery. Further up the hill they poured concrete into flat surfaces and ridged/speed bumped for the corners and particularly steep areas. I wore my Asics running shoes and did fine. The second photo is of the Tec campus at 20x optical zoom with my Sony DSC-HX1.

Okay, officially quitting uploading photos to this thing. It takes 3 minutes per photo, then they randomly delete themselves from the page. No more... (after the fact... I tried uploading more photos. Yes, it's still a pain in the rear.)

So, we continued up the mountain. Dang it! It takes forever to write in this thing. I'm going to swim my 1000m. I'll continue when I get back... Which for you will be 3 seconds of reading... Funny eh?

Back. That was fun. I'm really starting to like swimming, aside from the times when I go breathing stupid and i try to inhale as I'm turning my head back down into the water....

These blogs take forever to write, holy smokes... Alright, I'll try to type faster about the rest of my weekend. 

Right, Cerro de la Silla... So after 2 and a half hours of walking up the hill we made it to the top. And ohh buddy was it worth it. The view was incredible. Seeing the majority of a city of almost 4 million people without having to turn my head was an experience. It was sunny with a light wind that helped to cool us down after walking. At the top of Pico Antena is, go figure, several antennas for cell phone providers and telecommunication companies. There was even a medium sized transport truck up there. I don't think it drove though (bless you helicopters). We were at the top for about half an hour eating food, drinking sweet sweet glorious H20, and taking tons of pictures. Looking to the back of Pico Antena we could see the rolling hills of the mountain range and part of a municipality of Monterrey. Breathtaking. Some others in the group decided to venture down about 5 yards towards the real edge of the hill (one more step and its nothing but air an a lengthy vertical drop). I didn't go that far, kinda liked the feeling of not being able to truly fall to my death. Given a harness and a good rope oh heck yeah I would have gone right to the edge.Oh, I swear it looked like Pico Norte was below where we were, but anywho.

So, after resting and taking a bunch of photos, we started the 3.3 mile walk back down the mountain. This hurt me wayyy more than the climb up. Thanks to football and track in high school I have bad knees. It is easy for me to go up stairs, run 5 miles, or bike a long ways. Walking a mile, walking down 3.3 miles, and standing for 8 hours kills me. 

Nothing exciting happened on the walk down, no photos, nada. So I move on. The rest of Saturday was filled with getting food, showering, and then passing out by 7pm (missed going to dinner with some friends because of that). 

On Sunday, jeez I've written this much and I haven't gotten into Cueva de la Virgen... ayyy. 

Cueva de la Virgen (Virgin's Cave) is in the municipality of La Huasteca inside a park. There were 10 people with 4 guides that went this day. All of us had on full climbing harnesses and helmets. The cave is, I'm guessing, 200 meters in the air. We climbed up the side of this cliff that was quite steep. Sorry, I'm cutting down the length of this part because I need to restart my computer and go swimming, again (yes, this has taken over a day to complete). The climb was difficult, slippery, didn't always have places to grab hold so it was sometimes just using my two feet at opposing angles to walk up. By the time we made it to the cave I was needless-to-say tired. My legs never got a chance to rest after climbing Cerro de la Silla the day before. The cave itself was quite large. 30 yards deep, 10 yards high. We walked into the front of it, ate and rested at the back, then exited out the side. Upon leaving we were greeted with a, what seemed to be steeper hill than what we came up, which sucked because there weren't nice pointy rocks to get a good foot hold. We did however have some nice soil and small gravel that provided a great surface to slide down on our butts. Joy. Oh, did I mention gravity still works even when you are running out of things to grab a hold of so you stop sliding?? Ok, so after sliding down maybe 100 feet we stopped so that our guides could hook up a rope so we could start rappelling down the near-vertical face of the cliff. It took a while to get the lines situated then prep the 10 of us how to properly rappel then actually get all of us down the 3 different levels. There were only 2 ropes so we went down the first rope, then switched lines with the help of a guide, then went to the 2nd level then waited for everyone to get there. Then we joked and talked with the guides used one of the lines to get us down the 3rd rappel section. By the end of that 3rd section it was true what the guides had said, that the rope may "quemar los manos" (burn your hands). Mine had black lines across them. **Note to self: Next time bring gloves! Then it was another run down a hill with a ton of small-medium sized rocks then hopping down big boulders until we were back at ground floor. What an incredible climb. If you can get to my facebook, check out the pics there, I really hate the photo uploader with this site. 

All in all, a great weekend. It is now Tuesday at 7pm local time and my calves are still screwed up bad. The quads are good, those I have trained well. Let's just say The Stick is my mortal enemy right now. My roomie Raphael has been laughing at me. Okay, it's about damn time I finished this post. I'm going to get food, and swim, then lift. Then tonight shall be lots and lots of Math and Fluids hw! Joy!!! I wish you all could have come along, it truly was incredible. Oh Michigan, why can't you have 10% of the stuff that is available here?? Right, because you're MICHIGAN!!

On a side note: I miss my car, I miss my cat, I miss my parents, and I cannot wait to get back on my bike. Salsa classes are going well, I'm actually teaching my partners the moves instead of me looking the idiot who can't dance.

Au revoir