I have been trying to climb the Mexican volcanoes for two decades. Almost exactly 20 years ago, a friend and I tried to climb three volcanoes in Mexico: Malinche, Iztaccihuatl, and Pico de Orizaba. Due to a combination of bad weather and alternating altitude sickness, we didn’t summit anything. In 2016, my husband and I came back to climb Izta and Orizaba. We turned around on Izta at about 16,300 from high winds, and then I got sick. So I was hoping that the third time would be the charm.
The key to climbing the Mexican volcanoes, especially for people coming from sea level, is acclimatization. We rented a car on this trip, which made the logistics a lot easier and gave us a lot of freedom on where we could go. With our freedom, we chose some interesting hikes to acclimatize:
- the El Rosario Butterfly Reserve
- Xocotitlán (which we weren’t able to do)
- an entertaining drive to Cerro Catedral
- a climb of Nevado de Toluca
El Rosario Butterfly Reserve
3.63 miles round trip, 1,293 feet of gain, max elevation: 11,033 feet
Our acclimatization started with visiting the El Rosario Butterfly Reserve to see the monarch butterflies. Migrating monarchs who spend the summer east of the Rockies overwinter in Oyamel forests in Central Mexico.
Safety
The butterfly reserves are all located near the border of the states of Michoacán and Mexico. The State Department recommends not traveling to Michoacán at all. A friend from Michoacán recommended El Rosario and the neighboring town of Angangueo as relatively safe places to go/stay, with the proviso that we should not drive anywhere in Mexico at night. I probably wouldn’t go any further into Michoacán than we did, but at no time did I feel unsafe. Well, I felt a little unsafe from aggressive guard dogs a couple of times, but I never felt unsafe from humans during any part of the trip.
El Rosario Logistics: Parking, Entrance Fee, Guides
We parked at the lower parking lot, which sends you through about a half mile uphill of souvenir shops before you get to the actual entrance. Pro tip: park at the upper parking lot. After we paid our El Rosario entrance fee (100 pesos per person), a guide, Martin, accompanied us up. The guides are mandatory and are “free,” but we tipped ours about 200 pesos.
Seeing the Monarch Butterflies
We walked faster than I would have liked for acclimatization because we didn’t get there until 4pm and we only had an hour and a half until the reserve closed. Martin was pretty knowledgeable about the plants and the butterflies.
The butterflies were a little underwhelming. It was cool and damp when we were there, which means they mostly huddle together for warmth on the trees. I would not have known that the trees were covered in butterflies unless Martin pointed them out. There were a few crawling around on the ground, likely dying from cold, and quite a few dead ones on the ground. A local held a butterfly on her hand while her guide watched, even though this was against the posted rules she was right next to. Apparently the reserve is better to visit when it’s sunny and warm (particularly in January and February), when the butterflies fly around more.
Xocotitlán- closed on Mondays?
We had planned to hike up Jocotitlán, aka Xocotitlán, aka Xocoteptl the following day, a Monday. We hiked uphill from the village of Jocotitlán, where we were staying, accompanied by a group of street dogs that antagonized all the dogs in yards that we passed. After hiking about 1,000 feet up, we reached the park entrance, where there was a chain across and an official-looking man who told us it was closed that day. He couldn’t give a reason, just that an order came from above. It was unclear whether it was closed all Mondays or just this one.
Cerro Catedral: Snowpeople on Parade
To get some acclimatization, we drove over to Cerro Catedral in the Parque Nacional Cumbres Sierra Nevada and walked around a bit. This was just a road that we spotted in Gaia that could get us to similar elevation as Jocotitlán (around 12,000 feet). Turns out that this is a location for a lot of Mexicans to drive up, collect tiny amounts of snow, and drive down with snow people on the hoods of their cars. So it was a cultural experience in addition to an acclimatizing one. I learned later that there is a hike up one side.
Nevado de Toluca
4.63 miles, 1,588 feet of gain, max elevation of 15,167 feet (note: also closed on Mondays).
Nevado de Toluca is a really pretty mountain. The road gets you to about 13,700, so it’s a short hike to the short side of the crater, where you can see two lakes, the lakes of the sun and the moon. We planned to do a circuit around the rim of the crater, which would have hit all the high points. We started around the north side of the crater rim, heading towards the second-highest peak, Pico del Aguila.
It’s been a surprisingly wet dry season, and there’s a lot of snow. We only had hiking boots and microspikes (plus ice axes) for this “hike,” so we weren’t really equipped for very much snow. We carefully climbed up to the Pico del Aguila, which required quite a bit of snow traversing, but determined we couldn’t continue the circuit, particularly since weather was coming in.
After taking summit selfies at Pico del Aguila, we returned to the start of the rocky section and found a well-used path down a scree slope. It offered good plunge stepping. Once we reached the lake it started to rain. We hiked out southwesterly around the Lake of the Sun and then back to our car.
Congratulations!