Orizaba: Festina Lente

Mountain: Pico de Orizaba

Altitude: 18,491ft | 5,636 m

Location: Veracruz, Mexico, 19.0304° N, 97.2681° W

If you are an average adult, your heart beats at about 60 beats per minute, which allows you to perform sedentary and relaxing tasks. At 90 beats per minute, you are probably on a brisk, sweat-inducing walk. Your heart rate can reach up to 120 beats per minute when you see your beloved, thanks to the adrenaline rush. At around 170 beats per minute, your heart is beating heavily, you are short of breath and you are probably experiencing something life-threatening. It is 5 am in the morning, I am climbing in crampons on the glacier of Pico de Orizaba glacier, and my heart rate is 62 beats per minute.

The glamour of adventure sports has planted deep in us the image of sweaty, out-of-breath athletes gloriously rushing toward "something". Yet, some of the best climbers who I had the fortune to climb with, climb "lazy". Their feet move languidly, barely skimming the ground, pausing only to cut steps with a precision that seems almost casual. It is as if they are strolling towards a well-earned nap after a grueling day of labor, rather than scaling a mountain peak. Their movements are not haphazard, but rather, they are strategic, almost miserly, in their use of energy. Their movements are slothful, yet not sloppy. They are not in a rush. So upon this climb, I have decided to slow down. My rules: my heart rate must remain under 85 beats per minute, I will breathe only through my nose, and I will conserve my body's resources, allowing only the minimal amount of blood to pump through my veins.

Pico de Orizaba is one of the most frequently painted volcanoes, along with Ixta and Popo. It is said to be the first thing one sees when arriving in Mexico from the Atlantic Ocean. Although I have not made the journey by sea, I can imagine its grandeur and significance. We approach it from the land, where the surrounding forests and other volcanoes are rarely mentioned or painted, yet they are magical. It feels exclusive to know that only those who choose to climb Pico can see these hidden wonders. With little in our stomachs but coffee and a torta from the night before, we begin our ascent of Orizaba. The night is windless, the stars are sparkly, and the darkness is inviting. We quietly enter the slopes of the volcano, feeling the curious discomfort of warming up muscles and listening to the sound of rocks under our footsteps. In spite of the excitement, my pulse is 62 beats per minute.

How often do we truly remain alone with ourselves? The fast pace of modern life forces our minds to constantly optimize schedules, make decisions, and come up with new desires. Not long ago, waiting for a bus or train would force us to reflect, but smartphones have taken away these moments of boredom and replaced them with perpetual on-demand entertainment. For me, climbing mountains is the time to meet myself. As my body endures the hardships of the climb, a curious discomfort forces my mind into a meditative state of reflective synthesis. In the darkness, far from civilization's comforts, I confront the challenge of keeping warm by clenching my fists and toes. It is in these moments of struggle that I can truly see what is important. My guide Antonio's lack of English and my insufficient Spanish prevent us from having lengthy philosophical discussions. And so we proceed in silence at a monotonous pace in the dark. I check my pulse - 65 beats per minute.

As we ascend, a couple of groups hastily pass us around 3 am, eager to reach the summit. I resist the urge to rush, reminding myself of the ancient axiom, "Festina lente," or make haste slowly. I strive to find the balance between urgency and patience, moving with purpose at a deliberate and measured pace. This steady tempo allows me to appreciate the majesty that surrounds me, and I am filled with wonder at the serene beauty of the glacier beneath my feet. In just a few hours, we will pass those who rushed ahead, looking tired and out of breath. Meanwhile, we cut stable steps into the ice, our movements absorbed and focused. I check my pulse - 61 beats per minute. At this heart rate, I don't even have meetings at the office.

We found ourselves among the first ones to descend the mountain, a few hours ahead of the anticipated average. Yet, the time we took held little significance. Was it truly important whether I conquered the peak in 10 hours or 11? On Pico de Orizaba, I realized that the climb was not a race to the summit, but a journey of exploration and discovery. Filled with moments of quiet contemplation, I savored every step, despite the hardships. This journey was like a metaphor for life itself, an adventure that must be taken slow and steady, yet it is grand and adventurous in spite of speed. For true delights are not found in the destination but in the journey itself.

Something Hidden. Go and Find It.

Mountain: Mont Blanc

Altitude: 15,777ft | 4,807 m

Location: French Alps, France, 45.8326° N, 6.8652° E

When did we stop learning poetry by heart? Learning poems and reading them was the epitome of erudition. We read poems during gatherings and we impressed our dates with them. It seems today poetry got marginalized to a niche isle of a bookstore or mandatory recital of "classics" at school. Yet studies on poetry confirmed that reading poems by heart not only can help make an impression, boost memory and maybe also control the mind. At least that is how I have felt on Mont Blanc while doing a rock-and-snow scramble from Tête Rousse hut to the Goûter and reciting to myself Radiard's Kipling famous poem "If".

Mont Blanc is a very popular climbing destination. Every year climbers from around the world flock to the mountain in the hopes of the summit. They have been doing so for the past 200 years. The first documented ascent was in 1786 by local mountaineers Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel Paccard who did it for a cash prize (the value of the prize varies by various accounts). During the next two centuries, Mont Blanc was ascended by a variety of climbers: female daredevils Henriette d’Angeville and Isabell Straton climbed in long gowns, and daring winter soloists Walter Bonatti and Réné Desmaison opened more daring routes. Mont Blanc became such a household name that even fancy stationery proudly carries its name signaling unobtainable perfection. It was probably the popularity of the mountain that made me underestimate it so much since I and my climbing partner arrogantly started the ascend without acclimatization the next day after landing in Europe from New York with a huge jet lag.

The most popular route from the charming village of Chamonix takes an average of 2 days. While the first leg of the journey to the first hut is nothing more than a hike on altitude, the subsequent parts present various sections of rocky, icy, and snowy terrains, some with the risk of rock fall and crevices. One such section is the Grand Couloir. Located not far from Tête Rousse hut, the gully is only 100 meters wide and takes only a couple of minutes to cross. However, during the crossing one becomes a pin in a bowling alley, due to the section's notorious unexpected rock falls. Past the Grand Colour, the route shoots up into a steep scramble of mixed rock and ice. Some sections have bolted cable lines to help safeguard the steeper section, which serves more as an emotional ballast against the airy exposed drops. As we traversed this section twice - once on ascend and another on the descent, the only thing that distracted me from strenuous scrambling is poetry. And so during the very challenging part of the scramble, at 5 am at the altitude of being exposed to spacious views of the below valley, I would recite:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

Past the vertical scrambles lie glacier valleys with long gradual inclines. Ascend of these sections, like a lot of mountain climbing, is monotonous activity. People dread monotony. To counteract monotony, humans invented entertainment valued in billions(as I write this, just in the US consumer spending is estimated at $37Bilions). But the sustained repetition of monotonous activities can be very meditative. Repetitious physical actions, like running and cycling, free our minds from decision-making letting them process and recover from prior stimulations. The key to monotonous mountain ascends to "find the rhythm" - a balance between letting your mind dwindle from suffering yet being alert enough to observe the environment cautiously. I've heard someone call it "mediatic alpinism". And as we passed the glaciated valleys, poem reciting made my monotonous crampon work rhythmically poetic:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

A couple of hours from the summit we got caught up in the snowstorm. The clouds and fog slowly enveloped us and slowly swallowed the view of the summit towards which we were climbing. The only visible thing was the silhouette of our guide and the rope in between us, everything else was white. There were no views, nor the never-ending horizon of the Alps. We did not feel on top of the world - just displaced the whole-out. Since everything was white, our imagination filled the void with imagined dangerous crevasses and bone-chilling drops of the ridges. We just cautiously worked our crampons in the snow. When we descended to Refuge du Gouter at 3835m and clouds subsided revealing the below green valley, I looked back in the fog and recited:

“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges

Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”