Weather & Conditions Pico de Orizaba / Citlaltépetl 2016-17

[antivoyage]

Diariocambio.com.mx-AustrianDavid.jpg (85.9 KiB) Viewed 2621 times

Information is trickling in surrounding the rescue of a Austrian climber 'David' who is said to have fallen from the base of the Jamapa glacier (5,100 m) on the North face of Citlaltépetl while taking a selfie. His condition is thought to be critical because of the blows he suffered on his face.

Parsing together the reports, he was in a party of three climbers that chose to climb without a guide. Officials are describing as them as 'inexperienced' which is sadly overused when describing climbers that come to need assistance on the mountain. A guide and climbers from another party (apparently Roberto 'el Oso' Flores of Orizaba Mountain Guides of Zoapan, Puebla) coincidentally on the mountain performed the rescue, lowering David to the huts at Piedra Grande by foot where they then drove him to the hospital in Ciudad Serdan.

Of note, a pop radio station in Ciudad Serdan, Puebla, makes a well worn complaint that the climbers failed to 'register with the authorities', but this time they elaborate by mentioning a wristband in order to pass a guard station. The last time I was on the mountain in 2015, the guard station was partially finished and wholly unoccupied. When I've used guide services in the past, no such wristbands existed, though my driver mentioned this was something the government was trying to implement. It will be interesting to see how long they leave the mountain a free-for-all.

Photo via Diario Cambio

Sources
https://www.facebook.com/kebuenapuebla9 ... 4716967043
http://www.diariocambio.com.mx/2016/reg ... tlaltepetl

[Shooter]

All from taking a selfie. Pretty unfortunate.

[antivoyage]

Unfortunately, taking a picture of yourself is an all too common cause of injury in general. Conde Nast Traveler reports it's more dangerous than shark attacks...
http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2015- ... -travelers

I'm reserving judgement until more details come in. The local media has a unique way of blaming the victim which is an interesting cultural difference. I've definitely used my camera on the mountain. It will be an interesting to see if this turns out to be finger wagging by officialdom or the climber was actually doing something stupid.

[antivoyage]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: climbing the Pico de Orizaba in the summer's relative heat is not the safest idea.

We made it through the end of the popular climbing season in April with some injuries and close calls, but no fatalities. That hasn't held out. I've published what I believe are the first statictics on when and how people are injured on Citlaltepetl and the earlier example in this thread and an accident that occured this week on July 24 illustrate the conclusions I drew from my research.

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1: Climbing in summer is substantially riskier based on the last five years of data. Just as you'd avoid descending a couloir in noon-day heat, climbing a steep glacier in summer is a bad call.

2: Head injuries caused by falls are the commonest cause of death on the mountain. This is a theme I discussed in the guidebook at length. To summarize, there have been no deaths from rockfall in the last five years (though this remains a real risk). Second to a properly teathered ice axe to arrest a fall, a helmet is crucial and out-of-the box thinkers may look to other kinds of helmets such as a serious downhill mountain biking helmet designed for impact at speed to protect against a very typical cause of death on the mountain: a long slide into a rocky outcrop.

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That's just what happened to José Salomón Cornelio, a local resident of the mountain this last week who was said to be inexperienced and ill-equiped. During a descent down the south face the mountain in a party of seven friends he leapt to grab his 13 year old son who slipped at approximately 5,100 m. They slid and fell 500 m where the father struck his head on a rock. The minor son, Natanael, did survive with serious abrasions to his left shoulder from the fall and was lowered to the huts a local rescue crew Grupo Delta on a back board and taken to the hospital in Ciudad Serdán.

~

A link to one of the more detailed articles .

Here's a TV news announcement with a graphic photograph underscoring the importance of helmets:

[nyker]

To add another incident on Orizaba, a climber fell while I was there on Dec 29. The climber was a male in his 40s/50s, climbing alone and apparently slipped just above the Labyrinth/base of glacier late morning/midday. Upon learning of this, a guide who was there, volunteered to climb up from the Hut to get him and ultimately had to short rope the person down all the way from the base of the glacier. The climber had injured his knee/leg and was unable to walk on his own. He was able to get down safely, after being rescued and was then driven to town. I don't know any other details about the situation.