Ruta Vertigo: The most terrifying--and exhilarating--five hours of my life...

 

Two lessons I learned in Monterrey when I found my chicken-shit self at the top of a steep mountain about to zip line across a huge chasm in the middle of the night while terrified for my life: (a) be careful what you say yes to, and (b) be critical of your sources. 

The moment of reckoning.

So how the hell did I end up here? That is the exact question I, too, was wondering before I went screaming into the dark.

Cue: Vertigo, by U2.

Here's how it all went down. 

We were getting ready to head to the US and chose our last Mexican stop at the La Huasteca National Park just outside of Monterrey. Driving into the park was a dramatic experience--it was like we were traveling through the folds of a giant origami-ed earth. The mountain peaks towered to the sky in thin slabs that rose near perpendicular to the earth. You got vertigo just looking up.

A typical view in the ecosphere

Vanny, for contrast.

Hiking the nearby Guitarras Canyon (so-named because the mountains rise like guitar strings here).

Close up of the mountains.

Went looking for the petroglyphs that were supposed to be here, but never found them.

We stayed in the gated backyard of a gallery owner's mountain property, the hills rising behind us. The Primitivohotel was under construction, a thousand small projects underway, and served as a sometimes-DJ-party-place as well as a casual drop-in for the owner's friends from the city. 

These locals often stopped by, beer in hand, weed ready to roll, to hang out for a few hours before heading back to the city. Sometimes they were "pre-loading" for a party, even applying a most beautiful rose "perfume", as one near-silent, he-man-sized Mexican man explained to me when I said I smelled flowers. Other times, they were bracing themselves to go to the hospital where their mother was recovering from an operation, or simply to head back to the city.

 

Our van at Primitivo

Our terrifying guard dog:)

Chatting on the half-finished stage, the mountains we will climb behind us.

Nighttime fire

Always, though, our visitors were friendly, generous and hilarious--it was a great way to meet people. They were also very experienced climbers, so when they mentioned doing the via ferrata of the mountain behind us, I said that I'd done one once in Switzerland and it had damn near killed me. They assured me that no, this one was easy. Way easy. And too good to miss.

The peaks hosting the via ferrata.

Then they offered to hook us up with their guide. He'd do it for cheap, they said. A favour, you know.

I have no idea why it never occurred to me to google for more information, or to question what an "easy" scale meant for people who had grown up and climbed these mountains since they were children vs me, who has lived on one of the flattest cities in the world for most of my life. But I didn't. 

It wasn't until afterwards that I even knew the name of the route, "the Vertigo Route", and that it is considered the "most extreme" via ferrata in Mexico.  (When our guide kept repeating "extremo" on our walk up towards the climb, I thought was just some Spanish expression, like "cool" or something. My mistake.)

Our date and hour of departure (a 4:00 that turned into 6:00 pm) was set. And it was only as we were chatting, waiting upon our guides' arrival, that a newly arrived drop-in visitor to Primitivo mentioned: "Well, there is this crazy part about a ladder...." 

That got me a bit nervous, I will admit. 

But within minutes, our guides arrived and we slowly made our way to the old doctor's house, where we would begin our climb up the first peak. We'd been told the guide spoke English, but ... turns out that wasn't quite true. I would have to rely on my (clearly overconfident) Spanish comprehension to scale the biggest mountainside I had ever seen in my life. 

The communal dog house in the village.

Standing at "the doctor's house", an abandoned clinic built into the hillside in the style of the evil villain's Piz Gloria lair in James Bond's In Her Majesty's Secret Service.

First, it was a good twenty-minute slippy scramble up the 45+-degree slope to the base of the cliffs where the via ferrata begins. I was so busy looking at my feet on the climb up that I didn't realize we were at the location until we stopped and I looked up. 

And saw THIS.

The climb begins...

The first three hours were scaling up the cliff in the descending dusk, grabbing onto steel rebar drilled into the mountain, inching our way around the rock face, and doing all sorts of crazy shit that I can barely remember.

On the slope, pausing on a rare ledge.

Up the steel bars.

Peyote - our guide pointed it out on our way upwards. God knows how they harvest it from this cliff.

Crossing the canyon on a single wire. The guide is yelling at me to stop for a photo opp, and all I can say is "Nope." Then he tells me that in Spanish they have an expression that essentially translates to, "in the face of fear, never stop." Yeah, I echo that.

The infamous hanging ladder. You have to turn around and look out from the mountain into the valleys below to climb up, stopping every few feet to adjust your clamps. The ladder (or rather five separate ladders attached together with steel cables) is free hanging, so moves as you do. 

Once at the top, I felt bad about how terrified I had been. But then one of our guides (the main guide's wife) told me that she had climbed the via ferrata 11 times. And every time she got on the ladder she cried, she was so scared. I loved her.

We paused at the peak to share some granola bars and Gatorade, watching the stars come out over the mountain.

Then came the hard part: we had to get down. The good news? It wouldn't take as long as getting up. The bad news? We'd be descending into the dark. Specifically, we'd be riding a zip line 200 metres from one cliff top to another, landing on a 2 by 4 ledge, then rappelling down 200 metre drops in the pitch darkness to another 2 by 4 ledge (feeling for it in the dark), only to rappel ANOTHER 200 metres, then navigate our way down (mostly on my ass, admittedly) that same 45-degree slope covered in scree.

Pushing off the rock face...

Screaming all the way.

Rappelling down into the blackness.

It was after 11 at night by the time we made it back to the campsite and shared a beer with our amazing guides. And it was hours more before we could fall asleep after all that adrenaline. But I can tell you, as scary as it was, I was riding high for days afterwards.

Then we were rocketing it home. Not much to report on the return. One memorable moment in Texas, was when we stayed under an ancient tree and the Mexican farm hand brought us fresh eggs and okra, just because we spoke Spanish. So if for no other reason than making a Mexican farmer happy, it pays to learn at least a sprinkling of Spanish if you're travelling these parts.

Parked under a tree at a regenerative cattle farm.

Our gift of eggs and okra

We've now been home for awhile and are figuring out our next move. Vanny has been repaired and is running steady, but the price of diesel has made long drives much more expensive. 

I'll spend the next week or so summarizing the best books we read/listened to on our travels, and those I'd recommend you look into if you ever plan on visiting central America. I meant to do it while traveling but there were too many adventures to tell you about! I should also have an update on our next travel plans by the next post as well, so stay tuned.

Take care, and thanks for reading. If you're curious about any links or places where we stayed and want to know more, please contact me directly at nerys@nerysparry.com. 

Happy fall!