Just Another Notch?

Skyler Stark-Ragsdale - 03/2022

A mountaineering trip to Pico de Orizaba, Mexico with Nick Penzel, Baker Casagrande, and James Broyles.

Click. Click. Click.  

Crampon against rock. Breath steaming in front of face. 

Again. Click. Again. Pant. Again. Your stubborn quad muscle contracts just enough to raise an unconscious foot. 

Click. Pant.

Use your poles. Be efficient. Save your energy. Don’t look up toward the night sky, with its small pricks of starlight staring down at you, taunting you, reminding you of your insignificance and gravitational tie to the unforgiving ground below your feet. Don’t look up at the paper white, tragically distant mass of ice, rock and snow – at the summit. 

Your two companions trudge in front of you, moving with incremental speed up the frozen rutt of prints. You look down at your own feet, noticing the way the smooth metal of your crampons digs into the frost, focusing on planting your ice axe next to your uphill leg with every step.

Against your best judgment, you glance up. You can’t resist. And there it remains,“el cumbre,” the summit, looming against the sapphire sky, its snowy midst beginning to admit the faintest hue of color from the Eastern horizon. Despite the burden of each footfall, the cratored rim draws closer by only the slightest margin.

The name has been in your mind for years now, lurking dormant in the shadows, taunting on occasion. And only now, after 1,830 miles and 33 hours crammed in your rusted Subaru with your three companions, Nick, Baker and James, have you successfully made the journey from Denver to the third highest peak in North America – Pico de Orizaba. 

For what, though?

The end goal, to climb and ski this volcanic giant – one of the last remaining snowfields in Mexico – remains loosely in your mind. But the lines of the goal are faded, muddled by thin air and thousands of vertical feet. You know you once imagined yourself atop the crater, skis underfoot, arms around your friends and a smile stretched across your face. You imagined a sense of completion, of fulfillment, at what you had accomplished – an added feeling of self-worth as you gazed across the lengthy plains below the mountain, blue under the blanketing atmosphere. 

Your companions continue up. You sense the heaviness in their movements and dread the weight that will accompany your own. 

You stay stationary. You no longer have strong feelings about the summit. You admire the twinkling line of headlamps far above you, a string of dots etching a path in the darkness that you will presumably follow. But you don’t. At least not yet. In your weakened state, the peak does not hold the same importance it once did. Should you stand far above your own head, where the hollow wind rips strings of snow from the crest like ripples of turbulence in an otherwise tranquil body of star-spangled water, you will not feel victorious. You will not be a triumphant man with another notch in his belt, as you once anticipated. 

The summit is not your end goal. Not anymore. You don’t know if the relentlessness of this mountain has defeated you, or if you now stand here enlightened, seperate from the fever that has driven you up so many previous peaks, your eyes open to the sparkling snow as it reflects the sun’s emerging brow. 

You take a sharp breath in. Has the mountain gifted an insight or shattered an aspiration? You’re not sure. But amidst your unhinged psyche, you know you’ve gained some renewed sense of humility. 

You take another step.