The M-Peak

This is one of the iconic peaks among the mountains that surround the city of Monterrey. When I moved to the city as an undergrad student, I heard lots of stories about getting there. Basically, it was an advanced trail with a high demand for fitness and experience. I had the fitness, as I race as a cyclist, but it never attracted me so much to climb that mountain using my feet. Years passed, moved to different countries, and now I returned to Monterrey to live. Pandemia changed our lives, and I have been struggling to socialise and meet new people. So I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and decided to go hiking with a group. I checked the hiking calendar, and they had the famous M-Peak, I decided to do it and get up there.

I signed up, the meeting was at the entrance of the Chipinque Park at 5:30 am. It was dark, we were all parked in our different cars waiting at the gate of the Park to open. The guides arrived and gave us a consent letter to sign and gave us some helmets. I was not expecting it to be as technical to be in the need to wear a helmet. We signed our forms, and the Park let us in, we parked, and we started to meet each other. We followed the guides, and basically, we started to climb...

Everything was dark, and we were walking with lamps to light the trail. It was full of spiderwebs, and during the walk, we could see the reflection of eyes that belonged to creatures. We even received a charming welcome from a big tarantula. The trail continued, and we got divided into two groups so we could walk at different paces. They allowed me to walk with the fast paced group, but I was all the time distracted by the incredible sunrise views that we had.

The hike consisted of three phases. The first phase consisted of a simple walk going uphill until we reached a part that required wearing a helmet. We stopped to have drinks and to get all the members of the party together. However, the view! The sun was up, and the mountains... they were illuminated beautifully by the sun. We ate and enjoyed the view for a few minutes.

The next part was a mix between crawling and rock climbing. We were following a chain line, and definitely, the best thing we could do was not to look down. This part was short on distance and time, but really energy consuming. We climbed and reached the next reunion point. The view changed drastically, and if the previous view was surprising, the new view was speechless. We were already quite high up, and now we could actually see the mountains in the back.

From here on, the trail became a rock climbing route. It started with simple rocks that could be easily climbed to bigger boulders that required a bit of challenge. We arrived at the top of the hill, but there was a new challenge, we needed to climb down a section and cross a narrow cliff with a bit of wind. Lastly, you need to climb a made up ladder to get to the proper M-Peak.

Being at the peak was like a dream, I'm not sure if it was the tiredness kicking in, the altitude, or the impression of the view. But my mind could not work, I was taking photos, but I didn’t know what I wanted to get. I took some photos, but I could say that none of them actually made me happy. This is a good reason to repeat the hike.

Finally, the return back. I was ready to get down quickly, but then I realised that some of the people had a fear of heights. So the climbing down was slow, and I could say that in some bits this kind of fear can become contagious. However, once we arrived at the walking trail, we almost started to race downhill to the parking area. I enjoyed the hike, but I was quite tired of using my feet and decided to take a break before returning (Already a year had passed). But now that I'm writing this story, I want to get back and see if I can get better photos.

Going to an anime convention

Shirow

Marcos D. Moya