ナショナルジオグラフィックのインスタグラム(natgeo) - 4月23日 07時00分

Photo by @erintrieb I Happy Earth Day! On a recent climbing expedition in Mexico, the group I was photographing successfully summited the peaks of La Malinche (14,640 ft, or 4,460 m) and Iztaccíhuatl (17,343 ft, or 5,230 m). They planned to finish the trip climbing Pico de Orizaba (18,620 ft, or 5,675 m), the highest peak in Mexico and third highest in North America. We were well on our way to the top until one team member developed acute mountain sickness just 1,800 feet (550 m) shy of the summit, and we had to turn back. Downtrodden, I reluctantly descended and made the seven-hour commute back to Mexico City. But when I arrived at the capital, I impulsively turned around and drove all the way back to the base of Orizaba to give the summit another shot, this time alone and on just a few hours of sleep. There was an itch that needed to be scratched.

I find mountain climbing to be an exhilarating yet strange and elusive pastime. The legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner captured my sentiments perfectly when he said, “Mountain climbing is no fun. It is a place where you learn to cope with pain because it’s painful. When the pain is forcing you to go down, you keep going up.”

When I'm walking above the clouds in almost perfect silence, apart from the sound of my heart beating and the crunch of hardened snow beneath my feet, a mental game ensues. I am forced to face my most primal, internal fears fueled by self-doubt—a constant battle and dance of “I can’t do this, it’s too hard, I want to quit” versus “I can do this, keep going, just one more step.” Ultimately, I persuade myself to put one foot in front of the other, slowly and patiently, committed to keep moving forward with every raspy gasp for air. Some might call it a metaphor for life.

Pictured here: a view of active strata volcano Popocatépetl pluming puffs of ash at dawn, photographed at 16,500 feet (5,000 m) from the slopes of Iztaccíhuatl. For more stories on mountains around the world, follow @erintrieb.

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