Mt Whitney Zone Forums Trip Reports Whitney to Orizaba

Whitney in August, Orizaba last week. if you did not see it on the other board, here is the Orizaba TR. Scroll down to 11/13 post.

2012 Mexican Volcanoes
Harvey Lankford

http://www.whitneyportalstore.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=93287#Post93287

Just for fun, I scanned some of my slides from our 1980 climb, so you can see how it was 32 years ago. With almost 300 slides to work with, I selected 34.

Mexican Trilogy

We were fortunate to go there when Popocatepetl was relatively quiet; it was closed to climbing in 1994, after spewing gas and ash. Here is the writeup.

Really nice shots looking inside the craters. It is amusing to recognize some of the pictures/angles from the Mexico group trips over the last couple of years.




PS even more amusing is to look at the 30+ year old gear!

Bee, go back and look at Bobs #22 that I think is looking back down onto the the snow covered Labyrinth. My picture below is from 1997 as we looked up into and approaching the Labyrinth. Our trip was in Jan, Bobs' look to be winter as well, but the depth of the snow - no, actual hard ice-ax practice area glacier in that area - has disappeared from my 1997 to my 2012 trip. For whatever reason...manmade or natural cycle... there is warming evident.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us]1997 Labyrinth [/url]



1980




2012

I took the liberty of adding Bob R's picture to your post, so that we can easily compare the same location decades later. Interesting!. If you see other pictures that you recognize as the same, let me know, and we can post them together.

oops ,shoulda posted the 2012 picture, too.

Not quite as broad an image as the others...this one is taken standing right at the headwall of the Labyrinth that only has spots of ice and snow. Where I was standing taking this picture in 2012 was dry rock whereas in Bob's and my own previous pictures, it was under many feet of white.



Second picture from 2012 is pretty much same spot looking downhill - guy is Emelio. Has a carved-out, former glacier appearance there doesn't it?

It would be nice if you could talk to someone who has been climbing the volucanoes for a long time and see if the change has been gradual & permanent.