{"id":5036,"date":"2013-03-22T15:28:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T21:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5036"},"modified":"2013-03-22T15:28:04","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T21:28:04","slug":"a-photographic-journey-up-pico-de-orizaba-mexico%e2%80%99s-tallest-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5036","title":{"rendered":"A Photographic Journey Up Pico de Orizaba, Mexico\u2019s Tallest Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2013\/03\/a-photographic-journey-up-pico-de-orizaba-mexicos-tallest-mountain\/\">Jeffrey Marlow<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>The alarm clock goes off at 1:45 a.m., and no one\u2019s particularly happy about it.  Getting and staying warm in our tent at Orizaba\u2019s 14,000-foot base camp wasn\u2019t easy, and now it\u2019s time to venture into the cold.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m in southern Mexico, on the flanks of the continent\u2019s third tallest mountain, preparing for a summit attempt with fellow climbers Patrick Sanan, Joel Scheingross, and Josh Zahl.  We had left the oxygen-dense altitudes of southern California just two days earlier, and I was skeptical of my body\u2019s ability to handle such a quick displacement to Orizaba\u2019s 18,500-foot summit.  But the sky was clear and everyone was feeling good: there was no time to waste.<\/p>\n<p>Climbing ice-capped mountains in the middle of the night makes practical sense \u2013 getting up, down, and off the glacier before the afternoon sun loosens rocks and renders the slope a slippery waterslide is a good idea \u2013 but it also has psychological allure.  If you can\u2019t see the peak looming over you, you\u2019re forced to focus on each step, unburdened by the hours of climbing to come.  And it\u2019s a lot easier to delude yourself into thinking you\u2019re almost there.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeffrey Marlow: The alarm clock goes off at 1:45 a.m., and no one\u2019s particularly happy about it. Getting and staying warm in our tent at Orizaba\u2019s 14,000-foot base camp wasn\u2019t easy, and now it\u2019s time to venture into the cold. I\u2019m in southern Mexico, on the flanks of the continent\u2019s third tallest mountain, preparing for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}