"You buy," said the bull.

"No entiendo (I don't understand)," I replied

"Give us money," said bleached hair.

"The Aurora mercado has it, you can have the yogurt."

They made no move to accept the bag held out to them so I pushed my way through the circle and didn't look back, figuring that might indicate a challenge. They didn't move, but I kept walking. At that moment I wished more than anything to be safe in the arms of the mountain, the chill of her icy breath on my face. Iztaccihuatl (Ixta), where I would be in two days, was nearly three miles above the city and its thieves.

Ixta and her lover Popocatepetl (Popo) rest some 50 miles south of the sprawl of Mexico City. La Ciudad (Mexico City) sits a mile above sea level but Ixta and Popo rise above its tallest buildings by some 12,000 feet. I had hoped to be standing on El Pecho, the summit and breast of the sleeping Ixta, by noon. In the pre-dawn dark illuminated by the headlights of my father-in-law Lazaro's car, I shouldered my 30-pound pack, complete with ice axe, plastic boots, crampons, food, water, Diamox (in case of altitude sickness) and warm clothes in the pre-dawn dark. I had to walk an extra two miles to La Jolla, the beginning of the route, as the road got too rough for the Dodge Spirit.

The last words I heard that morning were Lazaro's thickly accented demand. "You be careful!"

The darkness kept my thoughts anchored to distant realities. The peak, still hidden, would not pull my attention for several hours until I hit the rock and snow bands. According to legend, Ixta was an Aztec princess whose father forbade marriage to her lover Popocatepetl, who was of the lower, warrior class. Word was sent to Ixta that he had died in battle. Hearing this, she died of grief. Popo, very much alive, returned to his love and carried her to the mountains and laid her there to rest for eternity. He stayed by her side and became the active volcano that today threatens some 25 million (including all the inhabitants of La Ciudad) who continue to make their homes at his feet. Even today, many view him as protector, and refuse to leave even when his coughing gets aggravated, which happens with an expected regularity, like the waxing of the moon.

The day before my ascent I drove up from Amecameca with my wife and her family to Paso de Cortez. This year like the last five there was very little snow, and despite it being mid-winter, it was clear and 75 degrees. At the climber's hut, we learned from the snow-goggled caretaker that Popo had been heating up considerably. We were at 12,000 feet, yet he said when it storms, the snow doesn't stick. I asked him if he was scared.

"I can't live shaking in my boots my whole life," he said, attempting his most convincing laugh. He told us the slopes of Popo and its summit had been off limits to climbers and everyone else for several years now, rendering the once bustling resort of Tlamacas, just a couple miles up the road, a ghost town. "The government believes it is too dangerous to be near the mountain," he said. A month before I arrived, a film crew had illegally hiked the shoulder of Popo to get footage for a documentary on volcanoes. As if in response, Popo coughed out projectiles that killed a cameraman.

Hernando Cortez had his experience with Popo half a millennium before. An amazing tactician, Cortez launched his surprise attack on the Aztecs by heading through the saddle between Popo and Ixta that now bears his name. The Aztecs would not have suspected anyone would come through the mountains, especially not an army that had never been through the treacherous pass. Cortez was able to slip through to the back door of the Aztec Empire before any real alarm could be raised. On his way he stopped at the shoulder of Popo, who was angrily coughing out smoke and pyroclastics. He sent some of his troops up for the first known summit bid. They negotiated the steep ice at the 18,000-foot high caldera and lowered a man in, via many ropes knotted together. He quickly loaded his pack with sulfur-rich stones, and amazingly was not overcome by the fumes. They pulled him out with a fresh supply of sulfur needed for their guns and artillery.

On the day I climbed Ixta, Popo again exhaled large clouds of threatening smoke, and from Los Pies (The Feet), I had an amazing view of the puffing cinder cone. To the distant north the countless red, yellow, and white twinkles of La Ciudad were being snuffed out one by one as the morning got brighter. The full moon was ready to slip away, and like an old man drawing his final breath, was poised at the edge of the world. I wasn't doing much better, breathing quite heavily, and not convinced I could summit with the 40 pounds on my back. I had started taking antibiotics a few days before, having contracted Montezuma's Revenge, and that was adding to my debilitating fatigue.

I had only hiked for a few hours and gained only a couple thousand feet in altitude, yet I had never been so tired. I would stop on the trail and pass out for one, two, five-minutes maybe. Then I would wobble a hundred feet further in my hypoxic (oxygen starved) state, fall over and sleep again. I had read too many stories of climbers not being able to wake up when this happened, so I decided to ditch my pack at Las Rodillas (The Knees), and attempt the summit without the extra 30 pounds. I was now just below the summit ridgeline and because there were just traces of snow that were easily avoided, I left everything but my camera off the side of the trail. At over 16,000 feet I was sure it would be safe. Leaving one's pack while making the final summit push is common practice in the mountaineering world.

Over the first knob of rock I passed the Buenos Aires hut and party of Mexican climbers that had spent the night there. I then chose to follow the steepest part of the ridgeline as it was free of snow. After an hour of picking the line of least resistance up the steep rock band, I made myself believe I was in sight of the breast, El Pecho, and decided that that would be enough. I sat next to a huge metal cross among the ghosts of Ixta. I had already passed a couple of dozen crosses coming up the steep rock band. At least I made it further than they had. I was so exhausted I couldn't enjoy the view, but noted that La Malinche, another tall volcano, was a mere pimple on the brown skin of high desert to the south. Further on, over a hundred miles distant, I spotted the tallest peak in Mexico Citlatepetl, or Pico de Orizaba, as the Spanish chose to call it. What pulled my attention first were the dazzling white arms, like that of an albino starfish; they were snowfields that stretched down the cinder cone.

Several hundred feet below my perch on the rocky ridge, I could make out the twisted wreckage of an airplane. Given the remnants of past disasters, I reasoned it was time to leave before I added myself to the number of casualties. My head felt as if my brain was a balloon being blown up inside my head. Everyone deteriorates at altitude and some more quickly than others. After a few steps I realized that I could no longer put total faith in my balance. It was time to get down, fast. Statistically, mountaineering is the most deadly sport on the planet (more than 300 a year will die in the mountains), and I really didn't want to add to these staggering figures. I delicately negotiated the 1,000 or so near-vertical feet of the loose rock band, found the trail, and felt a little more relaxed.

When I got to the spot where I had left my pack, it was gone, spirited away by the mountain goddess. I was shocked. The $500 in lost equipment seemed immaterial, as the terrain wouldn't get me, but without food, water, and the Diamox (prescription drugs for high altitude) I had brought for just such an emergency, I would eventually just shut down, having no strength to move. My head was now pounding intensely. I was altitude sick and wanted to get down, but now I was too pissed to think straight, and decided that the Buenos Aires hut I had passed just above, with the party of Mexican climbers, must be where my pack was. I stumbled back over the brown hydra-head of stone with fists clenched, and from the door of the hut I accused them all, in broken Spanish, of being thieves, and said I would die without my pack.

"Se robaron tu mochila? (They stole your pack?)" said the closest one, as he grabbed his archaic wooden ice axe and held it to his chest, blocking the door.

At that moment, having invited it, I was certain I would die.

"Vamos, vamos!" (Let's go!) he shouted.

He pointed at me, then to his eyes to make me understand we would look for the thieves.

Who can argue with a man wielding an ice axe? I only had a camera to defend myself so I let him do the directing. He led me away from the hut and down the mountain by a steeper trail I had not seen before, more to the west. I staggered on, trying to keep up, but kept out of range of his axe. He was obviously well acclimated, and although not tall he was barrel-chested and extremely fit, not even registering fatigue. I felt like a battered lizard being toyed with by a cocksure cat. I thought of Trotsky. With every faltering step I remembered a stupid mistake I had made that day. Any minute now he would have my jacket and camera too, and I would be neatly stuffed in one of the mountain's innumerable rock crevices. After a few minutes of lung-bursting sprinting down steep pumice sand, I figured out his diabolical plan: he would wait until I had an aneurysm and did myself in of "natural" causes. But as we reached the main trail again a scary thing happened. He suddenly stopped.

This is it, I thought. I wasn't falling over quickly enough for his liking. He let his arm open wide like a pitcher winding up for a fastball, only he had a sharp axe instead. I stood motionless, knowing exactly what the raccoon on the double-yellow thinks when eyes lock on the flood of halogen. Then there were voices, sweet voices from just behind him. Nervously looking back, he lowered the axe and told me he would run ahead to catch up with the thieves.

My saviors rounded the bend-a young Mexican couple from La Ciudad, doing a short day hike to Los Pies. After hearing my tale of woe they offered me some of their water and a chocolate bar. "You are very lucky," they insisted in English. I had to agree, yet I was still at 15,000 feet. I had to hurry down, so I said goodbye and headed down the trail. The pressure in my head was a big clue (poor decision-making being another) that I was suffering the early signs of HACE, High Altitude Cerebral Edema, and my head really would explode if I couldn't make it to a much lower elevation very soon. My dumb luck would be for naught.

Finally I made it back to La Jolla. Mr. Axe was there, grinning. He had met up with some more friends. They offered me a ride. I lied and told them I had a ride coming. They waited around some more to make sure, and thankfully the young city couple made it down to save me a second time. They drove me the six miles to the Paso De Cortez, where I would meet Lazaro.

Three days later, down at a survivable altitude in Ojo de Agua, I still had the throbbing headache and got winded just climbing the stairs of my father-in-law's house, but I felt safe from thieves. It helped that they had bars on the windows and broken glass cemented to the top of the high walls that boxed in the house. I stayed inside, recovering slowly, which gave me ample time to watch the Mexican news with my wife. The price of the tortilla was up, signifying imminent recession. The average wage in Mexico was hovering at just $4 a day. Popo was angry again.

It was time for me to go home.