Cerro de la Silla (Saddle hill)

For the last year or two Benny and I have talked about going to Monterrey to climb Cerro de la Silla. This past weekend it happened. Sunday we climbed to the top. Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Hill) rises above Monterrey and has a distinctive saddle shape - there are two peaks. We climbed Pico de las Antenas and the Next time we will climb Pico Norte. We arrived at the park at 6am and there was already a bunch of people there starting up the trail - to say the least we were perplexed - all these people are going to the top? Tough wrapping our brains around that one.

The red arrow points to where we climbed - next time we go to the other peak. The trail was tough - wide and much of it had rough concrete surface while the rest was rocky technical trail (unrunnable) although given the elevation gain it was all unrunnable. Still the question was nagging us - where were these people headed?

We stopped for a breather - the views were often obstructed by the trees - by this point the noise of the city had been left behind.

So we get to the halfway point and there was this huge concrete platform with an awesome view of the city - clearly this was the destination, but why was this here - and then it clicked. June 2nd 1961 was the opening day of the teleferico (cable car) that went up the mountain - it was also the last day as a tragic accident took the lives of 5 people including the engineer. I don't know what actually happened but I think it was a fatal design error. We were at the destination end of the cable car ride and this was the observation deck. Obviously this is a popular Sunday hike destination.

There were very few people past this point - but it was tough. We ended up with 1,200 m of elevation gain (3,937 ft). At the top the antenas were closed off but we could get around part of it - until the sheer cliff.