Sofia Bautista is a hiker from Guadalajara adopted by Baja California who started to climb mountains as a way to relax and get close to nature. When she was 19 years old, she found out what it was to have physical and spiritual strength which, to her, are essential elements to “get to the top.”

Sofia has the privilege of being the only person to have climbed ”Devil’s Peak” (Picacho del Diablo) 101 times. One of these times she was pregnant, managing to climb it in a 24-hour period, although she recommends not doing this in this amount of time due to how tiring it is.

”Picacho del Diablo” (Devil’s Peak) is Baja California’s highest mountain, and the fifth highest nationwide. The original name of this mountain was ”Picacho La Providencia” (Providence’s Peak), although it would be renamed afterwards for the name it was known for in the region.

This mountain is considered one of the most difficult mountains to climb in the hiking world. Its difficulty is compared to Pico de Orizaba (Orizaba’s Peak), the highest mountain in our country and the third highest in North America.

Regarding her experience, Sofia told us: “Once you start walking up the trail and get to the top of the mountain, the mountain gets inside of you. The way that it calls to you, it attracts you, the experience that you get from your hiking days, you want to repeat it.”

Though the path is the same, you are different. This begins to give you growth.

She thinks that preparation of 3 months is necessary to climb the Peak, since one needs to master a series of basic hiking disciplines. For this, Sofia has the “4 SIMAS”, an event where they train future hikers to climb the Devil’s Peak in 3 to 6 months.