Cerro de la Silla

The Cerro de la Silla, the saddle hill, is the mountain on Monterrey's eastern skyline whose two rounded humps you see from almost everywhere in the city, and it is the symbol of the city and its people. It is part of the Sierra Madre Oriental and its slopes are shared by the municipalities of Guadalupe, Monterrey and Juárez. The highest point, Pico Norte, reaches about 1,820 meters, with a prominence of about 1,210 meters, and it is topped by a lightning rod; the neighboring Pico Antena carries a Televisa transmitter, and Pico Sur and the lower Loma de la Virgen complete the ridge. The rock is folded Cretaceous limestone and shale.

In April 1991 a presidential decree made the mountain a Monumento Natural, the first protected area in Mexico in that category, covering about 6,039 hectares. The area receives roughly 1,000 to 1,100 mm of rain a year. The mountain also has a sad footnote in the city's history. In the late 1950s and early 1960s a cable car was built to carry visitors up the hill, but on its inaugural trip on June 2, 1961, a car fell and several people died, among them its designer, the engineer Jesús Fernández. The project was abandoned, and its concrete platform still stands on the climb as a lookout.

Hiking the Cerro de la Silla is a Monterrey tradition. Four main routes lead toward the summits: Camino a la Antena, Paso de los Elefantes, Ruta MG and San Ángel. The most popular starts at the foot of the mountain by the Bosques de la Pastora neighborhood in Guadalupe; the old cable car structure is 2.6 km up, and the climb to the antenna is about 6 km each way, with a further stretch from Puerto del Oso to Pico Norte of around 30 minutes. A shorter walk reaches the La Virgen lookout in about 25 minutes. The trails are steep and exposed, the city's summers are very hot, so start early and carry plenty of water.