An attempt on Mt. Aconcagua (6963m/22,841ft)

Hello from Mendoza, Argentina.

I forgot to mention one of the most exciting things for me on last month's trip to Antarctica. I spend a lot of time living out of my backpack, so whenever I have a chance to unpack and spread out, I take advantage of it. So, just like in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1996 and Pushkar, India in 1999, I took advantage of a ten day stop to unpack. I hung my shirts and jackets in the closet and put my books on the bookshelf.

Once back in Ushuaia, I visited the former prison and current museum. They had some really life like models of the former prisoners in there.

At the end of January, I flew to Buenos Aires and slept in the airport. The next morning, I flew up to Mendoza and spent a couple of days looking for the right tour to join next. While in Mendoza, I noticed that they have a very large number of cars from the 70's and earlier, including lots of Ford Falcons. Mendoza is also a very beautiful city. The climate is pretty dry and hot, so they have lined all of the streets with big 100 year old trees. Every street is well shaded and so are the numerous parks.

I decided to join the February 7th departure with Inka Expeditions. That was a few days away, so I packed up my gear and headed for the hills. I wanted to spend a few days at high altitude to get ready for my upcoming ascent of Aconcagua.

I took an evening bus to Potrorillos and camped in a pleasant desert campground. The bus passed through some dry horse country with lots of side roads. This was the first time on this trip that I took a local bus to get anyplace. Looking out the window at all the other places to go made me really miss my bicycle.

The next day, a nice Argentinian couple picked me up and drove me all the way up to the ski resort in Vallecitos. I spent a night at the bottom of the ski are and then hiked up to Piedra Grande to set up my base camp. For the next couple of days, I walked up to high altitude valleys and read my book.

On the 6th of February, I walked for hours to get out of the mountains and back to the main road. The second car to pass by picked me up and took me back to Potrorillos. One ride later I was in the outskirts of Mendoza and a short bus ride later I was back in the city.

On the 7th of February, I met some of the other members of my Aconcagua Expedition. Our guide was Gabrielle. He looks like he is from Pakistan, so naturally, his nickname is Paki. My roommate in the Mendoza hotel was Malik, from Turkmenistan. Malik was attempting to be the first from his country to climb Aconcagua. He is a really nice man, even if his English is a bit limited. He had a bunch of books about Turkmenistan and now I really want to visit his central Asian country. He is also well educated and gave us many impromptu lectures on Geography, History, Linguistics, Anthropology and Politics. He also taught me a little bit of Russian.

After the introductions, we went to rent the appropriate gear and then had a group dinner. It was strange for me to be part of a group without leading it. I found all of my little tour leader habits coming back to life, but not to the point where I tried to actually make any decisions.
On the 8th of February, we went to the Permit Office and bought our climbing permits. Then we headed up to the small ski resort of Penitentes (2600m/8500ft). I spent the afternoon wandering around near the hills.

On the 9th of February, we drove the last few miles to the Park Entrance. We started walking nice and slow. After an hour or two, we crossed the bridge that was built for Brad Pitt to use in the movie "Seven Years in Tibet". We had lunch there and then continued on to the Confluencia Camp (3300m/10,800ft). It was a short day, but my stomach was a bit sensitive, so I decided to relax that afternoon.

On the 10th, we hiked up towards Plaza Francia (4000m/13,000ft). At the highest point of our acclimatization hike, we stopped to eat lunch next to a glacier and looking up at the nearly 10,000 tall South Face of Aconcagua. In the afternoon, we returned to Confluencia.

On the 11th, we headed up to Plaza De Mulas Base Camp (4250m/14,000ft). It was a pretty long walk, both in distance and in time. We stopped for lunch near a big rock that is often used as a toilet. Just to add to the atmosphere, there was a dead mule nearby.

The 12th was a rest day, so we relaxed. We strolled over to the nearby glacier in the morning for a little bit of ice practice. We strapped on the crampons and wandered on the ice for an hour or so.

On the 13th, we brought some food and supplies up to Camp 1 - Camp Canada (4900m/16,000ft). We hiked up the side of the mountain for a few hours and had lunch at Camp 1 before returning to Base Camp.

The 14th was a rest day and I did just that. I took the twenty minute walk across the glacier over to the hotel. Their toilet had a seat.

Finally, on the 15th, it was time to start the four day assault on the summit. We went back up to Camp 1 and spent the night. At this point, my tentmate Malik finally stopped insisting that we keep the tent doors open for ventilation during the night. This is also about when the water bottles started freezing during the night.

On the 16th, we spent most of the afternoon hiking up to Camp 2 - Nido De Condores (5400m/17,700ft). From this camp we had a great view of the surrounding mountains and glaciers. I took a little afternoon stroll around the lake up there.

During the night, I managed to knock over my very poor quality thermos. I think much of the water was absorbed by Malik큦 sleeping bag. As the hours dragged on, the water froze and so did Malik. Oops. But, when it was time to take down the tent in the morning, cleaning out the water was easy. Malik just held the tent up and shook the ice out.

During the afternoon of the 17th, we moved up to Camp 3 - Camp Berlin (6000m/19,700ft). We had a little discussion about the next day and ate a big dinner of tortellinis.

At these heights it is pretty much impossible to sleep. Many even consider it impossible to survive for an extended period of time up there. We went to bed before sunset even though we knew we would not sleep. Instead, our job was to act as a heater for our batteries, cameras, water bottles and shoes. Our goal was to keep things from freezing during the night.

At three in the morning, our Guide Ariel delivered some hot water and it was breakfast time. I, like most of the others, was not at all hungry and did not eat. We pulled on all of our layers and started walking into the night.

The Doctor/Guide Miguel led us off at a furious pace, but I managed to keep up. With few breaks we made it up to the Independencia shelter (6500m/21,300ft). From there, it was time to head into traverse - a two hour long crossing of a very exposed ridge. One of the group members, a Swiss mountaineer, measured the temperature at -20 C or -5 F. With the strong wind chill, it was about -30 C or -20 F. That sounds pretty cold, but I made the mistake of not believing my guides and was wearing too much clothing. With all of the effort of walking, I was hot. I took off my hat and snot encrusted balaklava and wore only my gore-tex hood on my head. But, my ears got cold and it became difficult to move my jaw and nose.

The group stopped to rest after the traverse, but as soon as I caught up, they took off again. I quickly followed, but fell behind again when I stopped to poop into a black plastic bag and then put it into my pack. At those heights, people move really, really slowly. So, falling behind is a confusing thing. They never left my sight and in terms of distance were never all that far ahead of me. But, in terms of how long it took me to walk up to where they were, I was often 20 or 30 minutes behind.

They stopped to rest sometimes, but every time I caught up, they were off again. I wanted to stop and rest and go at my own pace, but Miguel had warned us that if we fell too far behind, he would just turn us around without reaching the top. He was concerned that we would use all of our energy to get to the top and then have nothing left for the big descent. So, I continued.

After one steep bit, I noticed that everyone seemed very happy. I realized that we were at the top. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was very happy and proud. But, mostly I was just glad for a chance to sit down. The summit of Aconcagua is at 6962 meters or 22,841 feet and the time was about 11:30 in the morning. The only mountains in the world higher are in Asia. I realized that in Asia it was the middle of winter and night time. This meant that there was probably nobody in the world higher than me for the few moments I spent on the highest bit of rock in the Americas.

Previously, the highest I had ever climbed was Mt. Kilimanjaro (5895m/19,335ft) in Tanzania, Africa. The highest I had ever been before without an airplane was 6400m or 21,000 ft. This was when I was skydiving, and we had used oxygen masks while in the airplane.

Out of our group of 11, six made it to the summit. One never left the tent in the morning, two turned back early in the morning from exhaustion, one stopped because of double vision and the final one made it pretty far before stopping because of cold and blurred vision. He had to be led by a rope back down. By the terms of Aconcagua, this is considered a very successful expedition.
At nearly 7000 meters, there is very little oxygen in the air. I found the combination of lack of oxygen, lack of sleep, lack of food and lack of water to be very tiring. I have since determined that some combination of those four elements are essential to my well being.

After a few minutes, Miguel said it was time to go and I requested five more minutes to eat and drink. I had a little to drink, but most of my water was frozen. I walked slowly back to Camp 3 with three other members of my group. The schedule called for us to spend another night up there freezing. But, we got back there at only 2:30 in the afternoon, so after a bit of a rest, we packed up and headed back down to Base Camp. It turned into a very long and difficult day. Doctor Johan, from South Africa, wore a heart monitor and computer. He figured that he burned 15,000 calories that day. That seemed like an incredible amount to me until I heard the guides talk about how many pounds they lose on each expedition.

After a comfortable dinner in the big tent, we all slept very well.

We spent the morning of the 19th relaxing and in the afternoon, Malik, Billy and I climbed up to the top of Bonete Peak (4950m/16,240ft). I carried a radio and when we reached the summit, I called base camp. We raised our arms up and they were able to see us and take a couple of pictures.

They ran back down the mountain to base camp and I strolled.

On the 20th of February, we looked at the mountains and glaciers around Base Camp one last time and then started the long and dusty 36km/22mile walk back to the park entrance. We stopped for lunch near the dead mule and then continued on through Confluencia camp to the start.

We made it back to Mendoza by mid-night and I quickly fell asleep.

On the 21st, we returned the rental equipment and I hung out with Malik. We went to the Inka Office and I was the official videographer for Malik as he presented the staff with some books and handicrafts from Turkmenistan. In the evening we went to an excellent all-you-can-eat buffet and I have barely been hungry since.

After a couple of days of hanging out, it was time to move on. This morning, I took a bus to the next province north - San Juan. I will spend a few weeks around here poking around in the hot desert. I had lunch today in the Syria-Lebanon Club. It was nice to get some non-Argentinian food for a change.

One of the group members, Johanas, has his own website with his own descriptions of the climb. The current page is in Danish, but he promises to make an English one when he returns home in May.