Trip Reports

Aconcagua 2016-17 Team 2 - report

Written by Leader Mara Larson, January 2017

Christmas & New Year's at Aconcagua 2016/2017

Excuse the small delay in publishing. Our celebration in Mendoza post-Aconcagua trip took a little while to recover from….it’s Tuesday now. Pretty much everyone’s accounted for.

Our holiday trip wrapped up this past weekend with a summit window that showed no mercy.

But this came only after an amazing couple weeks trekking and acclimatizing in near-perfect conditions here in Argentina. On arrival to base camp, Santa brought us a white Christmas morning which we celebrated with Father Christmas, Doug, leading us up the hill to camp 1 complete with elf hats. We sun-tanned on top of Bonete Peak picnicking there in still and glorious conditions, Clare introduced to the world of scrambling for the first time at 5000 meters. Col’s poker tournaments by the heater went late into the nights in the waning days of 2016. Bryan and James even planned a Bond-style escape mostly to restock our Malbec supply post-New Year (That was the point, right James?). It was a magic first two weeks with a team who knew that the best way to summit this mountain was by supporting each other, and tackling it together as a unified force. So that’s what we chose to do once we sat down together and looked at our summit prospects.

We headed up for our summit push with some strange cards in our hand: arguably the strongest team on the mountain but also a forecast indicating wind speeds ranging from 50 to 90 miles an hour. Not atypical for Aconcagua. But the wall of wind was predicted to stretch from New Years Day all the way through the 5th of January. Not ideal for a team with flights to the UK booked for the wee hours of Saturday morning, the 7th. Sat at base camp, Gianni, Nani, and I spent our mornings pouring over forecasts that last week. Our only chance in this current window was what looked to be possibly a small “drop” to 40 knot winds on the 4th January.

We’d had a wild and wonderful run up the lower parts of the mountain, as mentioned, and generally drove base camp nuts with a team full of characters and energy to burn. So the question as earlier this season, was, do we head up into the crazy winds or do we call it and head back to Mendoza for an extended wine tour? Again, as per the last round, it was a universal call to go and see where we could get.

New Year’s Eve was one of the best days of the season. We arrived to Camp 1 away from the world to a picnic dinner and a sunset that made the whole mission worth while.

From here we moved to Camp 2, at over 18,000 feet knowing we were in for some serious suffering. This time, it meant not only the essentials of strongly secured tents, but of building rock walls in anticipation of the western winds to come. For two nights, waiting for a small break in winds, we battled through, nearly sleepless with tent flies bashing around from roaring winds. Have you ever heard the noise of a crushing wind building from above? The anticipation is almost as bad as the actual impact, barreling in like a thundering train.

By our second night, our latest forecasts indicated wind speeds really weren’t going to drop as we’d hoped. So we made the call to stage our summit push from here at camp 2, knowing a move higher up the mountain would only result in shredded tents and an early end to our push.

So, the team steeled itself for one more pre-summit night at camp 2, howling winds slamming us from the sea as well as hurtling down the grand acacerra. We aimed for a 4 am start. By 3, Gianni, Nani, and myself recognized the winds still weren’t easing. It felt almost as if we were sleeping in the middle of a giant washing machine. We moved between the tents waking the team only to push the start time back another two hours, in hopes of some sort of break.

6 am came. The winds remained. But Nani fired up the stoves anyway. In came James, Yujin, Jason. It was a quiet, thoughtful huddle. It was bittersweet having such a rough summit window but we were content that at least part of the team wanted to make an attempt at climbing to their highest point. Then, as the minutes passed, one by one the rest of the team climbed inside. Col, Bryan, David, Clare, Rowena, Doug. For me, Gianni, and Nani, it was a pretty emotional moment realizing the grit of this crew. It was a team from the start, and it was going be a team supporting each other to the finish.

There’s no miraculous story here about the winds dying down. They were fierce.

Straight out the door from 7 am we got knocked around. Rowena, Clare, and David got to just around 5800 meters where cold toes and hands turned the girls around, and exhaustion for David. Clare got her first taste of being blown from her feet and her boots took a good old battering as a result. Cabesa and myself dropped down a ways to secure everybody back at camp 2 and Col, Jason, James, Bryan, Yujin, Doug kept pushing upward with Nani and Gianni through the constant battering wind. We’d anticipated a break from the high winds once over the ridge and on the more eastern aspects of the mountain. Not today. Even myself and Cabesa, catching up from below camp 3, clawed our way back up onto the scree track, each time we were blown off. 10 meters and another gust. Over and over. Very luckily, the temperatures stayed mild.

By Independencia the whole team reconnected together for a rest and to take in the outstanding views. We had the whole mountain to ourselves, of course, with no tents up at all at camp 3 as we passed through. Here, Col, Doug and Brian made the call to toast the success of their push and return back to Camp 2 exhausted but in one piece. Jason climbed on to Windy Gap and decided then that the 5 hours still remaining in these conditions was beyond what he wanted to gamble today. He descended and chilled out with us a while and then together all of us plus Cabesa started the 900 meter descent back down to camp.

James, Yujin, Nani, and Gianni pushed on for what even the local guides described as one of the tougher summit climbs they’d had. Along the traverse and into the Caneleta the winds finally died down enough to let the boys enjoy the last couple hours towards the top. And the summit photos prove, as ever, our Kiwi machine Yujin just won’t be phased by anything. A big congrats to all 4 on the top. And to the rest of the team for climbing in tougher conditions than they’re likely to face on any of the other seven summits!

Our return to Camp 2 wasn’t without excitement. A massive credit to our amazing doctors, Rowena and Clare, who jumped to action when the end of our summit push finished with a kitchen accident at our shared camp. Sometimes we forget just how phenomenal our climbers are in their outside lives, until those skills are called to use on the mountain. Incredible women.

When the sun finally set, and we had the full team back, warm and hydrated in our sleeping bags, we finally breathed a sigh of relief. Our final mission was clear: one final early morning start and a descent of 2500m and over 30 km back down and out of the park.

The end came too soon and we’re missing our ragtag team and their crazy antics already. A massive congrats to all for such a great adventure over here. Jason, Col, David, Bryan, James, Rowena, Clare, Yujin & Doug here’s to your massive effort on a mountain with no mercy. To Zebe and Roly, we hope you get a chance to try it all again down the line one day. And to Cabesa, Nani, and Gianni thank you for being the legendary guides that you are.

Mara Larson« Previous report | Next report »

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