Trip Reports

Aconcagua - 17 Dec to 8 Jan '18

The step just below Colera Camp (camp 3) on Aconcagua

Written by Leader Mara Larson, January 2018

Once again, where to start. The adventures on our second Aconcagua trip of the season really began before arrival. Politics and internal strikes meant Argentina was temporarily under lockdown for a day in December. That very day happened to be when Team 2 was scheduled to land in-country. And news stations that morning spread word fast, all airports on strike and shut down. The team was therefore stuck in neighboring Chile!

A quick few calls sorting logistics (“quick") and a back-up plan was made: a road trip by bus across the Andes. So the following afternoon, the chartered bus set off for the high route Santiago to Mendoza and our stranded nine were back en route. Naturally, dinner that evening was rather late. A shade before 11 pm had the team tucking into a feast of steaks and pastas.

So a day late but now back on track, we headed up towards the Aconcagua park gates again. It was a 5 day interlude trekking in, acclimatizing, learning the nuts and bolts of tent and camp craft, and generally enjoying the sandy beach life at the Confluencia desert. Plus, of course, the spoils of Chino’s spectacular cooking. Here Nadia had her first battle with the altitude gods, and eventually won out. Martin patiently awaited an early Christmas present of the arrival of his lost luggage, hidden away somewhere in a Buenos Aires airport store. Emmanuelle worked on the new fashion of goggles + glasses aesthetic. Nick, Nico, and Rob settled into what appeared to be casual stroll pace, enjoying the views and not breaking much of a sweat. Tom rounded things out by sorting some sort of 3D camera.

The big theme of these Aconcagua trips for me is teamwork. There’s no getting to the top without supporting one another and feeding off positive energy during the tough days up high. We hammered this theme in early - erecting tents together as a team, trekking steadily at the pace of our slower fellow members, and finishing the afternoons teaming up on card games hunting werewolves and occasionally town folk J. The team started to cohere. By the time we set off for our 18k advance into base camp we were a proper streamlined machine.

We bid farewell to the heat wave and a 10-hour day saw the full team into base camp for Christmas Eve. Santa hats out, dining tent decked, and a proper Argentine barbecue and bottles of Malbec rang in the holiday. I can’t recommend Argentine Christmas enough. Though the rangers celebrating till sunrise did make for some challenging sleep…

From there it was on to our acclimatization phase. Load carries and caches up to camps 1 and 2, then hooting and hollering scree ski descents to balance out the suffering. Rest days were spent sorting kit, recovering, practicing crampon techniques, and with a few members escaping up to Bonete Peak. Our nights were rounded out with ridiculous amounts of steak and just a bit of wine. Sounds more casual than it actually felt, but the pleasant part was the weather was on our side. We saw a cloud in Chile. Once! The rest was blue skies, condors, and more sunshine.

And then as we kicked it up a gear to the summit push, the weather arrived….

We knew it would. We saw it coming. But after a week and a half of picture perfect conditions, what a contrast snow and wind brought.

We headed up on our 5-day summit push knowing we’d be facing challenging conditions. A small weather window, one day to be exact, looked possible between a small snowstorm we’d meet at camp 2 and a blast of high wind arriving the day after out summit push. So that was our aim. Packed and loaded we moved up the mountain knowing it’d be a few days of hard conditions ahead, before the mountain opened up for us. And the forecast played out as predicted.

Camp 2 saw us whipped by the winds. Snow howling past. Tents went up with snow slamming us all around. We regrouped in our dining tent, collapsed on small stone seats, half giggling/half in shock from the wave of cold and storm now embracing the mountain. An entirely different place from our mellow acclimatization runs. Niko took to drying gear strung across the dining tent. Rob took to exploring the limits of exposure to the elements. Kevin got to his usual rigorous unpacking. Jack dug the picnic snacking (cheese plates galore) and Victoria led the New Years celebrations! Wayne, Martin, and Peter seemed to relish in the general suffering - keen to know when we were back out in the elements. Just what they’d been waiting for. And finally, finally, Jirka looking back to health too!!

Two long days of weathering the storm and finally we broke down camp and continued our move up.

Up above the summit height of Elbrus, on through the Aconcagua version of the Hilary Step, we arrived to our high camp in impressive time and got to settling in, anticipating one peaceful night up at extreme elevation. Dinner al fresco and finally some peaceful views above the clouds. Life is nice at just about 6000 meters. Until you try to stand up quickly, walk briskly to the toilet tent, or basically move anywhere at a speed faster than slow motion. But again, we’d been training for these conditions for the whole first half of the expedition, so now it was just time to put our new skills and trainig to use. So fed and hydrated, we crashed out for a few hours and at 3 am the alarms went off to ready for our summit push.

As predicted, the climb was cold and windy. 40 km/hr winds with some bigger gusts kept us working hard through the early hours of the climb. Local guide Gianni and myself zipped back and forth adjusting buffs and goggles while the team moved steadily together, a long zig zag of headlamps up the initial scree slopes. By dawn the winds decided they were just going to stay around, so we prepared ourselves for a long and cold summit morning and afternoon ahead. By 6300m, Nico and Tom decided they’d had enough. Acclimatizing was going slowly for them this trip and it just wasn’t their day. So both made the decision to head to high camp and recover and support the rest of the team from there. The rest of the team got their heads down, faces fully covered, and pushed on ahead up to the windy gap and across to the traverse, blasted by the winds the whole way. Again, that team theme kept everyone pushing ahead together. Sometimes there really is energy in numbers. Watching the line up snake up the hill in unison was a sight to behold.

I’m incredibly proud to say out of 15 heading out for the summit that early morning, 13 made it nearly all the way to the cave!!!! An incredible effort in tough conditions, and so much credit to a team learning and evolving over the course of the expedition. Here just around the cave, Rachel, Victoria, Emmannuelle, and Jirka all reached their respective high points and started their descent back to high camp. A tough bunch who will no doubt return for another round on this mountain soon. And then onward, the final climb through the caneleta, the final traverse, and the summit achieved by Rob, Nick, Martin, Kevin, Nicholas, Wayne, Jack, Gianni and Lucas. A stellar team effort from a hardy team. Pushing through conditions that day was no small feat.

We still had plenty of daylight left as the full team returned back to high camp, and the adventure wasn’t over yet. After an early dinner, and exhausted but delighted celebrations, the team crashed out back at high camp. The following morning the plan was a casual start, time to recover some strength, and then a descent off the mountain while the predicted winds came in stronger still.

And strong they came. Gusting to 70 km/hr our battle getting tents down one last time was memorable! One toilet tent lost, a few broken poles, and everyone using their full set of skills breaking down camp in all our summit layers, stuffing tents and poles while blown sideways by the gusts. Aconcagua made sure to give us a memorable departure!!

But in no time, we were on our way down the giant scree zig zags and out of the fury. By base camp, our overloaded packs came crashing down in piles of dust and the pizza and beers flowed. The massive effort high on the mountain always feels as if it ends too soon. But still there were no complaints over hot showers, a last perfect Chino dinner, and thanks and celebrations with the local staff staying behind for another round on the mountain.

A mighty congratulations to the full team. And as always to our local crew – Gianni, Lucas, Matti, Chino, Cachito, and Javi. A hard won climb for the team and adventurous days high on the mountain which won’t be topped anytime soon ; )

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