Aconcagua - Part 3

January 2015, Argentina - The next morning we awoke to clear skies and a stiff breeze blowing down the valley from the upper mountain. Despite the favorable conditions, our lead guide Peter called for a rest day at Camp 1 as a few members of the team needed additional time to acclimatize. For a restless soul such as myself, these rest days are a major challenge of their own. There is no place to comfortably sit outside given the cold wind and intense sun, and so the hopeful mountaineer retreats into the more hospitable habitat of the tent. And despite being only a few feet away from the other members of our expedition, each tent feels like an isolated island floating in a vast lonely ocean. The sound of the wind and flapping nylon simply too loud to make inter-tent communication possible.

Within the tent is hour-after-hour of lying in one’s sleeping bag reading or dozing the hours away. Daily highlights include the occasional need to pee and the extremely elusive, yet terribly exciting, bowel movement (since digestion slows a great deal at altitude). Seriously, these are the best parts of the so called “rest day”. And so my Dad and I passed the time swapping books, talking about the tremendous isolation of the experience so far, and pretending we weren't constantly farting.

The following day, having read an entire book and slept for much of the past 36 hours, I was energized for the carry to Camp 2. That morning the skies were clear but the wind was still blowing pretty hard. So far Aconcagua was living up to its reputation as one of the windiest of the Seven Summits, if not on one of the windiest places on earth. We packed the next division of food and gear and where again climbing upward. It felt great to be moving and by mid-morning we’d completed a long rightward traverse up a sustained scree slope. The climbing trail was in tremendous shape and I was feeling quite strong, almost in a joking mood through the first two rest breaks. Conditions looked extremely windy up high on the mountain with snow clearly getting scraped off the summit in a large directional plume of spindrift. But that was of no concern to me at the time. I was happy to be out of the tent and enjoying the sunshine, the wind at our present altitude just strong enough to make the climbing comfortable and whisk away some body heat.

"It would have been a pleasant stroll had there not been an icy blast of alpine air gusting up to 50 miles per hour straight at us."

We yo-yoed with other guided parties on our way up--passing one another on our respective rest breaks--many were new friends from our time in base camp. It had been a social morning, but when we finally crested the ridge line about 1,500 feet above Camp 1 the wind hit us with enormous intensity. I put on new layers of clothing immediately and swapped out my glasses for goggles, thus adding more wind protection and added warmth. The route from here was fairly flat as we traversed westward for the better part if an hour, the massive Polish Glacier and upper flanks of the mountain now in view to our left. It would have been a pleasant stroll had there not been an icy blast of alpine air gusting up to 50 miles per hour straight at us. The team slowly began spreading out along the route over the next hour in these tough conditions. Myself, my Dad, Gary, and our Argentine Guide Tincho at the front. We took a rest break in the middle of the final scree slope just below Camp 2, each of us was feeling quite good after the flat section of the route and ready to push the final distance. Muhammed was moving a little slower but said he was doing well when he reached us. Chris was reporting a few altitude related problems but was displaying great mental toughness and motivation to complete the day's work. Our lead guide Peter A was clearly monitoring Chris but had to be impressed with his fortitude. The wind really was the story of the day and continued to escalate as we made the final steps into Camp 2 at 18,400 feet.

Camp 2 is a compact camp site compared to Camp 1, but boasts an incredible view of the Andes to the north, an uninhibited view of our route to Camp 3, the upper mountain, and final summit plateau. The fabled Polish Glacier off to our left looked steep and icy, a reflective veneer directing sunlight through building clouds.

The Polish Glacier used to be a common route to the summit, but had fallen out of favor in recent years. And I could see why: one careless foot placment could result in a fall that would be hard to arrest and the likely outcome was a three thousand foot fall down the ice. Fortunately our route to Camp 3 looked much more achievable and safe. It moved steadily to climber’s right and culminated in a set of compact switchbacks before cresting a ridge into high-camp. The route was visible, but becoming less perceptible by the minute in deteriorating conditions. I knew it was an illusion but I was shocked by how close everything looked. It was as if Camp 3 and the final summit were right in front of us, a casual distance away.

A storm was clearly building so Peter A instructed us to drop our loads and make an about-face back to Camp 1. I unceremoniously plopped my load of food and gear on the ground, wrapped in a black trash bag, and said "see you soon" to myself as if I had some kind of emotional attachment to the crackers, soup packets, and garbanzo beans I'd humped this far.

On the way down it started to snow, but thankfully the wind was now at our backs making for more comfortable down climbing. Almost like an astronaut I was cocooned in my down parka and balaclava. It was a strangely comfortable sensation heading back to Camp 1, isolated in my inner universe, shielded from the elements by my hood and goggles. By the time we made it back to the tents, snow had begun to accumulate on the ground with deeper drifts around the lee side of my tent...right where the entrance was. Sigh. Brushing the snow aside my dad and I crawled through the zipper door and exhaled in satisfaction as we escaped the wind and got reacquainted with our sleeping bags. While the storm blew hard beyond our tenuous nylon shelter, I snacked on a Snickers bar and daylight faded into a blustery and uncertain night.

The next day the wind was still blowing hard and a thin blanket of snow covered the ground. It was immediately obvious that the team would be staying put until the weather improved. More mentally prepared for rest days than before, I swapped books with a few others and repeated the lazy cycle of read-doze-eat for the next 48 hours. It was still difficult being stuck back in Camp 1, but there was a certain peacefulness this time in snuggling into my negative 20 degrees sleeping bag with my only worry to be as comfortable as possible while time plodded by. It’s almost how I imagine my dog Gus spending most days while I’m at work. Not too shabby!

"For the time being there was resolute acceptance within the team of the challenge that lay ahead of us. If all went according to plan we be sleeping at High Camp the next day poised for a summit bid early the following morning."

After four total nights at Camp 1 the weather finally broke and we had the opportunity to move higher to Camp 2. I was quite grateful for the change of scenery and weather as we retraced our steps from two days prior and the climb that day was blissfully uneventful. When we arrived at Camp 2 and settled in, I took the opportunity to take some photographs and enjoy some reading outside the confines of the tent. Our initial plan for the next day was to perform a carry of gear and food to Camp 3 (High Camp) and return to our present location to rest before moving up 1-2 days later. As we were finishing dinner, Peter gave us the news that another storm was moving in with high winds on the summit forecast for our planned summit day. When I heard this my stomach dropped… how disappointing after all of this to be pinned down in another storm and not get the opportunity to try for the summit. Fortunately, there was good news to accompany the bad: until that storm hit there would be good conditions. With this, the plan was set to bring all of our gear from Camp 2 AND plan to move to High Camp the following day. This had the obvious benefit of accelerating our schedule and putting us in a position to Summit before the bad weather arrived. The downside, of course, was that we'd have less time to acclimatize at Camp 2 before moving to High Camp and that we'd have to carry much heavier loads (twice as heavy to be precise). So the big question was weather the heavy loads and faster ascent from Camp 2 to Camp 3 would leave us too exhausted to try for the summit?

This bounced around in my brain for some time that evening. I rationalized that

1. high winds would definitely inhibit our summit attempt more than tiredness

2. we'd already been acclimatizing for 4 days at Camp 1, and

3. the single carry and move to High Camp would be easier because we already consumed a good portion of our food and supplies, thus making the weight more manageable.

For the time being there was resolute acceptance within the team of the challenge that lay ahead of us. If all went according to plan we be sleeping at High Camp the next day poised for a summit bid early the following morning.

As we departed Camp 2 for the move to High Camp, there was no indication whatsoever of the foul weather moving in. In fact, it was one of the most perfect days of the trip with a slight breeze from the West and not a cloud in the sky. The route departed Camp 2 steeply and with immediacy. Well before I was able to get into a rhythm, the climbing path ramped up a steep slope at a direct angle of attack. The surface was unforgivingly hard and I struggled to get solid footing, even with the aggressive tread of my high-altitude mountaineering boots.

Each step was punishing. In mountaineering there are times when you fall into a zombie like trance where vertical gains and time tick away almost invisibly. This flow state is one of the chief things that draws me to mountaineering and centers me as a person. It feels incredible while it's happening. Unfortunately I was experiencing the opposite that morning, with the difficult first pitch coming before I was able to get into a rhythm. My internal gears were mashing together, the oil and lubricants in my system figuratively (and somewhat literally) frozen. But the pain was short-lived as we mounted a steep rock band and completed the first pitch out of camp. With this, to my great relief, came more gradual terrain angling ever-so-slightly to climber's right.

"Having summited Mount Kilimanjaro in 2012 at 19,340 feet, this was now the highest I had ever been. Every foot higher would be a new personal record."

The entire route to High Camp was now visible before us, our objective seemingly close but still almost 2,000 vertical feet above. Distances in the mountains are highly deceptive in that what appear to be short distances may take many hours to reach. Simply walking across a camp may take 10 minutes or more, finding a private rock to pee behind another 15. And so was the case on this morning as we slowly plodded upwards, trying to remain mindful of the games our oxygen starved brains wanted to play. My internal dialogue sounding something like: “You have a long way to go, step, temper expectations, step, sh*t this pack is heavy, step, temper expectations, step…”

At this point I want to call out the Herculean display of physicality displayed by our guides this day. It’s true that everyone on the team was shouldering a heavy load, but none of the clients were carrying even close to the amounts the guides were. Tincho, Johnny, and Peter were each carrying close to a hundred pounds...their packs stuffed tight and seemingly bursting at the seams with team and personal gear. It was an unspoken reminder of how well-rounded and capable our leaders were and it gave me even more confidence in their abilities to guide us to the summit the following day.

As the morning transitioned to mid-day, our team completed the long traverse from Camp 2 and started up a final set of switchbacks that would lead is to High Camp. Cresting the ridge, we came upon the martian landscape that is High Camp on Aconcagua, a whopping 19,700 feet above sea level. The term “martian landscape” is often prone to hyperbole, but in this context it is supremely appropriate. High Camp, also known as Camp Cholera, looks exactly like the terrain shown in images from the Pathfinder Rover: the colors are the same, it’s very cold, the sun is intense, there are no animals, nothing grows. You get the picture. Only there were no rovers but tents scattered about a small plateau nearly the size of a football field. The encampment cradled in a rim of rock on the downhill side and the steep upper flanks of Aconcagua on the other. All things considered the site was a great jumping off point for the summit.

It was the end of a beautiful day as we set up our tents and began to prepare for our summit push the next morning. Lot’s of eating, lots of hydrating, and avoidance of any unnecessary taxes on the body and mind. Despite the difficult start to the day, I felt really strong and prepared for what lay ahead.

And right before I was about to doze off I was struck with a novel thought. Having summited Mount Kilimanjaro in 2012 at 19,340 feet, this was now the highest I had ever been. Every foot higher would be a new personal record. I smiled and whispered inaudibly to myself, “How cool is this.”