SUMMITED

I have summited Aconcagua! On Sunday the 25th I managed to stand on what´s known as the Roof of the Americas. My summit bid started at 2:30 in the morning and took 9 hours to get there from Camp Nido Condores (camp 2) with a 3 hour return, making for a 12 hour day. I will further explain the event, but first I will catch up from where I last left off in the blog.

So.......Day 5 I believe is where I left you all in such suspense. This day I moved my camp from Plaza de Mulas Base Camp up to Camp Canada for my first night at a high camp. Before arriving at the camp I was caught in the middle of quite the snowstorm, which really made setting up my tent pleasurable (that´s sarcastic if you can´t tell). There are many different trails that have been made through the scree that all end up in Camp Canada, but with the storm and not being able to see all my options I think I mangaged to chose the steepest one with the most scree, and I think I lost about 3 feet for every foot I went forward getting there. By the time I got camp set up I was pretty tired, and not feeling exceptionally well, with a minor headache beginning to bother me. I didn´t have much of an appetite but managed to choke down some jerkey so I could take an Ibuprofin which cleared things up and I was feeling better shortly. While accending to higher altitudes headaches are a common symptom, however if they are not relieved with a mild pain killer and some water, it is recommended to decend to prevent what´s know as AMS (acute mountain sickness...aka altitude sickness). Anyway, I was feeling fine after a while and the only symptom I had was something known as HAGS or HAF. Now some of you may have heard of HAPE and HACE...which are the two common killers at high altitude being high altitdue pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema. Well let me tell you HAGS or HAF are the real killers....being a common symptom know as high altitude gas syndrome....or high altitude flatulance. Yes this probably taking it a little too far for some of you, but I´m sure you wanted to know all the details. It was kind of funny, because on the flight down to Santiago I was speaking with a physician on the plane, and he warned me of such and event being quite serious, and says it can ruin and entire expedition laughing out loud. My first night at high camp I had a few a apneic episodes, which without getting into too much detail happens because your respiratory rate slows down while you are sleeping, and you are not hyperventilating like you normaly would be with the decreased oxygen, and you wake up suddenly out of breath in the middle of your sleep. A bit scary if you are not used to such an event haha! Gives me a true appreciation for patients that I´ve treated at work with breathing difficulty.

Day 6: Woke up feeling top notch this morning and I had regained my appetite. After a hardy freeze dried breakfast I carried another load of gear up to what would be my next high camp known as Nido Condores, meaning nest of the birds at 17,715 ft. What started out to be a beautiful morning turned into a snowstorm before I finished carrying the load to Camp Nido. I was starting to think somebody had it out for me with my timing and these storms. I felt great at Nido and stayed to acclimate for a while and stache my gear. When I returned back to Canada the weather had cleared up nicely. There was no sign of Mario the phantom climber when I got back, who I would have expected to be either setting up camp at camp 1, or at least bringing his first load up to stache. At this point he would be about 2 days behind me as far as acclimating.

Day 7: Another beautiful morning as I broke down camp, and left some gas and other unnecessary items at camp 1, and prepared to move camp to Nido. On the trip up I ran into a lady from Seattle, which made chatting with somebody in fluent English kind of nice. In typical fashion, another snowstorm was hitting about the time I was at Nido and preparing to set up camp. The winds were pretty strong and made for a real difficult time getting my tent set up this time. The one good thing about all the new snow was it made gathering water quite easy. After filling up a 55 gallon garbage sack full of snow I spent the rest of the afternoon melting snow and cooking dinner inside the luxury of my tent while listening to the wind trying to tear it apart. I even managed to get a few Sudoku puzzles done, which let me tell you the light and easy are not light and easy at this altitude.

Day 8: The wind was relentless all through the night and continued into the next day. It makes sleeping in a tent seem like you are posted up next to an Am-Track that is running all night. I even tried to cut some make-shift earplugs out of my foam therma-rest, which didn´t work out quite as well as I thought it would, but was entertaining. Wind aside, I decided to go for an acclimatization hike up to Camp Berlin and White rocks at about 19,300 ft give or take. Even with the wind, it was much better being out and active than confined in the noisy tent. I decided that day that I would not set up another hight camp past Nido. Now here is the pros / cons that had to be weighed out with the decision. If you move to the next high camp Berlin or White rocks, you A.) are closer to the summit making your summit day quicker, B.) don´t have to wake up as early in the morning to summit so you spend less time climing in the cold without the sun, but C.) have to spend another day moving gear and camp up higher, where you will likely not sleep as well, because the altitude is so high, and it is colder, making for a tired restless climber on summit day. I spent some time at that altitude to acclimate again and decended back to Nido. I was comfortable with the decision that I would be getting up earlier, be in the cold longer, and adding another 1600 ft to the summit climb in compromise for a good nights rest, and no more moving camps. I was already an hour or two ahead of most of the recommended times moving from camp to camp, and figured I´d have no problem with it being a longer summit day. Although not at the same elevation, I´d climbed the 5,000 ft in a single climb before that it would take to summit, so I had a decent understanding of what I was getting into by adding the extra 1600 ft and an hour or two. When I returned to Nido I gathered a hearsay forcast from one of the expeition teams that it would be just as windy tomorrow as it was today, but would still be clear. I decided to prepare for a summit bid and see what the conditions would be like in the morning. After I packed my summit pack and ate some dinner I was off to bed and out like a light at 7:30 with the help of two benadryls and slept like a champ.

Day 9: Summit Day! I woke up before my alarm went off at 2:30am feeling fully rested and ready to rock. There was amazingly enough, for the first time at this camp...silence...and no wind! I planned on leaving at 3 am and was out a litte sooner after eating a quick bfast and putting on my crampons. It was a crystal clear morning, which was colder but made for great visibility. I made it to White rocks in no time and had passed two or three expeditions that left from Berlin Camp. The wind managed to hold out until a place called Independencia Hut, where it really started to pick up. It was blowing the dry snow around, and made it difficult to see withouth goggles, which I wasn´t wearing due to the darkness, but had to put them on regardless. I made it to a point called Windy Ridge when it was just getting light, and met up with two other climbers that were ahead of me. Let me tell you, Windy Ridge didn´t get it´s name for no reason, and the wind was absolutely relentless. It was time to dawn the down jacket and full facial protection just to be on the ridge. From the ridge you must traverse a big scree field to get into a giant gulley that eventually leads to the summit. One of the climbers turned back just shortly after being on the ridge as he could not take any more of the wind. His partner was still ahead of me and was continuing ahead. He was having to break trail because the wind was blowing so hard that it was blowing dry snow all over and accumulating in large drift piles. Breaking trail through snow is not an easy task and is very tiring, especially at this altitude. About half way accross the traverse, he too was throwing in the towel, and returned back to where I was and said ¨too much snow, too tired¨ with a foreign accent. This left the rest of the trailbreaking up to me. The sun was beginning to rise, so it was light, but was not shining on the north face we were on yet making it exceptionally cold with the wind and blowing snow. This was one of the toughest parts of the climb, because it was really tempting to turn around get away from the beating that was being given to me by the weather, but are you kidding me haha, there´s no way! Needless to say I made it accross the traverse, and was much more protected from the weather on the other side. All I had left was this steep gully to climb and I was nearing the summit. At this point I was really feeling the altitude and was taking about a 5 or 10 second rest with every step forward. I think I must have spent 2 hours climbing the last part with a gain of only about 500 ft. It was by far the most difficult and physically tiring thing I have ever done, and seemed to drag on forever, while staring at the summit the whole time. It defininitely wasn´t just going to hand itself over to me and seemed to be laughing at me as I lay on the snow panting after each few steps. After 9 hours of climbing, however I finally took the last few steps that put me on the Summit of the Americas and what an amazing feeling and view. I was the first of the day to reach the summit and I could see down at two of the expedition teams behind me about an hour or two. The summit registry wasn´t around to sign, so I took a few pictures, and hung out for a few minutes. You could only take your gloves off long enough for one picture, then had to put your fingers back in to rewarm them. It´s exceptionally cold on the summit, and no place to hang out, as cool as it really is being there, so after about 10 minutes and a frozen cliff bar later I was on my way back down. The decent took 3 hours and I was back at the tent at 3 in the afternoon. Not bad considering the average time for a round trip summit from Camp Berlin above my camp is supposed to be 10-18 hours. I was thrilled with the accomplishment, and decided I had enough energy to pack up camp and head down to Basecamp, which made for an exceptionally long day hauling out all the gear in one load (see picture) down, that I´d brought up in two. I got to basecamp at about 7:30, organized my gear for the mules in the morning, ate an absolutely terrible pizza, and stayed the night at Hotel Refugio, as there was no way I was going to set up a tent again.

Day 10: After I arranged all my gear with the mules and checked out my ¨sheet bag¨ with the rangers I was headed back to Puenta Del Inka, the 16 mile trek in one day that took two coming up. I didn´t care how long it took or how many blisters I had, I was excited to get down so I could eat a nice meal, sleep in a bed, have running water, etc... I was motivated! Listening to my Ipod and cruising mostly downhill I made the trek in 5 hours. I decided to take the bus back into town which took 4 long, hot, sweaty, stinky hours, but finally was back in Mendoza that night, where I could enjoy the luxury of a nice hotel with a swimming pool and a cerveca frio.

Well that about brings me to where I am now....still in Mendoza, but I believe I will be leaving tomorrow on another long, stinky, 15 hour bus ride over to Buenos Aires on the other coast. I´ve heard plenty of good things about the area, so I´m off to check it out. As for now I´m just relaxing, letting my legs and blisters heal, and pretty much loving life in the sun. Well minus the half of my nose that was outside my goggles and lips that got EXCEPTIONALLY sun-burned on the descent (see lovely picture), and look like a hard piece of bacon at the moment. Mendoza is a really nice city though, and the culture here is great. Until next time........Chao