Aconcagua

Aconcagua (22,841 ft) – Highest Point in Argentina (and South America)

Dec. 8-23, 2017 (Summit day Dec. 19)

Schedule:

Days -7 and -6: acclimation hiking/camping. Matthew camps at 8,600 ft in the CA Sierra; Eric camps in Camp Muir (10,188 ft) on Mt. Rainier

Day 0 (Dec 8, 2017): Depart Seattle and San Francisco; fly to Santiago, Chile

Day 1: Arrive Santiago; taxi to Santiago bus station; bus to Hotel Ayelen (Penitentes, Argentina), 8,540 ft; pick up permits from Grajales (logistics company); stay in hotel

Day 2: Drop off food with Grajales for mule transport; shuttle from hotel to trailhead at Horcones (9,678 ft); register with rangers; start hiking; camp at Confluencia (11,122 ft).

Day 3: Hike from Confluencia to Plaza de Mulas (14,107 ft); camp at Mulas

Day 4: Rest day at Mulas

Day 5: Carry food/gear up to Nido de Cóndores (18,208 ft); return to Mulas; camp at Mulas

Day 6: Move camp to Canadá (16,568 ft); camp at Canadá

Day 7: Move camp to Nido de Cóndores (18,208 ft); camp at Nido

Day 8: Rest day at Nido

Day 9: Carry food/gear to Berlín Camp (19,455 ft); return to Nido; camp at Nido

Day 10: Move camp to Berlín; camp at Berlín

Day 11 (12/19/2017): Depart Berlín (8:35am); arrive Aconcagua summit (1:06pm); leave summit (1:15pm); arrive Berlín (2:30pm); pack up gear, depart Berlín (3pm); arrive Plaza de Mulas (5pm); camp at Mulas

Day 12: rest day at Mulas; hike around the area

Day 13: depart Plaza de Mulas carrying all gear/food; arrive Horcones; check out with rangers; Grajales shuttle back to Hotel Ayelen; stay at hotel

Day 14: Grajales shuttle to Argentina/Chile border; walk across border; taxi from border to Hotel in Santiago; visit friend Gabriel; Matthew flies out of Santiago

Day 15: Matthew arrives in San Francisco; Eric flies out to Copiapó, Chile for Ojos del Salado

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By Matthew Gilbertson

December 19, 2017, about 11:30am:

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it much farther, Eric, maybe we should turn around and try again tomorrow?” I suggested. We were at La Cueva (“The Cave”) at an elevation of about 21,800 ft – the highest we had ever been – on the way up Aconcagua, the highest point in Argentina and South America. Numerically, with only 1,000 ft to ascend on a rocky snow-dusted slope called La Canaleta, it seemed that the summit was within reach.

But I was utterly spent. Due to exhaustion and lack of oxygen, we were going about one-fourth the speed we would have gone at sea level. Each step upwards was followed by four or five seconds of rest. We had a number of reasons to be exhausted:

First, we were on an expedited schedule: 2 weeks instead of the customary 3 weeks. That meant fewer days to acclimate and build up strength. It also meant more pressure to push ahead in spite of non-optimal weather.

Over the past 11 days, our appetites had been suppressed by the altitude, and it had been difficult to eat the number of calories we needed. In anticipation of this effect, which we had experienced before on other high mountains like Logan, Denali, and Elbrus, we had packed the tastiest food: our favorite cookies, the top-notch freeze-dried dinners, and Chilean sausage and cheese, to name a few. But it was no use – the altitude had robbed us of much of our hunger. Even those Costco white chocolate chip cookies, of which I could probably eat a hundred at sea level, we now unpalatable with my skewed taste buds and shrunken stomach.

In addition to the hunger, another physiological phenomenon that was wearing us thin was sleep deprivation. It wasn’t that we couldn’t fall asleep – we always fell asleep within seconds of lying down – it was the Diamox (acetazolamide), the drug we used to speed up our acclimatization, which was causing us to get up every two hours to use the bathroom. To be sure, we didn’t like taking this performance-enhancing diuretic drug (which probably 50% of our fellow mountaineers were taking and which many doctors recommended), but we liked even less the prospect of not reaching the summit within our shortened window.

Finally, the last element that was beating us down was the weight of the gear we were carrying. We started the trip with more than 100 lbs of food and gear each and, although some of it was carried by mules to base camp, higher on the mountain we were on our own. Unable to shoulder the entire burden all at once, we had been forced to do some double-carries, in which we stashed gear at higher camps, then descended to rest, recuperate, and acclimate, before carrying up the next load. The duration of daily exertion had been short – only a few hours per day – but it had been heavy, with a great deal of elevation gain.

On top of all of these factors slowing us down, we also had a time constraint that we were now working against. Although the forecast we had seen (from mountain-forecast.com) predicted excellent weather for the summit today, the park rangers had apparently heard differently. A few hours earlier, we had passed a group of Zimbabwean climbers, who said that two park rangers had told them that bad weather was moving in during the early afternoon, and the rangers were planning to close the summit at 2pm. Nobody would be allowed to summit after that time. Shortly after speaking with the Zimbabweans, we spotted the two rangers trudging slowly upwards. We quickened our pace, and breathed a sigh of relief when we passed the rangers during a brief rest at the Independencia Hut at 20,900 ft. As long as those rangers don’t catch up with us, we thought, they can’t prevent us from continuing.

But as we rested at the cave, drained by the accelerated pace, among other things, the rangers had begun to catch up. And maybe there was some truth to their weather prediction. Just before the cave, during a long traverse of a scree slope, with temps below 0F, gusty winds, and blowing snow, we had been forced to layer up. I was now wearing my entire arsenal of layers, including the down pants I usually reserved for the direst of circumstances. If wind chills of -20F were present on this slope, we thought, who knows what it would be like on the summit?

“Let’s rest here for a minute and drop some of our gear,” Eric proposed, snapping me back to reality. As tempting as it was to retreat, I knew that today was probably our only window of opportunity. True, we had one buffer day and enough food and fuel to give it a shot the next day, but we would likely be even weaker if we waited 24 more hours at camp, elevation 19,455 ft. And who knew what the weather would bring the next day. No, this was our one and only shot of reaching the summit of Aconcagua, and we knew it.

On the plus side, we weren’t feeling any of the telltale signs of anything more sinister than plain exhaustion. No headaches or coughing or altered mental state (as far as we could tell), which would have portended the serious HACE or HAPE and would have necessitated rapid descent. But we knew those could come if we dawdled too much at this elevation. We knew that climbing the last 1,000 ft was going to require speed and grit.

We stripped our loads down as much as possible, packing only a little food and water into one backpack, which we would take turns carrying. Our plan was to get the heck up and get the heck down. Way down. Hopefully all the way down to Mulas that evening, where we could recover.

I popped in my headphones, cued “Born to be Wild,” took a deep breath, and we started climbing.

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PLANNING AN EXPEDITION

As with any long expedition, this one required some serious planning. After some research in the early Fall of 2017, we realized that we had a spectrum of options in terms of help with logistics. On one end of the spectrum, we could go with a guided group. A guiding company could handle 100% of the logistics like arranging ground transportation and permits, cooking food, renting out gear, setting up tents, and even carrying gear via mule and porter to lighten your load. Many such companies, some based in Argentina, and some based in the US, offered this comprehensive package. On the other end of the spectrum, we could do everything ourselves.

We discovered that, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, there existed the option to have some help with

logistics but go without a guide. This appealed to us for numerous reasons. First of all, we hate going on guided trips. In our opinion, having a guide takes all the fun out of it because you don’t get to make your own decisions and the pace is limited by the slowest client. Secondly, we had several somewhat non-conventional constraints which required some customized logistical planning: 1) I wanted to avoid going through Argentina due to the risk of Zika, and 2) we could only dedicate about 14 days to the trip, which was about 7 days shorter than the recommended duration of 21 days.

We discovered that constraint #2 was workable, but #1 posed a significant challenge. Climbing permits were apparently issued only in person in Mendoza, Argentina, which was well within the CDC-designated Zika risk zone. Most Aconcagua climbers fly into Buenos Aires, then fly to Mendoza to pick up their permit, before driving to the trailhead at Horcones (which is at a high enough elevation to be out of the Zika zone) to start their climb. Because Horcones is only about 25 km from the Chile border, and Chile is Zika-free, I wondered if there was some way to get help obtaining the permit so that we wouldn’t have to make the trip down to Mendoza.

In early October, I emailed about ten different guiding companies to ask if it was possible to obtain the permit without us visiting Mendoza. Of the ten, only one, Fernando Grajales Expediciones, said it was possible. Thus, we chose Grajales as our logistics coordinator for the trip. Grajales agreed to help us with getting the permits, reserving our hotel at the trailhead, and transporting up to 50 kg of gear via mule to base camp at Plaza de Mulas. This seemed like a good compromise.

Although it initially seemed dishonorable to us to use to mules to carry our gear for part of the trip, we read that the vast majority of climbers utilize this option and, moreover, it could shave a few days off of our schedule. The alternative would be to do one or two double-carries which would add about two days. So, we were willing to trade off a little bit of honor for a higher chance of success.

A few days before the trip, I mailed via DHL several signed documents to Grajales in Mendoza. The day after they were received, I was notified by our coordinator, Nicolás, that he had the permits in hand, and that we had the green light to climb.

GETTING TO THE TRAILHEAD

At 2:54pm on Dec 8^th, I flew out of SFO, and met up with Eric in Santiago, Chile about 13 hours later, after a layover in Houston. Our bags arrived, including, thankfully, all the trip food that I had bought at Costco, and we grabbed a taxi to the Santiago bus station. While waiting at the bus station, I picked up a few food items that would hopefully boost morale at altitude: Chilean sausage and cheese.

The plan was to take a bus from Santiago to our hotel in Penitentes, Argentina. Only problem was, the bus was supposed to be a direct, nonstop bus all the way to Mendoza, which was a few hours beyond our hotel. However, we had read online that if we asked the bus driver nicely to drop us off at Penitentes he/she might acquiesce. At first, Eric tried asking (in Spanish) the people ticket booth, but they replied that it was not possible. He tried again when we spotted the bus driver, and fortunately the bus driver said it would be no problem.

We left Santiago in the late afternoon and reached the Chile/Argentina border crossing after about two hours. At the

border, we had to leave the bus and have our luggage inspected. I was initially concerned that some of our precious food would be confiscated, which would pose a considerable dilemma because there are no real supermarkets near the trailhead. Fortunately, the customs officers waved us through, and we were soon on our way. An hour later, the bus driver dropped us off at Hotel Ayelen in the village of Los Penitentes and we were on our own.

Penitentes is situated right at treeline in a valley at an elevation of about 8,500 ft and is surrounded by spectacular mountains. On the way in, we had gotten our first glimpse of the magnificent south face Aconcagua. In the southern hemisphere at this latitude, because the sun stays mostly in the northern sky, the southern slopes of mountains tend to hold more snow than the north faces (this is the opposite of the northern hemisphere). As a result, the south face of Aconcagua is covered by vast snowfields and glaciers. From a distance of about 12 miles, the south face looked like an almost vertical wall of snow. With the summit nearly 15,000 above us, it looked like a serious mountain indeed. “Well, at least our route is on the backside, and it doesn’t actually have much snow,” Eric pointed out reassuringly.

After we checked into the hotel, we headed over to the Grajales office next door to pick up our permits. This was the moment of truth. Would our permits be there or not? We walked inside and stepped into a large open room – a staging area for packing gear. On one side of the room were various lockers for storing valuables; on the other were some couches, benches, and tools for repairing equipment; in the center was a large industrial scale. All around the room were photos of Aconcagua and other high peaks, some of which were signed by apparently famous mountaineers expressing gratitude to Grajales for their help.

At the front desk, we were greeted by Andrés, an elderly gentleman whom we guessed had probably been climbing mountains and helping mountaineers for about the past sixty years. Eric conversed with him for a while in Spanish, and Andrés summoned his colleague Eduardo. Eduardo handed me a familiar-looking DHL envelope that I had mailed ten days earlier from Palo Alto. Inside were our official climbing permits from Mendoza! We thanked him profusely and proceeded to talk about logistics.

We would plan to meet him the next morning at 11am at the Grajales office and give him the gear that we wanted to be brought up to Plaza de Mulas by mules. We had paid for 50 kg total, which we figured would be plenty. Each mule can apparently carry up to 100 kg, we were told, so our two 25 kg boxes would be but a small burden for them. Eduardo would then drive us the 20 minutes to the trailhead and ranger station at Horcones. Meanwhile, the mules would proceed to Plaza de Mulas independently.

We also discussed our options for returning to Santiago after the climb, which would turn out to be more complicated than we expected. We originally assumed that we could simply flag down the same bus that had dropped us off, heading in the opposite direction. We learned that the problem was that the buses would be very unlikely to pick us up because they needed to submit in advance a roster of their passengers to Chilean and

Argentinian immigration. The only way to get to Santiago, Eduardo told us, would be to either take a private shuttle (which Grajales could provide for a large fee), or multiple taxis: one Argentinian taxi to the border, then one Chilean taxi from the border to Santiago. Eduardo agreed to work on this while we climbed. He instructed us to call him on our descent when we reached Plaza de Mulas, from which we could use the the Grajales radio.

We walked back over to our hotel and discussed our transportation options with Paul, the manager of the hotel. Paul offered to help, and his partner graciously called another hotel just across the border in Chile and set up a taxi from the Chilean border back to Santiago the day after our return.

At this point, with most of the logistical risks now retired, we breathed a big sigh of relief. Our flights had been on time. All of our luggage had arrived. No food had been confiscated. The bus had dropped us off successfully. The hotel had been expecting us. Return rides were nearly worked out. And, most of all, we had our permits in hand. We were getting close to the moment that I looked forward to the most: the moment when it was simply us versus the mountain. After repacking and divvying up the food, followed by a nice dinner at the hotel, we sank into our beds and fell quickly asleep.

The next morning, we met Eduardo at the appointed time of 11am and he gave us a ride up to the ranger station at Horcones to check in with the rangers. This was the last major checkpoint. Would our permits be valid? Luckily for us, Eduardo was good friends with the three young ranger ladies at the desk, and clearly looked forward to this part of the day. The ladies glanced at our permits and stamped them decisively. They instructed us to hang onto these permits dearly and present them at the next camp – Confluencia – where a medical ranger would take our vital signs and determine if we were fit enough to keep climbing. They also handed us two pairs of opaque plastic bags that were labeled with the same numbers corresponding to our permits: two white bags for garbage and two orange bags for human waste (there were no outhouses above Plaza de Mulas). We were quite impressed with how organized, conscientious, and responsible the park service was in trying to prevent waste from littering the mountain.

After saying goodbye the rangers and to Eduardo, we left the ranger station and started hiking. At long last, it was

finally us versus the mountain.

US VERSUS THE MOUNTAIN

The great thing about the trailhead for the Ruta Normal (“Normal Route”) up Aconcagua is that you can actually see the summit when you start hiking. For many mountains, like Mt. Logan, that simply isn’t the case, and you can’t see the summit until basically summit day. As we started hiking, we passed by a parked blue and yellow helicopter that is used for rescues, gear and personnel transport, as well as the occasional high-paying client who wants to save a few days of hiking.

Our plan was to stay the night at Confluencia camp, situated at about 11,000 ft, and 6 miles away. To give ourselves a head start on acclimatization before the trip, Eric and I had each spent a few nights at higher altitude the previous week. I had camped with Amanda in the Sierra at an elevation of about 9,000 ft near Carson Pass for two nights, and Eric had camped for a few nights at Camp Muir (~10,000 ft) on the way up Mt. Rainier. Although nearly a week had elapsed, we hoped that we still retained some of the extra red blood cells that we had gained. (In the end, I indeed think it helped, and probably saved us a day.)

On the trail, we proceeded northwards up a grassy valley, and soon we crossed a large suspension bridge over a raging muddy river – the Río de los Horcones. Because it was the end of spring here in the high Andes of Argentina, it was no surprise that the river was full of snowmelt mixed with mud and rock. We were glad we had the benefit of a giant bridge and didn’t have to ford the river.

By mid-afternoon, we arrived at Confluencia. The camp was situated right at the edge of grassline, and offered the last opportunity for ascending mules to graze. We spotted a few arrieros (mulateers) driving their heavily-laden mules up the trail. As soon as one of the mules reached camp, it bolted and started running around. One of the arrieros split off and pursued the renegade mule up the valley behind the camp. The poor mule must have just really wanted to eat some particular patch of grass, we figured.

Confluencia camp was an expansive compound consisting of many tents. At the entrance to camp, there were a few

semi-permanent ranger cabins. Beyond the ranger cabins were zones that were allotted to the various guiding companies. Each company had its own large dome tent, along with 10 or 20 two-person tents for clients. It was amazing to think that at the beginning of each season they had to assemble all of these structures and then take them down a few months later.

We set up our tent, a Trango 2, in the Grajales district of camp, and then proceeded to do some exploring. We hiked up a small hill next to camp, then discussed the schedule. Our original plan had been to take a rest day at Confluencia, but we both agreed that we were feeling pretty good. We considered skipping the rest day and proceeding straight to Plaza de Mulas instead. The pre-trip acclimation must have helped because we weren’t particularly winded. To quantify our health, we measured our pulse and oxygen saturation using our pulse oximeter. Our O2 levels were both in the 90% range and pulses were between 70-80 bpm – numbers that, according to our Aconcagua guidebook, were considered acceptable for advancing upwards from Confluencia.

The official measurements, however, would need to be taken by the base camp ranger. After we had eaten dinner, we walked over to the ranger station and informed the rangers that we were considering hiking to Plaza de Mulas the next day.

“All right,” a young ranger, apparently the medical lead, said, “let’s walk over to the medical tent and I’ll take your vital signs to see if you’re ready.”

We sat down and tried to relax as much as possible. Using a pulse oximeter, the ranger measured nearly the same numbers as we had measured before. He also measured our blood pressures with a blood pressure cuff. After writing the measurements down on our permit, and signing his name, he declared us fit to keep climbing. “Good luck guys, and get to the top!” he said. With a big sigh of relief, we retired to our tent and had a great sleep.

The next morning, we packed up and continued hiking up the valley towards Plaza de Mulas – the official “Base Camp” for Aconcagua, situated about 3,000 ft above us, and 12 miles distant. After hiking for an hour or so, we passed the last few tufts of grass, and were officially in the alpine zone – a zone of rocks, snow, and ice. We found ourselves hiking through a wide, featureless, dusty valley with 15kft+ mountains towering on both sides. A few mule teams passed by, and we made sure to step out of their way.

Five hours later, we crested a steep hill, and spotted the colorful, sprawling, megalopolis of Plaza de Mulas (“Square

of Mules”). With many more tents, including several truly massive domed basecamp tents, Mulas was perhaps five times bigger than Confluencia. We spotted the Grajales region of camp, and proceeded to the main tent, where we met the basecamp coordinator, Pablo.

Pablo handed over our two 22 kg green plastic boxes that the mules had brought up the other day, and we were delighted to see that they contained all of the food, white gas, and extra gear that we had packed. We set up camp our trusty Trango on one of the tent platforms and got busy relaxing.

In anticipation of some downtime on the trip, we had brought along a couple of books. I brought a new Tom Clancy book, titled “Power and Empire,” while Eric opted for non-fiction in the form of “Buried in the Sky”. From the comfort of the tent, we commenced reading in earnest. To recover and build up our strength for the big climb, we read our books for the next day and a half, and went outside only a few times, mainly to cook, eat, and use the outhouse. By the end of our rest day, we were nearly done with our books, and ready to switch.

MULAS TO THE CONDOR’S NEST

By the beginning of Day 5, we were ready to get moving again. Even though our books were good, we were getting bored just sitting in the tent, and were itching to make some progress. Our plan was to stash some food and gear up at the next camp, Camp Canadá, then return to Mulas. We loaded up a few days of food, along with some snow gear like crampons, gaiters, and goggles for higher on the mountain, and departed camp around 10:30am.

The Penitentes route took us first through a short snow patch covered with one-foot long penitentes – pointy snow fingers formed by intense sunlight. They’re essentially sun cups on steroids. I had only ever seen them once before, on Boundary Peak in Nevada, but we read that they’re common in the high Andes. We had even seen photos of early pioneers of this Aconcagua route struggling through towering 10-foot tall penitentes that are the route’s namesake. Due to global warming, the snowfields on the route have shrunk dramatically, and these would prove to be the only penitentes that we’d encounter for the rest of the route.

After the penitentes, the route switchbacked upwards, giving us a spectacular view of camp and the neighboring mountains. Although we had gained a few thousand feet, the massif of Aconcagua still towered thousands of feet above us. By early afternoon, we spotted a few tents perched on a sheltered shoulder of the mountain.

“I wonder what camp this is?” I asked Eric. “It’s way too early to be Canadá. We’ve only been hiking for an hour and a half.”

“Hmm. I don’t know what other camp it could be,” he said.

We walked over to the tents and spotted a few hikers resting. We asked them what camp this was and they responded that it was indeed Canadá.

“Wow, we’re here way earlier than I thought,” I said to Eric. “It seems kind of lame to turn around here. I’ve still got quite a bit of fuel in the tank.”

“Yeah, me too,” Eric replied. “Maybe we can just keep going up to the next camp.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

After a short break, we kept hiking. As long as it didn’t set back our acclimatization, dropping off our gear at the higher camp, Nido de Cóndores, would save us time later on, because it would mean that we wouldn’t have to drop down from Nido to pick up gear at Canadá. As we wound up the mountain, we spotted the first – and only – big snowfield on our route. We could have chosen to skirt around it, but we decided it was more direct to hike straight up. Plus, on the way down we might get to do some glissading. We aimed for the orange wind sock high up on a hill beyond the snowfield, which we guessed marked the helicopter landing pad at Nido.

By 2:00pm, after 3.5 hours of hiking from Mulas, we crested a hill and spotted the domed ranger tent at Nido. The ranger came out and pointed the Grajales zone to us, which was situated on top of another small hill. This camp, Nido de Cóndores (“Nest of Condors”) was much sparser than Mulas or Confluencia. In our area, there was one unoccupied Grajales dome tent. Farther away, we spotted a couple of other dome tents and a few two-person tents, but not much else. This was clearly a location where mountaineers didn’t usually spend much time.

We had been instructed to carefully cover our gear with a large pile of rocks to prevent the condors from stealing our food.

“I highly doubt there are any condors around here,” I said to Eric. “We’re at 18,200 ft, and there’s nothing living here except people. No animals, plants, or even lichen.”

“Yeah, I can’t see there being any condors up here,” Eric answered, “but we might as make a good rock pile so the wind doesn’t blow anything away.”

We put our food and gear into thick plastic trash bags and skeptically piled a healthy mound of rocks on top. It would turn out to be a prudent move.

A headache was starting to set in, and I knew it was time to descend. A mere hour later, after some serious scree glissading, we were back at Plaza de Mulas and ready to resume our resting.

Back at camp, we met up with a three-person team that was led by a guide from Grajales. It turned out that the guide Rico was leading his brother Andres and 65 year old father to the top. The family was from Mendoza. We looked longingly at the delicious-looking food that was being prepared for them – sandwiches, soup, vegetables – but reminded ourselves that we too could have partaken of such a feast if we had been willing to pay a few hundred extra dollars. On our return, we resolved to splurge on a couple of pizzas. I mean, how expensive could they be?

The last hurdle of red tape to overcome was the medical check-in. Similar to Confluencia, a medical ranger took our blood pressure, and measured our oxygen saturation and pulse. The values were within the suggested limits, so with a signature on our permits, she authorized us to keep climbing. She also suggested halving our dosage of Diamox, and drinking 6 liters of water per day.

After our freeze-dried dinner of spaghetti with meat sauce, we fell asleep and tried to build up our strength for the next day.

THE QUEST FOR WATER

The next morning, we packed up the rest of our food and gear and headed up through the penitentes. After a couple

of hours of hiking, we were back at Camp Canadá, where we would camp the night. A few years ago, before Denali, the prospect of hiking only 2 hours in a day would have seemed pathetic to me. If you’re pressed for time, why call it quits so early? The reason had everything to do with acclimatization. To be sure, we could have easily reached the next higher camp, Nido, later that afternoon. But our bodies probably wouldn’t have been ready for it. We were acclimated to the elevation of Plaza de Mulas (14,100 ft) and wouldn’t have been able to handle the 4,000 ft move up to Nido. The 2,400 ft move up to Canadá was thus a good compromise.

After setting up the tent, we went in search of water. We had been told by some other hikers that there was a patch of snow nearby camp from which one could obtain water. I spotted a snow patch nearby, which produced a moderate trickle. Unfortunately, the snow patch was directly against a rock, and it wasn’t possible to scoop up any water with a Nalgene. It didn’t make the water any more appealing that it was the color of chocolate milk due to the mud it contained. Well, we needed water, and this was apparently the only source nearby. Although it would have been great if indeed it actually did taste like chocolate milk, I guessed that it was probably tasteless anyway. Eric suggested that we could maybe filter out some of the sediments. So, we scooped up as much of the brown water as we could, and brought it back to camp.

To improve the appeal of the water, we planned to try a few different experiments. With Study A, we’d let a bottle sit upright for a while and see if the sediments settled down to the bottom. Then we’re try to carefully siphon off the clear water without stirring up the mud at the bottom. With Study B, we’d try to pour water through various fabrics in an effort to filter out the mud particles. Matthew would manage Study A, while Eric would mastermind Study B.

Removing the mud was one challenge, but that was merely an optional luxury. Making the water sterile was mandatory. Although there were no known camps above us, who knew what kind of pathogens the water contained, so we planned to treat all water with chlorine dioxide tablets anyway, as we had done so far during the trip.

Incidentally, I recalled a study involving sterilizing water that I had heard about a few years earlier when I was in D-Lab at MIT. The study, run by the UN, looked at using sunlight (specifically the UV radiation in sunlight) to treat contaminated water in developing countries. If I recall correctly, they found that setting a clear plastic bottle containing contaminated water in direct sunlight for about 8 hours rendered it safely drinkable. The UV radiation had killed most of the pathogens. If the water was murky, they found, the bottle needed to be left undisturbed long enough for the particles to settle and the water to clear up before the 8 hours of sunlight would prove effective. I found the results fascinating, and we had actually employed this technique a few years earlier on the way up the Switzerland high point when we had run out of water treatment tablets (and stove fuel). We successfully treated a few liters of water by letting it sit out in the sun for a day in clear plastic bottles. Granted, we were so high up that the water was probably sterile to begin with, but we liked to think that the experiment had worked. In any case, with an abundance of water treatment tablets and thirst, and with a shortage of patience, here on Aconcagua we would not be employing the sunlight approach.

With Bottle B, Eric first tried pouring the muddy water through the fabric on his hat, but nothing would come through. “Well, I guess a few years’ worth of sweat, dirt, and sunscreen have made this fabric watertight by now,” Eric declared. He tried the fabric on the corner of his shirt, which the murky liquid successfully penetrated. “Hmm, doesn’t look like that filtered out anything,” he observed. “It’s still the same color.” He tried other various fabrics with seemingly different fiber diameters and pore sizes and soon reached the conclusion that, with the technology at hand, the mud and water were effectively an inseparable and aesthetically revolting colloid. As far as the water was concerned, there were only two types of fabric: those that were watertight and those that the filthy water could pass freely through.

I was slightly more successful with Study A. After letting the bottle sit for a half hour, some of the larger particles like sand and gravel did indeed settle to the bottom. But most of the mud was still present, leaving the water at the top looking like slightly more dilute chocolate milk. “Well, the cave men probably drank plenty of muddy water, so I’m sure we’ll be OK,” I said. I carefully poured off the top two-thirds of the bottle into another Nalgene and chucked the sludge at the bottom. “But man, let’s remember to bring some Tang or powdered Gatorade next time. That’ll cover up the taste of this mud.”

We popped a chlorine tablet in each bottle and, while the tablets worked their germ-killing magic, set out in search for a better source of water for the remaining bottles. To get clear water, what we really needed was a mini-waterfall under which we could place a bottle, not a trickle that was running through the dirt. In order to make a waterfall, we needed to find a rock or some other structure with the right shape. I spotted the remains of a small aluminum and fiberglass structure close to camp and broke off a piece of right-angle aluminum extrusion. My plan was to stick this into the flow right below the patch of snow and use it to channel the water into a bottle.

As soon as I got back to camp to collect the empty bottles, I noticed that another group of hikers was stopped in the

middle of a long, thin snowfield a few hundred feet away from camp. They seemed to be hunched over with their water bottles on the ground. Could that be the actual water source? I walked over there, and sure enough, it was a regular creek flowing atop a sheet of ice. Better yet, the water was almost completely clear, apart from some sand and gravel. We can work with this, I thought to myself. I filled up all of the bottles, triumphantly brought them back to camp, and popped in some tablets. “This water will be much tastier,” I said to Eric.

During our quest for water, we had observed some curious developments at camp. A group of porters had ascended and had unloaded three tents and a bunch of gear at some of the vacant tent platforms. Then they turned around and descended. A little while later, some other climbers who looked like guides had arrived, and began setting up the tents. Then they started cooking dinner. Soon after they began dinner, about 8 clients trudged upwards, carrying minimal gear. “Wow, talk about luxury mountaineering,” I whispered to Eric.

After we cooked our own dinner and prepared for bed, we noticed that we were going to be in for a spectacular sunset. We had fantastic visibility to the west and, as the sun got lower, we noticed a telltale glare on the horizon. I had seen it before from the Presidential Range in the White Mountains on especially clear mornings. “Wait, is that the ocean?” I wondered aloud. According to the GPS, we were only about 80 miles from the Pacific, so it was indeed the ocean we spied. From camp, we could see across the entire width of Chile. We watched the sun until it plunged below the horizon in a magnificent rainbow of red, orange, and yellow.

THE CONDOR’S NEST

We packed up the next morning and resumed our ascent. After a few hours of hiking across familiar terrain, we reached Nido de Cóndores by lunchtime. When we arrived at the Grajales tent, we were greeted by a large group of about a dozen people. It turned out that it was one group of 8 and one group of 4. I approached the 8-person group and asked if they were on their way down, as it appeared.

“Yep, we’re heading down,” one guy said enthusiastically. “We came up the Vacas Valley Route.”

“Nice, did you make it to the top?” I asked.

“Well, three of us made it to the top yesterday around 1am,” he said, lowering his voice. “It was a 14-hour summit day. Man, that mountain is a b****!”

I continued speaking with this climber and with another (one from Missouri and one from the UK), who provided some helpful information. We learned that of the two camps above Nido, namely Berlín and Cólera (“Anger”), the latter was subject to ferocious winds, and Berlín was the better choice. Also, there was no liquid water available higher on the mountain. We would be melting snow from here on out. I couldn’t help but notice that the two climbers who enthusiastically offered advice were the only two clients who had summitted – the other clients didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t blame them.

After the 8-person group departed, we spoke briefly with the 4-person team. The two middle-aged clients looked disheveled and absolutely exhausted. We learned that they had successfully made it to the summit the previous day. We congratulated them and wished them luck on their descent.

Through our conversations with people up to this point, by our tally, only about a third of the people we saw had successfully reached the summit (a statistic that was later confirmed by the rangers when we checked out). From what we could tell, the weather had been great the past couple of days, so we didn’t believe the low success rate could be blamed on weather. It was probably mostly related to acclimatization and level of fitness, we suspected. It had everything to do with whether or not people took the mountain seriously.

As we excavated our gear from the giant pile of rocks, we were relieved to find that none of our bags had been opened. Some of the nearby bags, however, had not been so lucky. We noticed that other trash bags, probably from the previous climbing season, were completely shredded. We weren’t sure if it was due to severe wind or animals, but we began to suspect the latter.

With gusty winds at Nido, it was difficult to identify a suitable campsite.

Eventually, we spotted a large boulder that appeared to shelter some level ground in its lee. Unfortunately, that sheltered ground was covered with a giant snow drift, but it was really our only good choice. We began removing snow with our whippets (an integrated ice axe/trekking pole), and after bashing some stubborn ice with larger rocks, we finally had a platform just big enough to perch our Trango. The wind made it feel cold, even though temperatures were probably in the balmy 20F’s. The intense sunlight helped to melt away some of the remaining snow around our tent.

We had only ascended 1,500 ft, but we were exhausted, and soon got busy acclimating again from the comfort of the tent. We switched books with each other and read for the rest of the day. This would be the highest elevation at which we had ever camped, and I was initially a bit concerned that I wouldn’t acclimate properly. However, we awoke the next day feeling decent, with no concerning health symptoms, other than fatigue and lack of appetite.

For the remainder of the day, we rested, save for a short boondoggle in search of liquid water. My foray was unsuccessful, and we were resigned to keep melting snow. My hope had been to harvest liquid water from melting snow patches, but a combination of unsuitable topography and cloudy skies sabotaged my plans.

The most noteworthy occurrence on our rest day was the discovery of a small fox near camp. A fox, at 18,200 ft! We noticed it wandering around on the lower snowfields above camp, surely in search of food scraps leftover from our predecessors. Afterwards, we made sure to store our food with us in the tent, so that it would not fall victim to one of world’s highest-altitude canines.

Later that day, and on into the night, the wind came roaring in with a ferocity we hadn’t seen before on the trip. Although we were mostly sheltered behind the large boulder, a few of the stronger gusts threatened to squash our tent. Fortunately, our tent held up, although it was buffeted severely all night. With gusts that we estimated were well over 50 mph, we shuddered to think what it must have been like to camp at one of the higher camps like Cólera. Soon we’d cross paths with a few unlucky souls who had.

A TALE OF TWO CAMPS

By Day 9, our literature collection was running thin, and it was time to start hiking again. Our plan was to drop off

some gear at Berlín Camp, from which we’d go for the summit. With some food, snow gear, and fuel, we set off around 10am. By now, the altitude was really slowing us down. We were probably at a ratio of two breaths per step, and frequently had to stop to catch our breath, resting for support on our trekking poles. Despite the slow going, we reached Berlín (19,455 ft) within an hour and a half. We quickly deposited our gear amongst some rocks, piled on more rocks, then decided to take a peek at Cólera Camp.

Cólera and Berlín camps are separated by less than half a mile and a mere two hundred vertical feet or so, but the conditions could not have been more different. Whereas the winds at Berlín were mostly calm, as we approached Cólera, the winds rose to probably 50 mph. We struggled to keep our balance up a steep via-ferrata section just before Cólera. The moment that we crested the ridge, we were greeted with a gust of wind so strong it was like walking into a wall. We pushed ahead, towards the small steel shelter at Cólera, that must have been placed by a helicopter during a calm day. A sign inside the shelter declared that it was for emergency use only. The tent platforms nearby the shelter were completely empty, except for a few forlorn pieces of a tent held down by a rock: a tattered fragment here, a mangled pole there.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Eric.

We high-tailed it down the trail and returned to the comfort of our tent at Nido another hour later. At this point, we were almost out of literature, and starting to get concerned. What could we do to keep us entertained without anything to read? We had heard of fellow mountaineers making their own custom decks of cards or even Monopoly games. Or others who had memorized the ingredients and nutrition facts on the back of soup labels. Luckily, we weren’t quite at that point yet, but we resolved to bring more reading material next time. We cooked dinner, then got to bed early in preparation for the move up to Berlín.

THE PLAYERS IN THE SUMMIT GAME

The next morning, with sunny skies and calm winds, we packed up and headed towards Berlín Camp. We arrived to find our gear just where we had left it. As we set up our tent, we began to meet the players in the game for an attempt on the summit tomorrow. The first gentlemen we met was a Peruvian guide, who was leading a British client. The client had been part of a larger group that had failed to reach the summit a few days earlier. He was determined to get to the top, so he worked out a deal with the company to go with a private guide for maximum chances of success. He told us he would have just enough time before his flight left Mendoza in a couple of days.

He certainly couldn’t have connected with a more capable guide. The Peruvian guide had been to the summit of Aconcagua more than a dozen times, had done considerable mountaineering in the Himalayas, and had climbed Everest.

The other players in the game would be five-person group from Zimbabwe consisting of two fathers and their combined three sons. Ben and James, the two adults, relayed to us their harrowing experience a few nights earlier.

“We were camping a Cólera a few nights ago and the wind was ferocious,” Ben said. “In the middle of the night, our tent got ripped to shreds, and we had to make a run for it to the emergency shelter. Our gear was flying everywhere, and it was hard to find all of it in the dark. But I think we got most of it. The remains of our tent are still up there, being held down by some rocks. We were planning to summit the next day, but we were just too exhausted. We retreated down to Nido, and luckily our logistics company let us stay in one of their guided tents. Since our tent is busted, they suggested we could stay in one of the wooden huts up here.”

“Wow, that must have been absolutely terrifying,” I said. “I remember that night, the wind was insane down at Nido and we hoped that nobody was in trouble up at Cólera.”

It was clear that these guys were tough. They had survived a death-defying experience at nearly 20,000 ft on Aconcagua, had regrouped, and were ready to give it another shot. Not to mention, the youngest of their children was probably only around 12 years of age. This was a much higher level of determination than I would have expected from any middle school student. As we would learn later in the trip, their determination was not limited to mountaineering, and in fact this was only a mere taste of it.

Being tentless, their only option was to stay in one of the wooden shelters at Berlín camp. When we had arrived at

camp, Eric and I had quickly checked out the three shelters, and they were all unfortunately in a deplorable state. One of them had been burned, another was being used as a latrine, and the third was filled with more than a thousand pounds of snow. Nevertheless, Ben, James, and their children were busy excavating the snow from the third shelter using their ice axes.

There were a few other tents scattered around camp, all of which belonged to people who intended to be players in tomorrow’s summit game: three Koreans, two from the UK, and two Americans. We noticed one vacant tent next to ours that didn’t seem to be occupied.

“Wow, I hope this person isn’t on the summit now,” Eric said. “Look at how rough the weather is down here.” The wind had picked up and the clouds had rolled in. Before long, it started snowing, leaving a thin dusting on the ground.

“I think it’s the Russian climber,” I said to Eric. The other day, we had met a few Russian trekkers at Berlín who said their friend was planning to summit soon. “Not to stereotype here, but if the toughness of our Russian friends in MITOC is any indication, then he’s going to be just fine.”

In the early evening, a solo climber arrived in camp and approached the empty tent. It turned out he was the Russian climber in question and had just reached the summit. It had to have been a rough day on the summit, and he was probably the only one who reached the top, but he was cheerful and seemed completely unfazed.

Around dinnertime, two rangers appeared and began asking people if they were planning to head up tomorrow. Pretty much everyone was. They recorded the nationalities of everyone and the number of climbers in their group. When they checked in with the Zimbabweans, it appeared that the rangers had never actually heard of the country of Zimbabwe – at least, not the English pronunciation of the country. They simply recorded it as “Africa.”

That night, I don’t think either of us got much sleep. Due to a combination of excitement, nervousness, and anticipation for summit day, along with stomach discomfort and the lasting diuretic effects of Diamox, I tossed and turned all night.

SUMMIT DAY

The first group to emerge from their shelter was the Zimbabweans. When we first saw their light around 5 am, we poked our heads outside to check on the conditions. It was still a bit cloudy and pretty cold and windy, so we decided to sleep a little bit longer in the hopes that conditions would improve. By 8am, the wind had stopped and the sun had come out, so we were go for launch. By that time, the camp had nearly cleared out. The Zimbabweans, plus the UK dude with Peruvian guide, were all headed upwards. The Russian dude had left. The Koreans had apparently bailed. The two other two-person groups were hanging out in their tents, apparently delaying their summit attempt until the next day due to the non-optimal conditions a few hours earlier.

We were off and moving by 8:30am and figured that we would have plenty of time to reach the summit and be back in Berlín by the end of the day. We certainly hoped that we could beat the 14-hour mark set by the other group we had spoken with.

By 10:30am, we had caught up with James and his son. They were moving upwards, slowly but surely.

“The rangers said they’re closing the summit at 2pm,” James told us, gesturing to two hikers a short distance above them. “They said that there’s bad weather moving in this afternoon. I don’t think we’ll make it to the top in time, but you guys will.”

“Really? We heard that the weather was supposed to be great today,” I said.

My initial feeling from hearing this news was total discouragement. The rangers were going to take this away from us, I thought with dismay. But it didn’t take long before the discouragement turned into determination. The rangers had simply delivered us a challenge: let’s see if you can get to the top by 2pm. It was time to shift into top gear.

I patted his son on the back. “You’re one of the toughest kids I know,” I said to him. “You’ve got this.”

We picked up the pace, trying to close the gap between us and the rangers. By the time we caught up with them, they had stopped for a quick break at the remains of the Independencia Refuge at about 20,900 ft. Here, we spotted Ben and his two sons, who were waiting for James and his son to catch up. We offered them some words of encouragement, waved to the rangers, chugged some water, scarfed down some food, and kept going.

“As long as we stay ahead of those rangers,” Eric said, “there’s nobody that can turn us around.”

We wound up the switchbacks and soon began a traverse along a wide scree slope. The slope had been dusted with snow overnight, and the trail bed itself contained several inches of soft snow. Soon, the wind picked up and the wind chill plummeted. With temperatures below zero Fahrenheit and fierce winds, wind chills were likely around -20F. When we caught up with the Peruvian guide and UK client, we noticed that the client was wearing a full down suit – the kind that people wear on Himalayan expeditions. It didn’t quite seem cold enough for that, but we nevertheless donned all of our remaining layers.

The going grew even slower as we traversed the slope. The soft snow combined with the loose scree decimated our efficiency: we would take one step up and slide about 0.8 steps backwards. It was exhausting work, but it eased a little bit after we strapped on our crampons. We eventually passed a group of 5 Argentinian climbers that we hadn’t seen before and, with unbroken trail ahead of us, soon found ourselves at the tip of the spear.

TO ADVANCE OR RETREAT?

At the end of the long traverse, we reached La Cueva (“The Cave”) – the last significant landmark before the summit. A few days earlier, we had heard an account from another climber who had turned around at La Cueva, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. After La Cueva, the route steepens dramatically, climbing the last 1,000 vertical feet up La Canaleta (“The Gutter”). From La Cueva, you can’t quite see the summit, and it’s easy to feel that you still have a long way to go.

As we rested at La Cueva, we noticed that the rangers were making progress and would arrive in less than 15 minutes. We had to keep ahead of them. It was at this point that my confidence that I would make it to the top began to erode. It wasn’t due to anything particularly concerning like a headache, coughing, vomiting, but was just simply an overwhelming feeling of sheer exhaustion. The sleep deprivation, lack of food, low oxygen, and expedited schedule had all taken their toll. It was similar to the feeling that I had had on Elbrus in 2016. On that hike, I had considered turning around, but managed to tough it out to the summit.

To reduce weight, Eric proposed stashing some gear at La Cueva and alternating carrying one pack. This suggestion, coupled with a quick break to drink and eat, helped me to turn the corner. Keenly aware of the motivating effects of listening to the right music, I inserted my headphones and searched for the right music on my phone. A few years earlier, when we were 75% of the way done with a 55-mile Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim hike in the Grand Canyon in a day, hours after the sun had set and we were beginning our final long grueling climb in the dark, I had hit a similar wall. But as soon as I turned on some music, it was like I was struck by a bolt of lightning. I was suddenly refreshed and hungry for more miles. With this experience in mind, I searched for some rock and roll, and turned on “Born to be Wild.” I only hoped that we would reach the top before my rock and roll playlist ran out.

We set out from La Cueva and began up La Canaleta. We had the choice to either remove our crampons and scramble up the rocks or keep the crampons and make our way up a steep snow slope. We opted for the latter, and made good, albeit slow, progress. Soon, we reached the end of the snowfield and had no choice but to ditch the crampons. It looked like (and we sure hoped) that the rest of the route was all rock, so we left the crampons behind and started making our way up the steep and sometimes loose rocks.

Our pace slowed even more. My rhythm was as follows: take four steps, lean on the trekking poles, breathe four breaths, then repeat. We would spend about five seconds walking, followed by fifteen seconds of resting, giving a duty cycle of about 25%.

By the time I ran out of rock and roll music, we could taste the summit. We looked around us at all of the mountains that had seemed so daunting during our ascent. Now, we were looking down at them. We could see the knife-edge ridge extending SW of the main summit to the gnarly-looking south summit. We could peer down the glacier thousands of feet. This was the intimidating wall of snow and ice that we had first spotted from a distance nearly two weeks earlier.

LA CUMBRE

At the moment we reached the summit, at 1:06pm on December 19^th, 2017, I think I was listening to the Little Mermaid, from a playlist that Amanda had given me. It wasn’t exactly the music you’d associate with rock and ice, but its peacefulness was actually quite fitting for the pleasant conditions that we found ourselves immersed in on the summit.

At the summit of Aconcagua was a large, nearly-flat expanse of loose, dry rock, roughly the size of two or three tennis courts. Apart from a few snow patches, you could have comfortably walked around barefoot in a few spots. With the sun shining brightly directly overhead, temperatures in the 20F’s, and not the merest puff of wind, it felt downright balmy on the summit – not what we had expected, given the frigid conditions we had experienced below. From our lofty perch, we could see much of Chile and Argentina, with respectable mountains all around us.

Unfortunately, we knew that our time to revel in summit glory was very limited. From experience, we knew that each minute that we spent at this altitude, we were getting closer to immobilizing altitude sickness, and would have to descend very soon. After snapping photos and videos on all of our cameras (for maximum redundancy), we began our descent, having spent a grand total of nine minutes on the summit of the Western Hemisphere.

For a short period of time, we estimated that we were probably the highest people (on land) anywhere in the world. The only mountain range with peaks taller than Aconcagua is the Himalayas.

 

about 22,841 ft, there probably wasn’t anyone higher.

On the descent, we moved almost five times faster. We weren’t cardio-limited on the descent; rather, our speed was limited by how quickly we could safely navigate the rocks and ice. Near the bottom of La Canaleta, we caught up with the rangers, who were neck-and-neck with the Ben and his two sons. We waved to the rangers and told them that the weather on the summit was perfect. We hoped that they would relent and give the other climbers on the mountain a fair shot at the summit. The rangers gave us a thumbs up, and we continued our descent. A little while later, we reached the Argentinian climbers, followed by the Peruvian guide, with his UK client literally in tow on a short rope. Finally, we met up with James and his son, and wished them luck.

After grabbing the gear we had stashed at La Cueva, we continued our rapid descent. Within 75 minutes of leaving the summit, I was back at Berlín, with Eric close behind. We quickly packed up our tent and gear and high-tailed it out of there. Many groups chose to camp at Berlín after their summit day, but we knew that we’d feel better if we descended as much as possible. We proceeded swiftly downwards, reaching Nido within 30 minutes, and stopped briefly to grab some more gear that we had left behind.

THE KING OF THE SKY

As I approached the rockpile atop our gear, I immediately froze. There was a gigantic bird larger than a turkey standing nearby. The bird had a head that looked like a vulture, with white and black feathers. It was an Andean condor – the largest flying bird in the world. It was incredible to see a bird this big at this elevation and so close. Next to the condor was a smaller bird, with black wings, white legs, a yellow face, and a fearsome beak similar to that of an eagle. We couldn’t believe that these birds had been able to even find the camp. Maybe they ate mice or fox? And the mice or fox ate hiker food? And hiker food was the base of this mini-ecosystem?

Eager to avoid scaring away these magnificent creatures, we gingerly removed our stashed gear, stuffed it in our already gigantic packs, and kept descending. By now, my feet were severely blistered. My double-boots, which had felt so comfortable during the cold, slow ascent, were supremely uncomfortable in the warmer temperatures, with a heavy pack, and loose rocks. We aimed for the scree-glissade lines that we had identified a few days earlier, which sped our descent immensely. Finally, by 5pm, we crossed the finish line – the last few penitentes – and were back at Plaza de Mulas. The terrain that had taken us seven days to ascend had just been descended in 3 hours and 45 minutes.

TIME FOR PIZZA?

We declared that it was finally time to splurge a little and resolved to each purchase a pizza from Grajales. We approached Pablo, base camp manager for Grajales, and expressed our request.

“We’d like to buy two pizzas to celebrate,” I proclaimed triumphantly. “How much would that cost?”

“It’s $30 per pizza,” he replied.

I tried to hide my astonishment. That was about twice as much as I had expected. In our experience, most supermarket food in South America is considerably cheaper than in the US. Then again, here at 14,100 ft, and 18 miles from the nearest road, we weren’t exactly at a supermarket. “How big are they?”

By the gesture of his hands, he suggested that they were about the size of a medium you might buy at Pizza Hut in the US.

I turned to Eric to inquire his opinion on the matter. “I’m OK with our freeze-dried food,” he said quietly.

Although I had really been looking forward to some comfort food in the form of pizza, rather than one more night of freeze-dried spaghetti, I had to agree with Eric. It just wasn’t worth it. Regardless of how hungry we were, to us, it would be morally objectionable, a true shock to the conscience, to pay $30 for a medium pizza. We politely declined Pablo’s offer, and inquired about another important matter.

“We’re planning to take a rest day here in order to recover, but we have some gear that we’d like to send down with the mules,” I said. “Do you think they’ll be able to deliver it to Horcones tomorrow?”

“Sure, there will be enough time,” Pablo replied. He consulted the laminated price list hanging on the wall of the large tent. “It’s $250 USD per 50 kg.”

“Wait, I thought the $250 USD that we already paid for the two 25 kg boxes was for round-trip travel?”

“No, that was just one-way,” he replied.

Ouch. That was a real bummer. We had mistakenly thought that we’d paid for the luxury of a lightened pack not only

for the hike in, but also for the hike out. We had overlooked the “one-way” clause of the agreement (and I later confirmed this in the price list we had received before the trip). That meant that we had another tough decision to make. On the hike in, we had each sent about 22 kg of gear and food ahead with the mules and had carried moderately heavy packs. Now, we had quite a bit less food, but still a considerable amount of gear.

“OK, we’ll think about it and get back to you,” I said to Pablo. We walked back to the mountain of food and gear at our campsite and weighed our options.

We estimated that if we carried everything, our packs would both be somewhere between 60-80 lbs, and we’d have about 15-20 miles to cover to get back to the trailhead.

“Let’s think about it this way,” I said to Eric. “If someone offered to pay you $125 to hike 18 miles with a 60 lb backpack rather than a 10 lb backpack, would you do it? That’s basically what it comes down to.”

Eric thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I’d do it,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “There’s more honor in doing it that way.”

It was settled. There would be no splurging on dinner and no chickening out on the descent. We would do both with honor and save some money for a future expedition.

The freeze-dried spaghetti probably didn’t taste as good as the pizzas would have but, with our appetites on the rebound, at least we were able to stomach a full serving. Exhausted from the long day, we fell asleep almost immediately.

THE FINAL REST DAY

By skipping the rest day at Confluencia during the ascent, we now found ourselves with a buffer day. With blisters to

heal and strength to rebuild before shouldering our heavy loads, we decided it prudent to take a rest day at Plaza de Mulas. Having depleted our reading material, we went in search of alternative forms of amusement. Across the valley, we spotted the giant hotel that had been built a few years ago to serve climbers and trekkers. Apparently, it had been constructed using materials transported by mule and helicopter and must have taken a very long time to build. We wandered over to check it out and were surprised to see that it wasn’t open yet. We saw some workers sitting around and guessed that they were still getting it ready for the climbing season, which typically peaked a few weeks later.

We walked over to a giant boulder with an excellent view of the summit as well as Plaza de Mulas, laid down in its shade, and proceeded to take a long nap. Afterwards, we wandered to the mouth of a large glacier next to camp, which had clearly retreated hundreds of feet in the past several years. We orbited back to the tent in the mid-afternoon, where we resumed napping. Just before we went to bed, we bumped into the family of three Argentinians who had been aiming to

summit. It turned out that the two brothers (one of whom was a Grajales guide) had made it to the top, but their father didn’t quite make it all of the way. It was nevertheless an impressive feat, because he had still made it above an elevation of 20,000 ft.

We enjoyed our fifth and final night at Plaza de Mulas, capturing an awesome time lapse of the sunset and sunrise over Aconcagua.

In anticipation of a long day, we woke up early and quickly packed up all of our gear. The packs were indeed quite heavy but, we reassured ourselves, it’s basically all down hill so it shouldn’t be too bad, right? On the way out of camp, we happened to meet up with our Zimbabwean friends. It turned out that they had all made it to the top! They thanked us for helping to persuade the rangers to relax their 2pm cutoff time the day we summited.

BACK TO SANTIAGO

The hike out was brutal. We’d later find out that we were each carrying about 70 lbs on our backs across a distance of about 18 miles. We checked out at the ranger station and soon caught a Grajales shuttle back to our hotel in Penitentes.

The next day, we waited in front of our hotel for another Grajales shuttle, which would take us to the Chile/Argentina border. Just before the shuttle showed up, lo and behold, our Zimbabwean friends appeared.

“Mind if we join you for part of the ride?” Ben asked. “We’d like to check out Puente del Inca.”

“No problem,” Eric replied, “there should be plenty of room in the shuttle.”

Puente del Inca was a nearby geological attraction. It was a natural rock bridge that had formed when a rockslide covered a snowfield hundreds of years ago. Minerals in the ground water had cemented the rocks together, so that when the snow melted away, a bridge was left behind. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to check it out.

As we chatted with Ben, James, and their kids in the shuttle, we learned a little bit more about their story. It turned out that, up until a few years ago, Ben and his family had been farmers in Zimbabwe. Then, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe began urging black Zimbabweans to steal land from the white Zimbabwean landowners. Although Ben’s father-in-law had legally bought the farm a few decades earlier, and managed it well, his farm was invaded multiple times, and he, along with Ben, were severely beaten on multiple occasions. Although they brought to an international court their case against Mugabe and won, their land was nevertheless confiscated. His family was still fighting for justice. Ben produced a fascinating and award-winning documentary about his family’s experience in “Mugabe and the White African,” (by Ben Freeth), which we watched after our trip. Truly, we learned, Ben and his family had fought more difficult battles than their ascent of Aconcagua.

After saying goodbye to Ben, James, and their sons, Eduardo from Grajales dropped us off at the Chile/Argentina border, just before the checkpoint. We stepped out, proceeded through the various border checkpoints and passport controls, and within an hour were back in Chile. We waited another hour before being picked up by a pre-arranged taxi that would bring us all the way to our hotel in Santiago. Along the way back to Santiago, the taxi driver stopped by the Portillo Hotel for a quick break. The majestic and prestigious hotel was part of one of the most extensive ski resorts in the country. As it turned out, the older gentlemen who had been riding with us in the taxi was the father of our driver as well as the lead chef at the hotel. As he showed us around, we were all greeted with extreme deference by the hotel staff. “You’ll have to come back some day that I’m cooking and I’ll make you some traditional Chilean cuisine!” he declared.

We hopped back into the car and drove for another hour and a half, before the driver dropped off his father in another town along the way. After another hour of driving, the driver dropped us off at our hotel near the airport. All of the pieces of the transportation puzzle had fallen into place. We had managed to get from the trailhead to Santiago without any complications or delays.

ONE MORE RENDEZVOUS

We had one more mission to accomplish with the remainder of our final afternoon and evening in Chile. One of our dad’s former English as a second language (ESL) students, named Gabriel, lived in Santiago, and we wanted to meet him. Our dad connected us with Gabriel via Facebook. Coincidentally, today was Gabriel’s sister’s birthday and his family was hosting a party, so it would be a great celebration all the way around. Per Gabriel’s suggestion, we swung by a supermarket on the way over and picked up some chocolates for his sister. We also had a couple of summit rocks to give to his family.

We walked down a quiet street lined with beautiful houses and knocked on the gate. Gabriel opened the door, greeting us with a friendly smile. “It’s great to meet you!” he said in excellent English. We then met his father, mother, and sister, who all greeted us warmly. His mother led us to a table filled with all sorts of delicious snacks – appetizers for the party to come. After chatting with Gabriel and his family for a while, a few other guests began to arrive and soon we started kicking around the soccer ball in his yard.

Soccer – ahem, fútbol – was clearly the universal language. It didn’t matter how much English or Spanish you spoke – everyone knew how to pass the soccer ball. By the time that I had to leave to catch my flight to the airport, there were probably 10 of us kicking around the ball and having a great time. One of Gabriel’s young cousins, who was a Chilean taekwondo champion, put on show for all of the guests, after which the yard erupted with applause. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for any of the food, but Eric later told me that it was delicious.

My plan was to take an Uber back to the hotel, quickly grab my stuff, then head to the airport for my 11pm flight. Unfortunately, I had put too much confidence in the reliability of Uber, and the first couple of drivers canceled. I requested another driver, and thankfully one accepted. But, based on the live map, it looked like he was having trouble finding the house. Aware that I might miss my flight, several of Gabriel’s family members fanned out across the neighborhood in search of the driver. Eventually, they managed to flag him down. As I hopped in the car, one of Gabriel’s uncles explained to the driver the seriousness of my situation and the need to hurry. I waved goodbye to Eric (he was staying in Chile another week to climb the high point) and to Gabriel’s family, and we sped away.

Due to a combination of road closures and a few wrong turns by the driver, I arrived at the hotel much later than expected. The Uber driver said he’d wait for me outside while I grabbed my stuff, then take me to the airport. When I returned, I discovered with dismay that he had left. I tried frantically to request another Uber and explained my situation to the hotel staff. Fortunately, a kind Indian tourist on holiday overheard my plight, and offered to drive me the two miles to the airport. I graciously accepted his generous offer, and I was at the airport in ten minutes flat. After checking my bags and going through passport control, I arrived at my gate with about 15 minutes to spare.

I arrived in San Francisco the next morning. Over the course of the next week, I proceeded to erase my calorie deficit, which had caused me to lose seven pounds during the trip, by eating plentiful Chinese food with Amanda’s side of the family during the annual Christmastime family reunion.

Cool summit timelapse video: