One night early in the trip Paul and I were chatting with our guide, killing time before heading to bed. Out of the blue I asked, "What's summit day like?" After a long pause our guide replied, "It's f-ing cold." Silence. I was already "f-ing cold" and we were only at Camp One! "Really?" I asked. I think sensing he may have dampened our spirits our guide paused again before responding: "Well, I guess it's not that cold . . . unless it's windy." "Oh, OK," I said, and quickly changed the topic. As we walked back to our tent later that night Paul looked at me and said, "Mike, if there's one word I'd use to describe this mountain it's 'windy.'"
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| The proof. |
By some miracle the weather on summit day turned out perfect. Bluebird skies and no wind at all.
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I, however, felt terrible. We woke at 5:00 a.m. to eat, dress, strike hand and foot warmers, etc., and by 6:45 a.m. we were moving up the mountain. By 7:00 a.m. I was nauseous and believed I was going to die. I have no idea why, though it may have been due to lack of sleep. We spent the night before summit day above 20,000 feet and at that altitude the temperature drops well below freezing once the sun goes down. That meant we had to sleep with everything we needed for our attempt -- including our boots, water bottles, clothes, etc. -- inside our sleeping bags (which themselves didn't offer the most comfortable sleeping arrangement) and needless to say I didn't get much sleep. But I slept little all week and felt fine -- so maybe summit day just wasn't my day.
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I have to admit that as I result of my mild AMS I entertained the thought of quitting about every five minutes until we reached the summit. And I didn't take many pictures. In fact, these are the only two pictures I have of the ascent, the first being taking immediately after leaving High Camp and the second on the summit:
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| 6:45 a.m. sunrise before setting out. |
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| My first summit photo. South Face of Aconcagua in the background. |
After laying spread-eagled across a rock for five minutes I managed to pull myself together and enjoy the experience. I said before the trip that I didn't care much about getting to the summit and I stand by my statement. Paul refused to believe this and demanded that I stop 100 feet from the summit to prove my point. I declined but still think trying to get to the top was way more fun than standing there taking pictures.
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Despite not taking pictures on the way up I did manage to document the experience with a series of tent dispatches and pictures on the descent:
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| A glimpse of the trail leading from High Camp to the Cave. |
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| The base of the Canaleta, located just before the steep ascent to the summit. |
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| South Face of Aconcagua with team members in background. |
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The route from High Camp to the summit is fairly well established. There are five stages and you rest for around ten minutes at the end of each stage. Resting sounds pleasant but is perhaps the most miserable time of the day; in fact, most of our conversations concerned frozen toes and rather than resting I was actually forcing myself to eat (mostly GU) and drink (mostly electrolyte-laced water), praying that we'd start moving again so that I could warm up. In the end our day lasted about seven hours and we felt lucky to be back in our sleeping bags by around 3:00 p.m.
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| Me at 3:02 p.m. Photo courtesy of Paul. |
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Thankfully we had three excellent guides to help us along the way and keep us safe. I actually joked earlier in the week that my plan for getting to the summit was to pass out half way and have Thomas, our local Argentine guide, carry me on his broad shoulders to the summit. I was about one and half times his weight but pretty sure he was up to the task. And here I am with Lakpa Rita Sherpa, another one of our guides (and with over a dozen summits of Everest to his credit, I'm sure he could have carried me too):
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| Picture taken at 3:01 p.m., one minute before I passed out and Lakpa descended 6,000 feet to Base Camp. |
The next day we did the entire ascent in reverse (though we traversed the mountain, rather than following the same path we took on the approach), taking approximately six hours to go down what it took us two and a half weeks to get up.
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| The day after. |
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| On the descent Paul sports the classic look of the mountaineer: Sunscreen face. |
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| The tents of another hopeful team much lower on the mountain. |
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| Plaza de Mulas: Base Camp on the other side. |
I said in a previous post that thoughts of food do a great job of bringing you down mountains. And thus the entire descent I dreamed of pizza. Upon arriving at Plaza de Mulas (Base Camp on the West side of the mountain) I was not disappointed:
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| Its arrival marked the greatest moment of my life. |
We spent the night at Plaza de Mulas -- sleeping on the floor of our group tent -- before setting out at 7:00 a.m. the next day for an 19-mile trek, similar to the one we did on the approach, to the town of Penitientes. From there it was back to Mendoza for a much needed celebration.
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| Our sleeping quarters for the night. |
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| Same. |
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| Plaza de Mulas by night. |
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