I
had a slight headache before bed last night, so got an ibuprofen from Tomi.
Slept well until 5.30, after which I couldn't get back to sleep, in part
because Jeremy was still fast asleep and snoring. Felt nauseous after breakfast
and threw up the two cups of tea that I'd drunk, but managed to keep down the
food. Tomi supplied an anti-nausea tablet, which helped. I also decided to
start using chlorine tablets in my water. Up here, there aren't any meltwater
streams, so we're drinking melted snow. Lito has advised us several times that
it doesn't taste good and we should add some orange flavouring to it, but I
prefer to drink water (and don't want the hassle of cleaning out my
Camelbak after the trip). Our friends Damien and Ali, who climbed Aconcagua in
2011, had a bad reaction to the water at Confluencia and advised us to take
enough chlorine tablets to cover the whole trip. We hadn't needed them to date
and I was gearing up for an extended bout of mockery on our return, but now I’m
glad I have them. It’s probably psychological; the taste of the tablet is very
faint, but it’s enough to convince my brain that this water is somehow
different from water without the tablets [1].
Anyway,
Tomi's tablet did the job and, despite feeling pretty grim, I was ready to go. As
an aside, the only reason I can remember this incident is that I wrote it down.
I know that I was feeling queasy for most of the time above 5,500m, because I
remember asking Tomi for more pills, but I had no recollection of being that
bad until I read my diary for the day. I do remember feeling much better at
altitude this time round than I did when I was over 5,000m in the Khumbu on the
way to EBC, and being sure that I had coped better. For instance, after EBC I
was determined that I wasn't going to go any higher, because I was sure I would
feel grim. But despite having objectively worse symptoms (I never threw up in
the Khumbu [6]) , my memory of Aconcagua is that I coped better with altitude.
Perhaps it’s just a matter of knowing what to expect.
The
climb out of Nido is up a dauntingly steep-looking slope that we’d seen people
descending the night before. Tackling a slope like this at altitude, your body
goes through three distinct phases. First, the anaerobic phase. Your body at
rest is nicely oxygenated, not quite as it would be at sea level, but enough
that you’re not feeling much stress. The initial bit of the climb uses up this
oxygen, and you just have time to think “Hey, this isn't so bad” before you've used it up, about five steps later. Then there’s that transitional bit where
you’re switching from anaerobic to aerobic respiration. You’ll know it if you've ever been jogging: that bit where you feel exhausted, burned out and want to
stop, and you’d stop if you weren't an embarrassingly short distance from where
you started. There are two problems with this at altitude. The first is that it
takes a really long time – what feels like several minutes - to get through it.
I’ll come onto the second one later. Finally, you get into aerobic respiration
as best you can and find that you can keep going steadily for an indefinite
period. This is actually quite cool because it dawns on you that you’re already
at extreme altitude, every step takes you another ten, fifteen, twenty
centimetres further into that extreme zone, and if you just keep doing this –
which you’re sure you can – then before too long you’ll be on the summit and
there probably won’t be anyone else standing anywhere higher than you. At this
point, under normal circumstances, your brain might be inclined to mentally
high-five itself and go “Heck yeah! You’re a mountaineer, baby! You’re a high
altitude athlete!” but this would require too much oxygen, so mostly what you
feel is a kind of determined satisfaction. [8] It is at this point that the
second problem kicks in.
Something
changes. This happens surprisingly frequently. Maybe you stop to take a photo,
or you’re crossing a rocky bit that needs you to use a different set of muscles,
or you miss your footing. Maybe you just took a sip from your Camelbak [10]. Suddenly,
you are out of aerobic balance and back to stage two – except that you didn't have any anaerobic capacity to spare so all you can do is struggle on and
breathe harder [11] until you recover.
At
the top of the initial slope, we paused for another stunning view of the Andes,
and then pressed on up another stiff slope. This one took us past bare rock, I
think for the first time on the climb. Occasionally we would pass a patch of
distinctive, and very soft, yellow sandstone which crumbled under our feet. It
looked like it had the remains of razorshells embedded it – striking evidence
that the rocks we were walking over today, nearly 6,000m above the surface of
the sea, had once been under it.
We
arrived quite suddenly at the crest of the slope, and a slightly incongruous
wooden hut. I was taken aback when Lito told us that this was the Berlin refuge
– it didn't seem that we had climbed nearly enough to reach it. We stopped for
a welcome snack [12], and I felt that it was only appropriate to make a
rendition of “Take my breath away”. This was not received well by the group
[13]. I briefly considered continuing along the Top Gun soundtrack by
suggesting to Jeremy that Vicky had, perhaps, lost that loving feeling, or
switching from a song by Berlin to one about Berlin (“Wilkommen” from Cabaret).
Fortunately, while for me the first symptom of high altitude cerebral edema
would seem to be wanting to sing, the second is not being able to remember the
lyrics.
Around
a rock bluff from the hut was Berlin campsite, but Lito prefers to camp at Camp
Colera (literal translation: “Angry Camp”. No idea why it’s called that), which
is only a little distance away along a short traverse that concludes in a
scramble up some rocks. At sea level, this would be a doddle even with a heavy
pack, but at this altitude it is frankly terrifying. It’s a struggle to work
out where the footholds are for your suddenly unwieldy plastic boots, and the
fear of falling is accentuated by the fear that, having fallen, you could slide
down the slope for quite a way before stopping. Fortunately, someone has fixed
a wire handhold along the length of the scramble.
We
arrive to another mountain plateau with another stunning view, and veg out in
our tents until dinner time. For the first time, we are sharing with other groups
[14], but Tomi and the porters have secured a decent spot.
Over
dinner – I didn't record what it was, but it might have been soup, frankfurters
and mash again – we discuss plans for tomorrow. The fact that we've come up to
Colera means that tomorrow will be our summit day – if we were waiting for a
weather window, we would do it at Nido – and Lito tells us that they will wake
us at 3 am for a 4 am start. Apparently a snowstorm is approaching, and Lito
wants to give us the best chance of getting up and back again ahead of it. He
tells us to prepare for twelve to fourteen hours of walking, and they hand out
chocolate, biscuits and sweets for us to have for breakfast. I grab a big bar
of chocolate, knowing that biscuits will be too dry for me early in the
morning. I also have a secret weapon stashed in my pack: three slabs of Kendal
Mint Cake [15].
That
evening I made a provisional list of what I was going to wear and carry the
next day. In the end, I simplified things a lot, particularly after having
listened to a loud American guide giving an extended briefing to his clients,
who were camped next to us. Anyway,
with a 3 am start ahead of us, I wanted to try to get some sleep so it was
lights out at 10pm to try to get some shut-eye. But that is another story.
[1]
Learned Taste Aversion, as we psychologists [2] call it, is actually one of the
strongest mind-over-matter effects we know of. If you feed a rat (or the mammal
of your choice) a new taste, and then inject it with something that makes it
ill, it will avoid that taste and it’s very hard to persuade it that it’s OK.
It’s a sensible trait to have evolved. If those berries make you sick, don’t
eat ‘em again. I suspect that, if we’re honest, many of us have an example of
it in our lives. I, for instance, won’t touch Bacardi after a particularly
unpleasant experience when I was younger. [5]
[3]
Bet you wouldn't have guessed if I hadn't told you.
[4]
Psychology being psychology, this is long enough ago that everything I learned
will by now have been accepted into orthodoxy, discredited, forgotten,
reinvented, rediscovered, accepted into orthodoxy again and is probably even
now on the way to being discredited once again.
[5]
But not, sadly, so young that I shouldn't have known better.
[6]
A phrase which sounds much less savoury when I read it back than when it was in
my head. But, as I can only imagine Mike Batt thought when he wrote Katie Melua's
song Half-way Up The Hindu Kush[7], it’s out there now, and I’m sticking with
it.
[7]
I still find it hard to believe that there is a song out there with the
repeated refrain “Thank you for taking me half-way up the Hindu Kush”. It’s a
sort of trompe l'oeil of Carry On grade smut. You know that the song does not
at any point include the words “Khyber Pass”, but your brain knows that that
was exactly what he was thinking,
with the same kind of certainty that led Margaret Thatcher to introduce the
poll tax. I mean, I even typed “Khyber Pass” initially as the name of the song,
and had to correct myself when I started typing the lyric.
[8]
It is possible that Americans on Aconcagua actually do think this kind of
stuff, which may be why so many stupid and avoidable tragedies seem to happen
to Americans. [9]
[9]
Though the statistician in me is at pains to point out that it’s more likely to
be because Americans make up the largest percentage of foreign climbers, and
therefore the largest group who have both limited exposure to Aconcagua horror
stories and limited Spanish.
[10]
This is surprisingly hard to do at altitude, because you have to stop breathing
while you take a sip, and when each breath gets you around half the amount of
oxygen that you’re used to, that is a Bad Thing. Even worse, you then have to
blow the water in the tube back into the reservoir, because if you don’t it
will freeze. So not only do you have to stop breathing, but you have to expend
effort and get air out of your lungs. Taking a sip of water can leave you
gasping for breath for several seconds afterwards. But you do it anyway,
because while gasping is a Bad Thing, it is temporary, whereas dehydration is a
Worse Thing, because it can ruin your whole trip.
[11]
That’s hyperventilating. Which is bad, remember, because of alkalosis.
[12]
The favourite among the assortment of sweets and biscuits that we’d been handed
was a sort of Wagon Wheel (remember them?) but with dulce de leche in place of marshmallow.
This is an inspired change, and somehow makes the snack feel considerably more
suitable for adults.
[13]
Those of you who have had the misfortune to hear me sing will understand why.
But I should make it clear that while in my hands (or rather vocal chords) the
word “rendition” carries overtones of both the original, musical and more modern,
extradition-and-torture-tinged meaning of the word, my services have not at any
point been deployed by the CIA. Some things are simply too inhumane to
consider.
[14]
There’s also no toilet niche. The solution is a little package that contains a
bag with chemicals, a few sheets of paper, a hygienic wipe, and another bag to
put it all into when you are done. It’s a little fiddly but keeps the mountain
clean (the porters will take it down in the rubbish bags when we break camp).
Sadly, it’s clear from the state of the various rock niches behind the camp
that not everyone is this fastidious. This is a real shame. At this altitude,
above the glaciers with very little animal life and not enough warmth for
bacteria to do their thing, waste of all kinds can hang around for years. It is
a big issue on Aconcagua, which is why they've instituted the idea that you
bring your waste down with you (remember the numbered bags?). Unfortunately, as
long as you bring down something the park authorities have know way of telling
whether you've brought down everything.
[15]
Complete with testimonial from the 1953 Everest Expedition – “the only
complaint was that there wasn't more of it”. I can see why. It’s easy to carry
and eat, has a strong taste that doesn't pall at altitude, and boosts your
blood sugar instantly. On the EBC trek we were struggling up Kala Patthar (the
highest climb of the trip, which gives you great views of Everest and the
valley) and I realised that we had only been given a cup of tea and a biscuit
for breakfast, and everybody’s blood sugar was low. I started giving little
bits of Kendal Mint Cake to the group and it was almost cartoon-like how people
would eat it and immediately shoot off up the hill. Like Road Runner. But in
slow motion and with walking poles.
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