Sorry for being a bit slow with this post - I'll try and get another one out this evening and get caught up a bit.
On 6th Jan, we did an "acclimatisation walk" to climb Cerro Bonete. At 5,005m, it doesn't sound that high, but it's still 650m above base camp, so at the very least it will be a hard workout.
The first part of the route is "Nepali flat" [1] over to the Base Camp Hotel and ranger station, where Lito checks in to let them know what we're doing. Across the ranger station's helipad (well, an area of clear ground marked by a ring of stones), the true climb begins with a very steep zigzag up a scree slope. You can see much of the route from Mulas, but it doesn't give you much sense of the steepness, or of how loose the ground is underfoot.
After 150m of near-vertical slope, it flattens out for a bit and it's more Nepali flat across a ridge line until we reach a small stream where we paused for a snack. At this point a lone guy in a red jacket with a much bigger pack went past us and off up the next slope. A few minutes later, we followed him. Lito was setting a punishing pace that was judged just at the edge of sustainability. Zig, dig your pole in at the corner, swing round, zag. Repeat.
Eventually, we hit a zig (or maybe it's a zag) that goes off at a slightly different angle and find ourselves on the shoulder of the mountain, just below the rocky summit pyramid and the view is astounding. We're on an arrete [2], capped by a field of penitentes, that sits between what we can now see are two huge glacial bowls. To our right, the Andes stretch away to the horizon and Chile. To the left, we can see where we've come from, little ant-tracks up the side of an immense slope. Dead ahead, we can see the valley we climbed two days ago to reach Mulas and, of course, Aconcagua itself.
We rest here for a bit, take a few photos. Red jacket, who we've passed going up the slope [3], overtakes us again, and presses on to the summit. Eventually we follow. Tomi is leading this time, and the route isn't so clear. It looks as if there are several possible paths to the summit, picking our way across and over bigger rocks, but finding the clearest one is a bit of an art. At one point, he changes his mind about the route and we reverse direction and take a different fork that leads us over the edge of the face we've been climbing and onto the final clamber to the summit.
If the view before was astounding, this is even more so. This is the view I came here to see: mountains arrayed below me like strips of Toblerone under a blanket, with the vast bulk of Aconcagua standing above us. Photos are duly taken, including this panoramic one that I'm really proud of. The routes up to the first two high camps were clearly visible from our vantage point, and Lito pointed them out. It looks daunting from this distance.
It turns out that red jacket is sponsored by a new-ish gear company called Berg, and a couple of others, and asks if we can take some photos of him at the summit. All eyes in our team turn to me. I'm fine with it, but after the 6th or 7th configuration of man + gear + sponsor's flag, it is getting a bit much. Eventually, we're done and I get to eat some lunch.
The way down is actually trickier than the way up. Particularly on the steep upper slopes I am finding it hard to put my feet in places that will hold my weight. I fall a couple of times, with no damage other than to my pride, but it still shakes me a bit. The next bit is more fun, and the purpose of the more direct slopes becomes clear: because they are loose, you can go down them in great sliding steps. Initially, shaken by my tumbles, I continue on the zigzags, but the others are getting a long way ahead, so eventually I join them. The trick is to manage your centre of gravity so that it's stable when you're moving rapidly downhill, and to manage your feet so that they don't get caught in the scree and rocks and trip you up. After a bit of trial and error, I settle on walking with my toes up, digging my heels into the ground and bending my knees slightly so that my weight is lower to the ground. It feels a bit like walking down a giant escalator.
At the end of the slopes, the stream where we stopped for a snack has become a torrent of meltwater as the sun has warmed the glaciers above. It takes a bit of exploration to find a way across. Yacob, Jeremy and Carlos jumped across from a high rock. The rest of us, less daring, took the time to pick our way across.
The trog from the Ranger station back to base camp was surprisingly hard. For one thing, penitentes fields are harder to pick your way through going uphill than going downhill, but also the gently undulating ground was actually quite hard going, at altitude, after a hard day's climb. We were very relieved to make it back to base camp.
[1] That is, constant small ups and downs without any major altitude gain.
[2] A ridge, typically joining two peaks, that's been eaten away by glaciers from both sides to create a knife-edge.
[3] The zigzags are crossed by other paths offering a slightly more direct route. He was toiling up these, but the longer way round is clearly the way to go. Lito has a word with him when our paths cross, and he amends his line.
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