Sunday, 6th January, Part 1

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.

Saturday, 5th January

Rest day in Plaza de Mulas, which you would think would be quiet, but the day was enlivened by quiet anxiety. Despite finishing yesterday strongly, nearly everyone reported a disrupted night's sleep and mild symptoms of altitude sickness. The exception was Vicky, who promptly twisted her ankle on the way to the breakfast tent to complete the set of mildly unfit mountaineers.

With hindsight it should have been obvious. 1,000m is a huge altitude gain for a move of camp (though it's almost the standard for an up-and-down on a summit day), so it would be remarkable not to feel altitude symptoms after a shift like that. I also realised belatedly that the previous afternoon and night I had not drunk anything like enough water, so I started playing catch up.

Anyway, we all felt a lot better after breakfast. Flor, our chef while we were at base camp, had the knack of cooking big, tasty scotch pancakes that somehow stayed hot for long enough that you could still eat them warm [1]. I also began taking aspirin, which is supposed to think the blood and help with acclimatisation. As we shall see, I could actually have made a better and equally simple choice. George was already on half a Diamox a day, which was the source of much consternation for the guides and doctors. Diamox makes you pee even more than usual, which helps with acclimatisation, but on Aconcagua the climate is so dry [2] that it can actually be difficult to take in enough water to stay hydrated.

Suitably fed and watered, we went to the medical hut to have our stats checked. My O2 Saturation was 87, which is good for a first morning at this altitude and very good for a bloke of my size [5]. Heart rate was holding steady at 88. Letting the side down was my blood pressure, which had shot up to 150/90. Again the message was that it was right at the acceptable limit and I was advised to drink more water. The rest of the group were also passed as fit; George got a second lecture about taking Diamox (see above and repeat as necessary), Vicky got diclofenac, a crepe bandage and an ice pack, and Jeremy, who wasn't shifting the cold he had brought from England [8], was told "your lungs are green". Which we think meant green as in "red for stop, green for go" rather than "full of horrible green mucus-y stuff".

I spent the rest of the day (and the night) repeatedly draining my Camelbak, but otherwise resting up, reading and conserving strength. I was nearing the end of volume 1 of Monte Cristo (which, like the first two Lord of the Rings movies, is basically all set up for the extended payoff of Volume 2), but the battery indicator on the Sony was down to the final blob. Would I get to finish the book? We also went to visit the highest contemporary art gallery in the world, in which Miguel Douro exhibits his paintings - mainly of Aconcagua in various weathers and a style reminiscent of van Gogh. They were impressive, but I hadn't budgeted a the few hundred dollars needed to buy one [9].

I also gave some thought to what I could leave behind at base camp when we went up to the high camps. Above Mulas, the mules don't go, so you either pay for a porter or carry your own pack. George, somewhat older than the rest of us, had already booked his porters for the whole trip. The rest of us planned to do our own carrying. At the time, we were expecting to do an initial carry to Camp Canada (the first camp above base camp), leave some gear, go back to base camp and make our move up with the rest of the gear a couple of days later. A fair amount of time was devoted to working out what could go up in the first load, what in the second, and what was to stay behind.

The big debate in the group was generally about how many layers, and how many spare clothes to take. In the end, for me, it resolved itself very simply. I put on my merino baselayer, which were also doubling as pyjamas, put my walking clothes and an extra jumper on top of them, and basically stayed in that for the whole five days above base camp.

But that was several days in the future. We had two acclimatisation walks and another rest day at base camp to go, and in the meantime there was the question of going to the loo at night. The amount we were drinking required 3 or more trips per night, but the loos were a longish, rock-strewn stroll away, and it is cold at base camp whenever the sun is behind a cloud, and bloody freezing at night. What to do? I opted for putting on my down jacket and making the trek each time. Some of the others found a convenient spot nearer the tent. Judging by the dark streaks across the paths outside some of the tents, they weren't the only ones. [12]

[1] It emerged later in the trip that Flor wants to become a mountain guide and really doesn't like cooking. We didn't have the heart (or stomach) to tell her that the right strategy if you want to stop doing something is to be so bad at it that they don't let you do it any more.
[2] For context, it's only a couple of hundred miles from the Atacama Desert, widely regarded as the driest place on earth [3]
[3] Though some sources argue that the Dry Valleys of Antarctica are actually drier. So there you go. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. [4]
[4] Also: the boy stood on the burning deck, his feet were all in blisters. The flames came up and burned his pants, so now he wears his sister's.
[5] For any readers who don't know me, I'm 6'4" and 108kg [6] [7]
[6] Look, I'm part of that confused generation that grew up being educated in both metric and Imperial measures, and I shall mix my metrics if I please.
[7] At least, I was when I started. Not so much now. I haven't weighed myself, but since I got back I'm wearing trousers that haven't fitted properly since the late 90s
[8] It can be very hard to shift a cold at altitude. Get well before you travel, if you can.
[9] Or, perhaps more pertinently, the new house that I would need to hang it in. [10]
[10] We already have various paintings and objets d'art [11] that I have acquired sitting around in the spare room waiting for a wall with a bit of space on it
[11] Ok, ok, signed rugby shirts
[12] Of course, the obvious solution is to use a pee bottle, but it just didn't occur to us until after we'd gone up the mountain. What can I say? The brain works more slowly at altitude.

Friday, 4th January

(...sorry this one's a bit late. I was too tired to fire up the laptop and post this last night after an early morning flight)

A good final night's sleep at Confluencia, marred only by the early morning discovery that the pipes had frozen in the toilets and so the flush mechanism wasn't working. This was eventually resolved with a bucket  filled from a cask of stored water, but in the intervening period it was all a bit smelly.

I still can't get over how bright it can be at night - the moon is just past full at the moment and I didn't even need my head torch to get about at night.

We had to get up by 7am today so that our sleeping bags could be packed up and loaded onto the mule train that comes through Confluencia on the way to Plaza de Mulas at 7.15. If you're not ready by then, your stuff doesn't go with the mules. Woke up feeling very good - strong, and my stomach (which had been uncomfortable the night before) had settled down. Digestive disorders seem to be less of a problem on Aconcagua than on the trek to EBC (and, according to Jeremy, much less of a problem than on Kilimanjaro). The climate is dry, the park authorities have begun strictly regulating toilet arrangements (if you don't sign up with a provider like Grajales, you are supplied with a waste bag that must be returned full or face a hefty fine), and most places are as a result pretty clean. However, a lot of people have trouble at Confluencia because the water there has so much magnesium in it that it's cloudy white rather than clear. Lito advised us to carry extra water up from Penitentes and today he's suggested we leave camp with some of our water bottles empty and fill up at a spring he knows along the way.

Anyway, I enjoyed another good breakfast, during which we continued our ongoing debate about whether to watch the calories on the climb. The group is divided on this: Vicky on one side (guess which), everyone else on the other. Assuming 1,000 calories per hour of walking (which is pretty conservative given the steepness, the loads we'll be carrying, and the altitude), I reckon we will burn at least 60,000 additional calories over the course of the trip. It'd be very hard to eat that much, even with seconds for every meal (which is typically on offer).

We set off just after 8am and climb down a valley to cross a metal bridge over the meltwater streams. It was apparently built for the Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet which was, incongruously, largely filmed in South America. After a steepish climb up the valley wall on the other side, we pass a sign reading "Plaza de Mulas, 8 hours" and emerge onto La Playancha ("Broad Beach" - I hope I have the Spanish down right [1]). This is the flood plain of the Horcones river, a wide, flat, pebbly and sandy expanse criss-crossed by the anabranching threads of the river. Although the slope is gentle, it's tough going because a) the loose surface needs care to pick your way over it and b) it goes on, and on, and on. Conditions are sunny but windy, so as we go we are constantly adjusting our layers and zips to avoid getting too hot or too cold.

There's a difficult but spectacular final stretch where the river cuts down sharply through the sedimentary rocks of the stream bed to make a narrow gorge, at the top of which is another long, flattish plateau - the previous stream bed, now on its way to becoming a stepped terrace. Among the softer rocks are occasional balls of white rock that seems to be quartz, but the water has worked on every fissure until they look like giant grains of popcorn. At the end of the terrace is an ascent known as "brave slope" - a steep, sharply zig-zagged climb from the top of which you are in sight of Base Camp. The bottom of the slope is marked by the desiccated carcases of a number of mules who have lost their footing on the way down the slope. Although it's not obvious at the time, I'm now pretty sure that what we are climbing is the terminal moraine of the Horcones glacier - all the rocky debris that it has pushed along in front of it.

From the top of the punishing 150m ascent, we can see Base Camp, Cerro Bonete (which we will climb in a couple of days), the rocky west face of Aconcagua (not as spectacular or defined as the south face, but vast and imposing nonetheless), and El Cuerno (the Horn, a striking pyramidal peak at the head of the glacier). It's still quite a slog to Base Camp - nowhere near as steep, but over undulating ground and at this altitude you feel every upward step. Still, it only took us 7 hours to get here, not the 8 promised on the sign. Tomi and Lito declared this to be a very good time (though Lito's record for a group is less than 6).

Base Camp itself is a semi-permanent town of tents of various sizes. Each year, the guides and porters set it up anew - it's built on the glacier, and exposed to the weather, so leaving the tents in place over the winter would be a recipe for disaster. It has generators, store rooms, internet cafes and even its own art gallery. A little way off, there is an hotel, although we subsequently learn that it's closed down - rooms are much harder to heat than tents. The Grajales enclave has the usual assortment of sleeping, dining, storage and kitchen tents, plus a big geodesic dome tent that we are offered as our relaxation room - it has speakers for an iPod and beanbags for lounging on.

The camp is surrounded by penitentes - weird, spiky rows of ice pinnacles, the result of wind and dust working on ice in a cold but dry climate. Pretty much every dip in the mountain is furred with them. They're named penitentes because, apparently, they look like rows of people praying. Can't see it myself.

There's a certain amount of admin to be done at Base Camp. Jeremy and I still haven't actually paid for our permits, so we sort that out with Pablo, the base camp manager. I don't have the exact amount, and he doesn't have change, so we agree that I can have 2 minutes' credit for phone calls (at $5 per minute). I leave a message for Leah [2]. We need to check in with the doctors, too, but that can wait til we've acclimatised a bit.

Our kit has also arrived, so we can have clean clothes for once. Most of us have adopted the classic model of having a dirty "walking" set and a clean(er) "base camp" set of clothes. Gratfiyingly, I've had to set the belt on the fresh set of trousers a little tighter than it was when I set out. I sit in the dining tent for the afternoon making progress on the Count of Monte Cristo. The battery on the eReader is going down alarmingly fast, so I am not sure if I will get the chance to finish it.

[1] As fans of Eric Idle and Neil Innes will recall, all sorts of confusion can arise from bad Spanish. The Rutles' Sgt Rutter's Only Darts Club Band allegedly contained the line "I buried Stig", resulting in rumours that Stig O'Hara had died and been replaced by a ringer. The line was in fact "E burre stigano", which is very bad Spanish for "Have you a waterbuffalo?"

[2] When I get back to Mendoza, I find she's forwarded it back to me as a voicemail. It's completely unintelligible as the sound keeps pulsing on and off. Oh well, at least I tried.

Thursday, 3rd January

First night at (proper) altitude, which means a lot of getting up to go for a wee [1]. Confluencia has one public toilet and several locked private ones operated by various guiding organisations, including ours, Fernando Grajales Expeditions [5]. Whether you went public or private, it was still a chilly walk to the facilities several times a night. Chilly, but stunning: the night sky this high up and far from civilisation is startlingly clear, with the great band of the Milky Way spanning from horizon to horizon and unfamiliar Southern Hemisphere constellations sharing the sky with an incongruously upside-down Orion.

Still, if it was cold out (and we hadn't yet reached the pee bottle [6] stage), it was snug in the tent (a big semi-permanent Nissen hut affair with bunk beds in it) inside our sleeping bags. This was encouraging, because Lito had looked rather dimly on them when they were first unvieled. One of my neighbours had given me them when they traded up to better ones: Nepali-made Alpine Designs down sleeping bags. Not a brand you'll know (unless you've shopped for trekking gear in Kathmandu and resisted the temptation to go for the North Face rip-offs), but I have down mittens and hats from the same company and reckoned these would be up to the job. I'm pleased to report that they were.

However, a hut of 8 people is very noisy, and dropping off was tricky, so I started some reading. I'd brought two eReaders (figuring that the battery on at least one of them would go before we'd finished the trek) and started on the set of free out of copyright classics on my Sony Reader. I chose The Count of Monte Cristo which, it turns out, is both more complicated than the version you'll know from the films, and longer. Much longer. The Sony clocked it at 2,700 pages. I made a start, and wondered if the book would run out first, or the battery.

Breakfast was at 9.30 and was superb. One of the big problems on the Everest Base Camp trip was food. Your taste buds are dulled at altitude and it can be hard to maintain an appetite when food is reduced to little more than a texture - but you need to eat to keep your strength up. On the way to EBC, our morning omelettes became a daily challenge - could you grab one and eat it before it cooled to a piece of unpalatable rubber? Grajales pride themselves on their food, and rightly so. Hot scrambled eggs with a varying collection of cheese, herbs, bacon and sausage to add flavour, porridge, toast, pancakes and a choice of honey, jam and dulce de leche to spread on them. Plus fresh ground coffee and an endless choice of teas. Much more like it.

We then set off - at a punishing pace - on an acclimatisation walk to view the South Face of Aconcagua. It's a climb of 650m vertical from Confluencia to the viewpoint at Plaza Francia (4,000m). We reached it in around three and a half hours, slightly less than the par of 4. I have a suspicion that throughout the trek Lito was pushing us to see how fast we could go, trying to gauge how we'd cope with the summit day. The view was worth it, though. Our route eventual route up Aconcagua would be non-technical - basicallly a very long and demanding walk over scree, but little actual climbing - but the South Face is another prospect altogether. It's a vast wall of ice and rock, at 3,000m tall one of the highest and most demanding anywhere in the world, with 11 main routes, including one pioneered by Reinhold Messner and one known as Russian Roulette.

In front of it lies a huge glacier, covered with moraine and scarred with crevasses, many of which were filled with muddy, liquid meltwater.

While we were sightseeing and eating lunch we also go to watch a rockfall a few hundred metres across the valley:

The descent was almost as demanding - steep and over loose scree. On return to camp, tired but elated, we trooped off to the medical hut for the first of our acclimatisation checks. The main camps on Aconcagua are staffed with doctors who will check you over and advise you as to whether it's safe to go on. It's part of what your permit pays for - they're not cheap at $700, but there's a lot included, such as emergency helicopter evacuation. The doctors check three things - O2 Saturation and pulse (using a little clippy thing they put on your finger) and blood pressure (the traditional way, with a sphygmomanometer [8] and stethoscope). I'd been warned in advance that big guys have trouble acclimatising, so was pleasantly surprised to find that my O2 Sat was 92% and pulse was 90 - both pretty good. Blood pressure, though, was 140/80 and I was told "that's OK, but we wouldn't want it to go any higher." One to watch out for, but not a bad start to the trip. Everyone else was also OK, so we're in good shape.

And so, with a bottle of water and long johns on, to bed.

[1] It's long been known that there are several key aspects to successful acclimatisation to altitude  of which one of the most important is drinking a lot of water and its inevitable corollary, going for a pee on an embarrassingly regular basis [2] [3]. It's taken longer to understand why this is so. For instance, it didn't seem to be widely understood 5 years ago when Jeremy and I trekked to Everest Base Camp. Of course, it's all now on Wikipedia. Basically it seems to be to do with stopping the blood from becoming too alkaline. The body's normal and immediate reaction to low air pressure (and therefore low oxygen) is to breathe harder and so get more oxygen into the bloodstream, but that expels more carbon dioxide from the lungs, and leads to respiratory alkalosis (which is doctor-speak for "your blood becoming less acidic" [4]). I don't fully understand why, but this is A Bad Thing. Acclimatisation is essentially the process of your body excreting bicarbonate via the urine, to keep the blood acidic. Which it can only do if you give your body lots of water to work with and it, erm, expels it.

[2] As Dr "Dr Death" Ramesh, our expedition medic when I went to Everest Base Camp, used to say, it's all in the 3Cs: Clear, Copious and regular as Clockwork.

[3] The other acclimatisation rules, if you're interested, are (as best I can remember):
- Try to limit the height differences between where you camp from one night to the next (on Everest Base Camp this was 300m, on Aconcagua it was 500m)
- Have a rest day after each 1,000m gained
- Climb high, sleep low (i.e. where possible, go on acclimatisation walks to higher points, but return to a lower place to camp)

[4] Interestingly, people from ethnic groups we think of as high-altitude people (the Sherpas, say) have genetic mutations that predispose them towards more acidic blood.

[5] Fernando Grajales was an Argentinian farmer and mountaineer who pioneered a route up the western face of Aconcagua. In 1976, he began guiding people up Aconcagua. He was one of the first to do so, and the first to set up the logistics for carrying their gear to the various base camps. Today, the organisation is run by Fernando Grajales Jr ("Fernandito") and is one of the largest guiding organisations. They also organise logistics for independent guides, which led to us sharing our tents with an interesting mix of other guides over the course of the trip.

[6] More on this later. Much more. Probably more than you ever wanted to know [7]

[7] Which I suspect is not very much.

[8] That's an inflatable cuff to you, squire.

Wednesday, 2nd January

Not really, obviously. But if you've read my previous blog post (what? you haven't? go and read it now!) then you'll know that I'm going to try to prolong this whole shebang far beyond its natural limits give you a taste of the Aconcagua experience by writing up my diary notes day-for-day over the next two weeks. So today is, in diary time 2nd January.

The story so far... [I can't format this to scroll up the page like the opening of Star Wars, but you can  imagine it that way if you like]

Jason and Jeremy have safely arrived in Mendoza, via a whistle-stop tour of Buenos Aires that took in the giant mural of Eva Peron eating a Scooby Snack (see here: it's about 40% of the way down the page). Despite it being New Year's Eve, we met up with Tomi (one of our guides), managed to hire a pair of plastic mountaineering boots for Jeremy (Jason, fearful of turning up to find that there were no boots for hire in US size 14, decided to bring his own), and met up with three of our fellow climbers - Carlos and Yacob from Mallorca and Vicky from Buenos Aires - for a very pleasant New Year meal.

The journey to Penitentes.

On New Year's Day itself, we met the rest of our party ("Lito" Sanchez, the "Godfather" of the guides, who trained most of them and for whom this would be his 60th ascent, and George - who is Romanian, not Albanian (sorry) but left for Canada at the fall of the Ceaucescu regime). Thus quorate, we boarded a minibus and drove for three hours up into the Andes, ending up at a ski resort known as Penitentes. The drive itself was spectacular. The Andes are clearly visible from Mendoza, and when the bus turns onto Route 7 and heads straight for them, it's like a very, very extended cut of that bit in Lawrence of Arabia where Omar Sharif emerges gradually out of the horizon, the whole vision heavy with the anticipation of what might happen. Except without the camel [1].

And then you see, emerging from the clouds above the brown and grey peaks ahead of you, the snow-capped summit of a proper mountain. This is Cerro Plata. At 5,955m, it's big, but it's a full thousand metres lower than Aconcagua. Sharp intake of breath, and not for the last time.

The road itself is spectacular. It follows the Las Cuevas river, on what you soon realise is the less even of a pair of stepped fluvial terraces where the river has cut down sharply through the sedimentary rock to follow a narrower path along the valley floor. The side that the road is built on undulates over dry tributaries and burrows through rock bluffs, but the far side is so even it could have been measured with a set-square. The terrace ends abruptly in a sharp vertical cliff about fifty feet high that seems to run for ever. I counted off at least 50km on the road markers, but it clearly goes on for far longer. If you have a penchant for physical geography [2], it makes for an endlessly fascinating journey.

Eventually we reach Penitentes, at about 2,580m. In the winter months, it's a ski resort - at least when there's snow, which apparently there hasn't been in any quantity for at least a couple of years now - but in summer it's a base for trekking expeditions. There's a large basement room with lockers, storage and, crucially, a big electronic scale for weighing out mule-loads which teems with activity even when the rest of the resort is dead. Somewhat incongruously, Penitentes is run by an Englishman - it turns out that his wife is from Mendoza and he's been roped into the family business.

Over dinner, the talk at the tables is of a tragedy on the mountain, still raw. Three Americans have just gone up via the Polish Glacier route. One felt ill at Camp 3 and returned to Camp 2 suffering from High Altitude Pulmonary Edema [3], but it was too late and he died. The other two pressed on. One made it to the summit and back down the other side. The other stopped somewhere high on the mountain, and his body is, as yet, still there. His family has arrived in Mendoza to try to arrange for his body to be brought down. [4]

This is tragic, but I can't help feeling that it was avoidable. It does not sound as if they allowed enough time to acclimatise, something everyone can and should do. I will see if my opinion changes as more details emerge.

First day of walking

The next day, we reorganise our kit. We pack day sacks with enough to get through a day's walking and a couple of nights in camp, sleeping bags (and any extras), and a main bag of longer term and higher altitude equipment. We leave anything unnecessary at Penitentes, including wallets, passports and a change of clothes for the journey home. Our sleeping bags will go with one lot of mules to Confluencia, our first camp. The rest will follow a few days later on another mule train, this time going to Base Camp of Plaza de Mulas [5]

Then it's off to the park entrance, a half hour or so away. On arrival, Jeremy and I need to sort out our permits. They have apparently already been paid for in Mendoza, but the rangers at the park entrance aren't buying it at first. Briefly, it looks as if we might need to go back to Penitentes for our passports and then apply afresh, but after a string of calls back to Mendoza they agree to give us the permits. The permits in question are accompanied by in individually numbered waste sacks. There's a fine if we can't return them full (or hand them over to a provider of sanitation services  - which includes Grajales - and get our permit signed off) at the end.

Eventually we get going, and make it to Confluencia in 2h40 including a couple of stops for food and water. The "official" target time is 3hrs, so we're doing OK. We're also met by fresh pizza and fresh fruit, from Sabrina, who's the on-duty Grajales cook. It's great to be able to walk into one of their big hooped base camp tents and find food ready after a hard day.

After dinner, we spend another hour wandering to a waterfall we've been told about. The landscape is stunning. All around you can see the naked rock strata, folded and tilted at outrageous angles. On the way back, we bump into a ranger coming down from Mulas (as all the old hands call it) who explains a little more about the American tragedy. Not only did they not prepare properly, but they lied to the rangers and medical teams about their route, and the rangers are incensed that they split up. I'm confident that we will not make the same mistakes.

It's not particularly dirty here, but very dusty. Vigorous application of baby wipes helps to keep me feeling at least a little clean, but it's a losing battle. I think even at this point I am resolved to put up with it rather than fight it.

Our sleeping bags have arrived, the day's walking is done, we're fed, watered and as clean as we can get. And so, as Samuel Pepys would have said, to bed.

[1] Face it, a camel would be weird. For one thing, mountains are much bigger than Omar Sharif and wouldn't fit on a camel. For another thing, this is South America and the local camelid is the guanaco, which is useless for riding.
[2] Guess what? I do.
[3] Sorry for the US spelling, but a) the standard abbreviation is HAPE not HAPO and b) I don't think this typeface lets me do the ligatured o-e that I'd like to do
[4] This is quite a serious undertaking. At high altitude, it's hard enough moving your own body around, let alone someone else's. The main routes on Everest have so many bodies on them that some of them have become landmarks. Aconcagua is not quite in the same league, but getting 100kg of mountaineer and gear down from anywhere high on a mountain is a real challenge.
[5] So called because it's the highest mules can go.

Action replay

Well, I'm back. How did it go? That's for me to know and you to find out. Since blogging capability was almost non-existent on the mountain (at least not without the payment of large-ish sums in USD for brief access to t'internet) and I kept a daily diary of what happened, I plan to play out how it happened day-by-day over the next two weeks to give you a sense of what it was like, and maintain a modicum of suspense.

However, paraphrasing the words of the late, and exceedingly great, Douglas Adams:

Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the galaxy and it is in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance: 

Jason did, in fact, return largely intact from Magrathea Aconcagua. The various threats posed by wind, cold and altitude merely resulted in some headaches. No fingers or toes were lost, and all members of the climbing party made back alive from summit day. In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved no revelation will yet be made concerning which, if any, members of the party actually made it to the summit. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever.

Got that? Here we go.

Here we go...

Well, here we are in Mendoza, awaiting our pickup to go to Penitentes, our last stop before the trek proper begins. Yesterday was a day of travelling that saw us fly from Heathrow to Buenos Aires Pistarini airport, then get a lift-cum-guided tour across the city with Jeremy's friends Vicky and Julian, who were wonderful hosts. The short hop to Mendoza itself was pleasant on a half empty flight with acres of space, and all was going well.

Our guides had even managed to get our permits before we arrived (you're meant to apply in person). And then we realised that all the gear hire shops would be shut today for the New Year, and Jeremy hadn't yet acquired a pair of plastic boots. A slightly nervous stroll around Mendoza's beautiful, tree-lined streets ensued, before we found, t the third attempt, a shop that was only on the point of closing instead of already being shut. Job done, all set. Earlier, our guide Tommy, who is a rugby fan and has recently climbed Lhotse without oxygen, reviewed the rest of our kit and pronounced it adequate, so there remains only the problem of working out what to take for the first two days' walking, and what to send ahead with the mules.


Then there was time for more strolling around Mendoza in search of an open bar (they all shut last night at 8. Even the Irish pub. Why?). The city itself is something of a marvel. Built on a desert plain in the rainshadow of the Andes, it and its vineyards are fed by a vast network of irrigation canals that make life possible and allow trees to flourish along every street. We met the rest of our group for a New Year's dinner. Jakob and Carlos are from Mallorca, Victoria is a portena (as natives of the port city of Buenos Aires are known), who's prepared by climbing several 6,000m peaks. We've yet to meet the mysterious George, an Albanian who's lived in Canada for 20 years, but they seem a good bunch and I think we will get on well.

So, we're checked out, packed (Jeremy has gone ultra-light with his two-day pack. Mine is much bulkier and a fair bit heavier, but it's still lighter than my training load of Elspeth and Cora) and waiting in the lobby for our minibus. Wish us luck.