Preparation
Sometime in the middle of November 1998, I got an e-mail from my buddy Avi. At the time, I was in the middle of one of my aimless wandering trips across the country that seemed to characterize how I’ve spent my unemployment. The e-mail read:
Subject: Don’t cry for me, Argentina…
so, uhh... guess you didn't make it down here, or we just missed each
other. oh well. anyway, it just occurred to me that you might be the one
person with enough free time, so how do you feel about heading down to
argentina to bag a 7000m peak this winter? trip will be from 12/21 to
1/13 and promises to be one of the most heinous and traumatic experiences
of your life. You'd be the fourth person, if you're interested. Airfare
is about $1850 from LAX to Mendoza. Other trip expenses (besides all the
-20 degree gear) will probably be about $300/person. let me know soon.
The note sent me into a tailspin. It sounds amazing. But I am so far from prepared for it. It would mean bagging my minimal Christmas and New Year’s plans, and spending a lot more money than I had. I also hadn’t done any real climbing in a while, so I would have to devote myself to training in the interim. But I’m not the kind of person to pass this up. A few phone calls and I got some more details. Mt. Aconcagua: highest point in the Americas. One of the seven summits. 22,840 feet. The normal route is completely non-technical, but hellishly cold. –20 F. Last year, 22 people died climbing it. Out of almost 4,000 climbers, that puts the fatality rate pretty similar to deliberately driving your car into a brick wall. Ten times higher than the most dangerous mountain I’d ever climbed, Mt. Rainier. My friends tried to assure me that I was in a low-risk group, but I was not so confident. My mountaineering experience was clearly inadequate to be trying this, and Avi had less. The other two, Jay and Chris, sounded like they were on the low end of acceptable. I was reassured to hear that we would be carrying oxygen, radios, and maybe even a satellite phone. Ultimately, there was no way I could say no.
I spent the remaining weeks doing little but train and prepare. First I bought and read several copies of the definitive guidebook to climbing Aconcagua written by R.J. Secor. It seemed informative and helpful at the time. Through experience I would learn to hate that book. I’d been staying active in my unemployment, so a few weeks of serious physical conditioning, and a strict training diet got me into prime form. I ran all over town trying to gather all the gear I’d need to stay warm at –20 F. In all the time in between, I read books on mountaineering and high altitude physiology. Altitude illness is the big killer on Aconcagua, and I was determined to know everything about it I could. When I realized that I was going to be cold and lose weight on the trip, and traded my low-fat, high-protein training diet for a high-fat, high-protein weight-gaining diet. When I left, I was excited and nervous. As prepared as I could be, but not sure it was enough.
One early Friday morning in December, I flew down to Harvey Mudd, my alma mater near Los Angeles. There I met up with Avi, his friend Jay, and Jay's friend Chris -- our expedition team. Avi and Jay go to Harvey Mudd, and Chris knows Jay from Lakeside High here in Seattle, and goes to MIT. At one point we would be called the “brainiac expedition.” We got to know each other talking about what gear we were going to bring, and how we had been preparing for the trip. I quickly learned that Jay and Chris were a good climbing duo as Chris’s natural cautiousness offset Jay’s lack. I was disappointed to hear that we had no radios, phone, or oxygen. The only cool equipment we had was a portable pulse oxymeter that somebody at MIT had loaned Chris. Slightly smaller than a pager, this device optically measures the saturation of oxygen in your blood when clamped on a finger. We could tell analytically how oxygen starved we were.
After a couple of days organizing gear and making last minute runs to REI and the grocery store, we endured the 28 hours of travel to get to Mendoza, Argentina. Mendoza is at the base of the Andes, due West of Buenos Aires, and is the normal starting point for climbers. The flight included an annoying 8 hour lay-over in Santiago, during which we toured the auto-parts district. We all got very excited as we flew over the Andes, and took lots of pictures out the plane windows of what are doubtless the wrong mountains. Only developing will tell.
We spent a single night in Mendoza (2,400'), and the next morning made all our final preparations in a frenzy. Chris and Jay both spoke respectable Spanish, which was quite handy. Since my trip to Mexico the previous spring, I had made a real attempt to learn Spanish off books and tapes. I realized that while I could compose sentences effectively but slowly, my comprehension was quite poor. Avi was struggling to revive some of what he had learned as a kid in Miami. After buying white gas, paying $480 for climbing permits, and hiring a friendly cabbie to take us the 200 km to the trailhead, we were out of town by 10 AM.
Ricardo's van, our taxi, ran on compressed natural gas, and was embarrassingly slow. This offered us a good chance to take in the scenery under his careful guidance. He spoke in the deliberate simple Spanish of somebody well used to speaking to foreigners. He pointed out all the landmarks as we passed them. He told me exactly when to take pictures. (!No sacar photo ahora! Espera. … Ahora! !Sacar photo! !!Ahora!! !!Ahora!! !!Ahora!!) He said that Uspallata, the town between Mendoza and the high mountains, was where “7 Years in Tibet” was filmed. He pointed to the mountains and said that there were seven different colors of rock in it. He showed us the decidedly cow-free Vacas Valley which was the approach for the Polish Glacier route.
We stopped at Puente del Inca, an impressive bridge over Rio Mendoza formed naturally from hot-springs mineral deposits, and big enough to drive a truck over. At 9,000', Puente is a tourist attraction in its own right, and there are some restaurants and hotels there. As it is only about a mile from the actual trailhead it makes a good starting point. We hired two mules from a guy named Jorge, and set up camp on a patch of grass. Jay was thrilled to see his brand-new North Face VE-25 tent go up for the first time.
“How do you like my BOMB SHELTER, boys and girls?”
“Pretty cool dude. Serious expedition tent. Is there anywhere people won’t take that thing?”
“No way. This tent goes up to Camp 4 on Everest. North Face even sells a set of pulleys and ropes to reinforce it internally so it can take 60 mph winds without being guyed out.”
Having helped Jay set it up, I secured my right to sleep in it for the whole trip. Avi and Chris weren’t as happy with their “Rock and Roll 2” by Jack Wolfskin on loan from Jay’s uncle. Despite having a really dumb name, it’s not a bad tent, but hardly the spacious pleasure palace of the VE-25. Jay got upset when I complained about the zippers on his tent’s vestibule, which seemed designed to snag the fabric on every use. Incensed at my irreverence to his baby, he invited me to sleep in the “Wank and Crank.” I apologized for my blasphemy by chanting “Oh Holy is the VE-25, most perfect of tents, free from defect in every possible way, except for the lame self-snagging vestibule zippers.” He thought the first part of this chant was great, and repeated it often.
We sorted some gear into mule-sized bags for Jorge, had dinner and went to sleep.
The Approach
The two day, 30 km, 5,000 foot approach up the Horcones river valley would take us to Plaza de Mulas (13,900') which serves as the base camp for the "Normal Route" up Aconcagua. It's also where the mules would dump our stuff. Three quarters of climbers on Aconcagua take the Normal Route, as it is by far the easiest, avoiding all glaciers. Once on the trail we were quickly joined by a friendly little dog whom we dubbed Juan Carlos. She just started following us, and we were happy to have the company.
We also ran into an annoying pair of climbers we'd met on the plane who greeted us by saying "don't you guys like mules?" One of these guys proudly boasted that this was going to be his third time on the summit, and that they would be staying at the hotel at Plaza de Mulas. (Yes, there’s a hotel at base camp.) These two were dubbed "Two-times and his Bitch." He put us on guard by assuming his climb would be a success. Such arrogance is inappropriate for several reasons, not the least of which is bad luck. He was even staying in the hotel, and for all we knew having porters carry his gear. Mountaineers are very superstitious, and getting their respect requires following certain rules, like not staying in a hotel. With a few short sentences he had become the bad guy in our minds.
For all that, Two-times was right about our packs -- they were pretty heavy. We were each carrying about 55 pounds, even having sent 200 pounds of gear with the mules. Our 420 pounds of gear was unusually high for a group our size because of our intentions to climb Cerro Cuerno as practice before Aconcagua. Cuerno is 17,700 feet, heavily glaciated, and borders Plaza de Mulas on the North. To this end, we had brought ropes, full snow-protection and glacial gear. This, along with our basic camping supplies, clothes to keep us warm at –20 F, and 130 pounds of food, gave us quite a burden.
The first day of the approach was pretty if uneventful. Juan Carlos stayed with us the whole way as we hiked through grassy hills along the river valley. About the most exciting thing was that we ran out of water about half-way along the trail, and spent a good hour trying to filter the thick silt out of Rio Horcones using any of our clothes that we could. We failed completely having nothing but clothes that were completely waterproof, or retained no water at all. We all laughed when we reached Confluencia (11,000') after just 15 minutes more of hiking. The official mid-way camp on the approach, Confluencia is named for the convergence of several clear-running streams that easily provided us with good water. There were about 20 tents at Confluencia, including a hamburguer [sic] stand-tent! It was pretty there and the other campers were friendly. Almost everybody was on their way up, and just as curious about conditions as we were, but no more knowledgeable.
The next morning we set out early to avoid the afternoon heat. The hike was long and boring, mostly in a rocky riverbed. As we climbed, I watched the bizarre cactus-like shrubs fight desperately to survive at the increasingly severe altitudes, and ultimately fail. On top of that, Juan Carlos had run off with some other expedition, the unfaithful bitch. Our jokes about self-hauling meat were cut short. Mid-day we were happy to be overtaken by mules carrying our bags. Having paid Jorge $180 up front, and then left him with several thousand dollars worth of gear, we were a little nervous. Another group of mules that passed us was carrying a foosball table -- a truly bizarre site.
A White Christmas
Plaza de Mulas was a zoo. There were about 80 tents, including about 20 permanent tents for the muleteers, rangers, medics, radio-phone operators, porters, hamburguer-stands, gear-renters, guiding groups and everybody else who thought they could make a peso or two at 14,000'. We heard that weather had been terrible, and that the summit success rate had been on the order of 25%. It was Christmas eve, and our dinner consisted of mashed potatoes. I ate one cup’s worth, hating every bite. Jay tried to serve me more, insisting I do my part to help the team finish the glop. I told him if he made me eat any more I’d puke in his tent. He didn’t force any more on me, so the next morning when I had to puke, I did him the favor of leaping out of the tent first.
I spent Christmas day lying in the tent with self-diagnosed moderate acute mountain sickness (AMS), the most common altitude illness. Avi was also suffering from mild AMS, but he didn't puke. It feels somewhat like a hangover, with a whole lot of lethargy thrown in. At this level it’s not dangerous, and just needs rest. I upped my dosage of Diamox to the traditional 250 mg twice a day that the others had been taking, having lost faith in my books which said that 125 mg was just as effective without as many side-effects.
Diamox (acetazolamyde) is the most common drug used to prevent and treat altitude illness. We had all been taking it since Mendoza. It helps keep your blood's pH balanced when you hyperventilate, and actually helps you acclimatize to altitude in addition to treating the symptoms of AMS. The side effects don't go beyond increased urination, an occasional tingling in the fingers and toes very similar to a sleeping foot waking up, and Coke tasting flat. (Bizarre but true.) There are two schools of thought about taking Diamox when climbing: "everybody should take it " or "drugs are bad." We took it.
It snowed at Plaza that day. A white Christmas of sorts. I poked my head out of the VE-25 for just long enough to convince myself that it was really snowing, even though the air temperature was 65 F. Sure, it disappeared as soon as it touched anything, but it was good real snow. A couple of tents even had decorations on them, but nobody was terribly festive. No caroling. No mules with antlers and red noses.
In the evening, Jay appeared in the tent, “Special Christmas dinner is ready. Mac ‘n’ cheese.”
“I figured out where the ropes and pulleys would run to reinforce this tent from the wind.”
“You’ve had way too much time to stare at the ceiling of this tent. Come out and get some food.”
I was actually starting to get an appetite again, so I joined them for a small dinner. I had most of my energy back too. AMS is not so serious that you can’t keep climbing after a day or so of rest. The more serious altitude illnesses of pulmonary edema and cerebral edema will end your trip completely.
We contemplated trying to replace some of the gear we had forgotten by visiting the "drugstore" at Plaza, but were frightened by what the prices would be. In our aggressive weight-saving consolidation, we made it out without any iodine for water purification, no matches at all (we found a small paper book at Puente) and only two lighters, one completely out of fuel, and the other really close. We did have a crappy water filter, and figured out how to light our stove with just the spark from the lighters, so we decided to go with it. Ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy. I would really miss the iodine later.
The Climb
The next week saw nothing but double-back carries to successively higher camps. The day after Christmas, we carried half our gear up to Camp Canada, a small outcropping of rock at 16,000 feet, and slept again at Plaza de Mulas. The next day, we packed up camp at Plaza, and carried everything else up to Canada. This included all our glacial gear, since we decided that Canada was the best place to attack Cerro Cuerno from. The one person we talked to who knew anything about Cuerno suggested this route rather than the direct assault from Plaza. He also described technical sections which had convinced all of us except Jay that the mountain was beyond our abilities. It took until Canada for this to sink in with Jay -- not that it was beyond his abilities, but that we weren't going to go with him. Having given up on Cuerno, we stashed our climbing gear under some rocks.
Our first night at Canada, we were still in good spirits. Through some miracle of applied chemistry, we managed to cook spaghetti at 16,000 feet, and along with red bell pepper pesto, had an amazingly tasty meal. After dinner, Chris put his machine on our finger, and logged our oxygen levels, which were down to the low eighties. Every morning and every night, he logged our readings in his book religiously. “Pinche maquina” we would swear in Spanish. We bitched and whined about how worthless the machine was, and how meaningless and random its readings were, just like we always did, but he didn’t care. In return for the loan of the machine, Chris was taking scientific data on the four of us. The only thing that would stop him would be a dead battery. We were all waiting hopefully.
We spent the next two days carrying our stuff up to Nido de Condores (17,600'). These four days of carries above Plaza were spent entirely on switchbacks up huge scree fields, with occasional snow patches to cross. Scree is small loose rocks, not bigger than an inch or so, on a steep slope. Monotonous, not very aesthetic, but not very hard either. We never spent more than five hours climbing in a day, since the camps aren't that far apart, but altitude prevents us from moving faster. The record time to the summit from Plaza de Mulas is six hours -- it’s only 4 miles of trail. But because of the altitude, it would take us a week to cover this distance. We could all feel our bodies adjusting to the thin air -- the second day's carry was always easier than the first. The "climb-high, sleep-low" strategy of double-back carries helps acclimatization too.
Nido de Condores was busy and smelly. The camps above Plaza didn't even have the holes in the ground with wind-screens that served as toilets lower down -- designated rock piles became the WC's. We couldn't find a campsite we liked at Nido, so we dug one out of the snow between two big rocks. It took about two hours of alternately hacking with ice-axes and lying down panting to dig out two flat spaces big enough for our tents, but then we were extremely well sheltered from the winds. Even when fully acclimatized, it's impossible to do much physical work at 18,000 feet without getting winded -- acclimatization just lets you do it without dying. We were very proud of our work, and other campers gave us looks mixed with respect and bewilderment. At Nido, water was becoming scarce too. Melting snow was the most appealing choice, even if very slow, and questionably sanitary unless done carefully. The alternative was to spend a long time with hands drenched in freezing water trying to use our clogged and leaky water-filter. I really hated that filter.
Two more days of carries brought us up to Camp Berlin -- our designated high camp at 19,500'. It was getting really rugged up there -- everybody we saw was looking seriously bedraggled, including us. (Except for this one Italian guy with neon-orange trekking poles who blew past us like he was at sea level, and smelled like he'd just showered.) Berlin smelled bad. Worse than Nido. It was hard to tell campsites from waste sites. It seemed like nobody had the energy to walk more than 10 feet from their tent to relieve themselves, and after a week on scree, I could sympathize.
When we first arrived at Berlin, it had just started snowing lightly. Then the snow fell faster and harder. By the time our tents were up, three inches of snow had fallen. For the next hour we sat in our tents as six more inches of snow pelted us, and thunderclaps sounded from less than a mile away. I was terrified. More scared than I’d been on the whole trip. The worst part was that there was nothing we could do. Waiting out the storm was our only choice, since the sun was setting, and descent in snowy darkness would have been even more dangerous. Jay kept saying, “it’s snowing way too hard for this to keep up.” Right. This is the kind of situation that kills climbers. It seems innocent enough at first, and by the time we realize it’s serious, there’s nothing we can do. Sure, there were heavy clouds as we were climbing up to Berlin, heavier than normal, but there were usually clouds in the afternoon. It was snowing a bit, but snow was completely commonplace. Now we were caught in an electrical storm at 20,000 feet, helpless.
Luckily, after about an hour of this, the snow did stop. We looked out our tent to see that the clouds had dropped below us leaving a breath-taking vista of Andean peaks jutting above storm clouds with the remains of a sunset in the distance. I set an alarm for 5:30 AM. Weather permitting, tomorrow we’d go for the top. My watch read 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and 15 inches of Mercury. We’d endured a blizzard in sub-tropical summer, and were breathing half the air there is at sea level. It was New Year's eve, and we hardly cared.
Summit Day
In the darkness, a watch alarm goes off. Jay stirs for a little while, but doesn't wake me up. He must have poked his head out the tent and decided the weather was too bad for a summit attempt. Relieved, I close my eyes, and actually fall asleep. Another alarm. Jay gets out of the tent, and a few minutes later yells "Get your clothes on, and I mean all of them. It's cold out here." My oxygen starved brain struggles to accept that the first alarm was a mistake, and that we really were going for the summit. We layered on fleece clothes, and topped it with Gore-Tex. Our packs were light -- water, some food, first-aid supplies, a few clothes, and one sleeping bag for the group, just in case. Even inside double-plastic mountaineering boots and several layers of socks, my toes were numb from cold. Standing around waiting for everybody to get ready, we were shifting our weight back and forth uncomfortably, trying to wiggle our toes for warmth. “C’mon! Didn’t you pack your pack last night? Let’s go!”
We broke camp at 7:00 AM. The sun had risen behind the mountain, and the sky was a pale blue. As we walked, our fingers were even colder than our toes. Whichever hand wasn't carrying the ice axe hid in a pocket to try to warm up. This was almost good enough. The prospect of frostbite loomed heavily in my mind. My fingers were getting numb even while I was producing lots of heat climbing, and doing my best to keep moving and warm. When we stopped to rest they got much colder. If we had to bivouac on the way down it seemed unlikely that I would keep my all my digits. Almost every afternoon we'd been on the mountain, the summit had been shrouded by clouds starting at about 2 PM. These clouds would reduce our visibility dramatically, and without wands to mark the trail, we would have to rely on our memories to find our way down. If we weren't completely sure which way to go, our only choice would be to stay put and wait for the weather to break, a chilling prospect. At Plaza we had met a South African climber who had just summited, and got caught in white-out on the way down. He said that in South Africa he had had a gun held to his head several times, but never felt so close to death as when he was trying to find his way down with 15' visibility. The memory of this conversation haunted me. I was very close to turning back because of the cold. But once the sun rose, things warmed up quickly, and we spent too long breaking for people to take layers off.
I felt surprisingly good on the climb. I was motivated and energetic, but coughing and cold. Avi had been coughing for several days, and it seemed to be getting worse. Chris's fingers had been swollen to the point of being painful to use for a couple of days. So-called peripheral edema is common at altitude, but usually not this bad. We told him to stop drinking so much salt and stop wanking off, but he didn't listen. Today, Chris's fingers seemed better, though. Jay was lagging badly, and complaining about stomach pains, his first sign of weakness on the whole trip. The night before he had entered the tent and triumphantly announced that he had taken a massive dump, and that this was an excellent omen. "I've never missed a summit if I've had a good shit the night before." Apparently some of the unfiltered water Jay had been drinking got to him.
At noon we broke for lunch (20,700') and Jay decided he couldn't go any higher. I was elected executive leader for the rest of the summit attempt, and the three of us continued up. Nearby peaks had clouds on them already, but none around us yet. We reached a ridge a couple of hundred feet higher, and looked out at the Gran Acarreo. Roughly translated as "the long haul" this huge scree field was covered in snow from the previous night's storm. It is extremely steep -- about 35 degrees, so we put on our crampons. We had to traverse it to reach the Canaleta, the infamous last steep push before getting to the summit. When dry, the Canaleta is extremely frustrating to climb since the scree is so loose that for every step you take, you slip down half the distance. But it should be a lot easier when snowed over.
Once on the Gran Acarreo, clouds were forming around us. That is to say, we were hiking into a cloud. Visibility was going down fast, but it wasn’t actually snowing, so we continued to climb. We figured that as long as snow didn’t cover the trail we could find our way back just fine even in total white-out. Besides there were plenty of other climbers in front of us and behind us who seemed unfazed. For the next hour of hiking, the clouds around us got thicker, making us nervous. Through occasional breaks, we could look out onto the nearby peaks below us and see that clouds were forming everywhere. We decided to sit still for 15 minutes and see what the weather did.
We were also carefully watching each other’s condition. Chris’s deep blue lips had scared us into running a field-check on him for pulmonary edema earlier. High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, or HAPE, is an altitude condition characterized by persistent coughing and severe shortness of breath. It’s caused by fluid filling the lungs, further reducing the amount of oxygen that the body can use. After looking carefully for all the other signs, we decided Chris’s lips were blue just because he was cold, not because of HAPE. Avi’s hacking cough and deteriorating strength seemed more like the real thing. I was also coughing more than I would have liked.
As we waited, the clouds got thicker. Nearby we saw some dark snow-bearing cumulus clouds. This reminded us poignantly of the previous night’s blizzard. If it snowed like that when we were on the top, our trail down would be gone, and in white-out we would have no choice but to sit still in the amputating cold and wait for the weather to break.
This was enough. We all agreed that it was time to turn back. My watch said we were 21,340 feet above sea level. We pulled out the camera and took our “summit” pictures – us against white backgrounds, no matter which way we faced. As we descended, I felt a great sense of relief. The pressure to keep going up, to push myself into a more and more dangerous situation, was gone. We were returning to safety.
Descent
The climb down was surprisingly difficult. I don’t think any of us had appreciated how tired we were. But once the big motivator of getting to the top was removed, the muscles started to ache. We navigated back to camp perfectly, which was reassuring. Throughout the climb I had been looking behind me to see what the trail would look like on descent. I knew that it could be critically important to be able to find our way back in poor conditions, so I had concentrated on remembering every turn on the way up. Under the fine conditions of our descent, our memories served us well. When we got back to camp, we were happy to see that Jay hadn’t taken a tent and gone down further. We told him what had happened. I don’t think he understood.
We still had plenty food left – at least 5 days worth. We had budgeted 4 bad weather days to hit the summit, and were ahead of schedule anyway. But it was clear that we were all getting sick in the thin air at high camp. We decided that the next day we would return to base camp and lick our wounds. Once everybody was strong again, we could make a second push up.
I lay in my sleeping bag exhausted, wishing somebody would bring me a hot dinner and some water. Avi calls out from the next tent “Hey anybody wanna go down to Nido tonight?” His cough was pretty bad. We had some drugs for treating HAPE, but descent is the only real cure. His ability to do physical work was decreasing. He had a persistent, productive cough that was getting worse. His blood-oxygen saturation was down to about 60%.
Jay answers him “Dude. It’s 9:00. It’ll be dark by the time we hit the trail. We’re going down to Plaza tomorrow anyway.”
I agree, “It would really suck to go down now.”
“Yeah, okay.” Avi coughs back.
I lie there thinking about what I’d just said. It was true. Descent would really suck. I contemplated everything that would be involved. I’d have to get up, put all my clothes back on, stuff my sleeping bag, completely repack my pack, gather up all my junk lying around outside, tear down a tent, and go down the trail in total darkness. Once at Nido, we’d have to completely remake our camp. It would be at least another 3 hours before I could go to sleep. Suckful, but possible. My pocket guide to altitude illness has a Q&A section in the back. One question kept popping up in my head.
Q: My companions say I have HAPE. I have descended a thousand feet to where I first began to feel the extreme shortness of breath. Now I feel a little better. Should I spend the night here and see how I feel in the morning?
A: No. Such a scenario has proven fatal. When you have serious symptoms of altitude illness, you should descend to below the altitude at which you first had any symptoms of altitude illness, even mild ones. You may not improve significantly before doing so.
Such a scenario has proven fatal. Such a scenario has proven fatal. “Hey Avi, want to go down to Nido?”
“Let’s go!”
Jay and Chris stayed at Berlin, planning on meeting us at Plaza the next day. On the hike down, Avi told me that he had been reading my book in camp, and the exact same line had stuck with him. He was about to go down by himself when I offered. It did not seem unlikely that he would have been too weak to hike down by himself had we spent the night at Berlin. The hike down did suck, but we had no regrets. At Nido, just a couple thousand feet lower, Avi was coughing much less.
The next day, before hiking down to Plaza, we grabbed a bunch of food that we had stashed at Nido. Our packs were quite heavy again, since on descent, we don’t have the luxury of carrying only half the gear. Once we were down to about 17,000’ Avi had all but stopped coughing. But he was moving quite slowly, and frequently stopped for no obvious reason. Standing still with an uncomfortably heavy pack on is one of my personal peeves. My feeling is that if you need a real break, let’s take the packs off and rest, otherwise let’s keep moving. Finally I told him I’d meet him back down at Plaza, and went on ahead. It doesn’t take much hindsight to realize that this was somewhat irresponsible, but Avi was cool with it at the time.
I pushed myself down to Plaza without stopping. The warm comfort of a super hamburguesa and Coke was all I could think of. When I got down I decided I’d rather share the glorious meal with somebody else, so I lay down in our old camp site to wait for the others. I fell asleep. Occasionally I’d glanced up the hill and see figures that could have been Jay and Chris and Avi, but they were taking way too long to get down. Confused, but too comfortable to care, I just lay there and waited. A few hours later Jay and Avi walk up, “Hey hoser! You missed all the excitement.” “Huh?”
“Avi passed out on his way down and got a ride to the med-tent. Some guys from Seattle found him lying in the trail. Chris is over talking to them.”
“Actually, I was just tired and thought a rest would be nice,” Avi said with a big smile.
“Whatever. I had to carry his pack down, and these other guys helped him through the penitente field.”
“Yeah, I was really confused when you told me to take my pack off. I couldn’t figure out why you wanted it or what you were going to do with it.”
“You carried his pack and your pack down at once!?”
“Yeah. I strapped them together. It was pretty heavy.” Avi’s pack is huge, almost twice the volume of Jay’s or mine.
“What did they say at the med-tent?”
“They said I was dehydrated. I’m supposed to drink these electrolyte packets and go back at 5:00.”
I dropped hints about going to get hamburguers, but nobody was biting, and I didn’t have the balls to go soft by myself.
The next day was a designated rest day. We hiked over to the hotel, and marveled at it. Spacious and open, it was a real hotel brought in by mule or something. Later that afternoon, I tried to make a phone call, but for one reason or another none of the radio-phones at Plaza were running. Plaza was even more busy than the last time we were here. Peak climbing season was fast approaching, and the place was filling up. In one tent, I found Chris happily munching on a steak sandwich, and talking about Argentine rock music with the locals. “I caved in,” he admitted. This tent housed the foosball table we had seen carried up by mules. Chris and I got soundly thrashed by the owners a couple of times.
Avi decided that he wasn’t going to make another attempt for the summit. He thought the odds were really good his HAPE-like cough would turn him back again, and he didn’t want to ruin anybody else’s chances for the top. His plan was to hike out to Puente with one of the tents, and find some way back to Mendoza where wine and warm sun awaited. After some serious soul-searching, I decided to go back with Avi rather than back up the mountain.
My hard-reached decision was both an acceptance of defeat, and a realization that I had already accomplished my goals. Before leaving, a friend had asked me why I wanted to climb the mountain. I told him it was because most people couldn’t. He asked if that was important to me so that I could tell other people, or for myself. I took his question very seriously, and had decided that I really was doing this for myself, and not for any form of bragging rights.
I had proven to myself I am capable of living for several weeks in the comfortless conditions necessary to climb a mountain like this. I also was convinced that I was strong enough. I have no doubt that I could have reached the top on the day we tried. But, as I often say, getting up is the easy part. Making it down safely is the real trick. While it is possible to summit a mountain like Aconcagua under truly safe conditions, it requires large amounts of patience and luck. Had we been truly careful, we would not have climbed up to Berlin when there were heavy clouds around, and we would have avoided the snow-storm. But this level of care would have prevented us from climbing on other days as well, and slowed our expedition to an unacceptable pace. If I went back up with Jay and Chris, I would probably reach the top, but doing so would almost certainly involve accepting conditions that would be more dangerous than I was comfortable with. Had our expedition been better prepared with say trail-marking wands, radios, emergency oxygen bottles, and gloves that actually kept my hands warm, I would have felt much more comfortable.
Being a successful mountaineer requires accepting risks. In order to be a truly great “hardcore” mountaineer one must take truly great risks. This aspect of the sport did not appeal to me at all. Considering this, I really had failed to climb the mountain, and telling myself “I could have if I’d wanted to” is a complete lie. But this doesn’t bother me at all. My primary goal was always to make it down safely. It is important to realize that this is more important than making it to the top. Many people die confusing these. I had climbed to over 21,000 feet -- much higher than I had ever been before, and higher than all but very few people will ever reach. I had challenged my physical limits, and was pleased with the results. At that point, I was anxious to take a nice summer vacation in Argentina.
Back to Mendoza
The next day, the Viento Blanco was blowing. Around the summit a textbook lenticular cloud was swirling, the telltale sign. None of us had ever seen a lenticular cloud before, but one glance would tell you exactly what they’re supposed to look like: a large white UFO perched to land on the summit. Viento Blanco, or “white wind,” is the local name for a particularly nasty weather pattern that occurs on Aconcagua. All the guide books say just one thing: “don’t climb into Viento Blanco.” We had been told that Viento Blanco was blowing our second night at Canada when our tents were shaken by 60 mph winds, but none of us had poked our heads out to look that night.
Jay and Chris were not deterred by the weather, packing to go back up to Berlin for another attempt. Avi and I were planning our retreat. Avi and I agreed to pack out a bunch of the climbing gear that was stashed at Camp Canada to even the load. Being acclimatized to 20,000 feet and having empty packs, we made the climb to Canada in record time, passing dozens of other climbers on the way up. We also retrieved our leather approach boots, so we wouldn’t have to do the whole hike out in our storm-trooper-esque plastics. We asked Jorge’s man in Plaza to get a call through to Ricardo to pick us up at 3:00 the next afternoon. That should give us plenty of time, as everybody said the hike out shouldn’t be more than 8 hours or so. They were all wrong.
Once we had our packs completely loaded, they weighed about 75 pounds each. My pack had been heavier before, but only as a joke. We moved no faster on our way out than we had on our way in. Boots and tents and helmets and things were strapped to the outside. I could feel bruises forming under my hip-belt. The hike was painful.
Just outside of Plaza, a hiker passed us with four dogs at his heels. One of them was Juan Carlos! She seemed happy to see us, but about as happy to see the rocks and the dead mules on the side of the trail. I asked the hiker if they were his dogs, and he said they were “camp dogs.” Being less burdened, this guy and the dogs quickly left us behind. Trail dogs always seem to stick with the fastest moving human.
As night fell, we were again out of water, and figured that Confluencia was still another two hours away. We put on our headlamps and mindlessly drudged on. Then I noticed that Avi only had a single boot strapped to his pack. We both had our plastic mountaineering boots attached externally, and I must have dislodged his when I took the tent from him to balance our loads. That had been an hour back. We considered our options. As this is a $350 pair of boots, Avi didn’t want to just let it go. I recommended camping there for the night and going back to look for it at first light, but he wanted to look then. I was feeling too weak to hike an extra two hours, so I stayed put while he went back and looked.
The rest was wonderful. Strong winds were blowing, so I stacked our packs on top of each other for a wind break and lay down behind them. It was stormy, too. Snow started falling, even down at 12,000 feet. The morning’s Viento Blanco had finally reached us. About an hour later Avi came back and announced he had come to his senses, and abandoned the search.
We hiked on for another hour and then set up camp for the night. The winds in the valley that night were as strong as anything we’d seen. We worried about how Jay and Chris would fare up high. Our campsite was completely unsheltered, but for some reason the river was clear enough to filter there, so we thirstily made some water. The river seemed too small to me, and I began to wonder if in the dark we’d missed a turn to Confluencia.
The next morning, we started down the valley again, and started to see people heading the other way. We were still on the trail. Avi stopped several groups and asked them to keep an eye out for his boot on the trail, and if they found it to leave it in Plaza where Jay and Chris would get it. We figured that if these guys got to it before the muleteers, he’d have a good chance.
At Confluencia, we stopped for breakfast: chocolate milk and fig newton compress. We made a bunch more water and kept hiking. We didn’t talk much. Just mindlessly placed one foot in front of the other and tried to ignore the pain. We checked out at the ranger station, and were upset that Secor’s book had once again misled us. We did not receive congratulatory beers in return for our full trash bags, as the book told us we would. We took the wrong trail back from the rangers’ station, and found ourselves with a 3 km hike on the road to get back to Puente. Cars would wave and honk as they went by. Several stopped to take pictures of us. One car even got out and posed for pictures with us. They were excited to see real andanistos. All we wanted was a ride down to Puente, but all these cars were full. At 2:00, after a grueling seven hour hike, we sat down at the hamburguer stand at Puente, and enjoyed burgers and beer. We were out of the woodsk. All of civilization’s comforts were ours to relish.
We sat in the refugio at Puente and chatted with the locals while waiting for Ricardo. There we learned about mate (pronounced mah-TAY), an herbal tea that the locals consume in with vigour. Ricardo finally showed up at 8:00 and took us back to Mendoza along with another climber.
Argentine Vacation
Mendoza is known as “La Tierra del Sol y Buen Vino” – the land of sun and good wine. The name fits. All of Argentina has a strong Italian background with many immigrants. Mendoza province has a perfect climate for growing grapes and olives, adding to the cultural similarity. They take wine, beef, and helado (ice cream) very seriously, and they’re all really good. My post-climbing vacation turned out to be one of the all-time greats.
We spent a couple of days in Mendoza feasting on the local bounty. Then we hopped on a 14-hour bus to Buenos Aires for a quick two day visit. We stayed out all night at a dance club, and returned back to Mendoza the next night. A few days later my girlfriend Monica arrived in Mendoza.
When Chris and Jay failed to show up at either of our scheduled meetings, we began to get a little worried. When we found them, they were recovering from a hard day’s drinking, and had completely forgotten about our meetings. The day we left them, they made it as far as Nido. From their, they left for the summit at 2:00 the next morning, and made it to the top. Unfortunately, nobody had given them Avi’s boot. They had just gotten back to Mendoza after a similar two day jaunt in Buenos Aires.
The next day the three students flew back to their schools, while Monica and I continued to enjoy another week in Mendoza. We sampled the local wine, went swimming, watched an amazing soccer game, basked in the sun, and had about as good a time as two people can have.
One bad thing did happen to us. Having missed the bus up to Puente del Inca, we decided to rent a car to see the mountain sights. While going through Uspallata, a police officer pulled me over for passing against a double-yellow. I was guilty, but the infraction was about as common as going over 55 here in the US. He kept my driver’s license saying something like I could get it back when I paid the ticket. Fortunately he gave me the American tourist fine of $388, rather than the locals’ fine of $55. If he’d given me the local fine, I would have had to figure out the system to get my license back, but there was no way I was going to pay $400. I got a new license here in Seattle for five bucks. The incident left me seriously stressed out for the whole day, though.
After two weeks of wonderful sunning in South American summer, I’m back in the States, with a good tan and a smile on my face. Aconcagua was physically and mentally challenging, and I feel wiser for it. I also know that without this trip as motivation, it would have been a really long time before I ever saw Argentina, something I am incredibly glad I did. While I was there, my Spanish improved to the level where I feel comfortable and even eager to visit other Spanish speaking countries. But first I need to find a job and pay off this last trip.
Addendum
It is years later now, and distance has given me a lot of insight into what happened that winter. A few months after we returned from Argentina, Avi called me. He told me he had bad news. Really bad news. Jay was dead. His funeral was the next day. I stared blankly, barely able to ask for details.
Avi had been trying to get a hold of me all week. It was now obvious why he had been calling. Avi offered to pick me up from LAX, and I told him I’d call him from Seatac the next morning when I knew what flight I’d be on.
The entire campus was in shock. The school only has 700 students, and everybody knew Jay. He was North Dorm Proctor,
There is good evidence that Jay’s death was deliberate. The plane hit the ground at a 45 degree angle, with the engine running. That kind of Cessna will fly level without any pressure on the control stick. He had promised a close friend that he would seek counseling for depression that day.
