Argentina

31/3/11

Argentina - Aconcagua: for people who like mountains!

I was recently told the most dangerous part of climbing is getting to the mountain. I can also add to that the hardest part of climbing is getting a permit in Argentina.  Its well publicised on the national park website for example, that the cost of climbing Aconcagua depends on the season, and nationality. Its about 4 times cheaper to climb if you are Argentinian even if you drive around in a nice Mercedes like a lot of people here. So, even though i cant afford a Mercedes I still have to pay 4 times more than people who can.

Apart from that there are 4 seasons, high, medium, low, and off season. Until last year the prices were $500, $300, $150 and free. Now they have almost doubled to $750, $500, $300 with off season being $750 with no rescue service!!! 15th March is the last day of the low season, so i turn up at the tourist office (where they issue permits), to get mine on 14th, only to be told they have stopped issuing permits completely, and now no climbing even in the off season. Having skipped most of Bolivia and northern Argentina to get here in time for a low season climb, I am not amused!

I need an explanation quick and no-one can really give me an answer, except that a lot of people died on the mountain this year. It turns out only 5 people died but what difference does it make anyway, stupid and unlucky people die all the time, everywhere, not just on mountains. Why should it stop anyone else climbing, especially a mere 2 days before the season is up.

The staff are not much help until i start to get really angry, cursing the bureaucracy and cursing the country! After all, people rely on the information on their website from all over the world and book flights and make plans months or even a year in advance. For me its a stepping stone for Everest. If i dont climb here there's no way i can climb Everest.

Luckily workers in the tourist office don't normally argue with tourists and the cursing gets me a few phone calls to the people in charge. After a lot of no's and more cursing i get a "Yes, you can climb". I'll be the last person this year, i need to buy a radio to communicate with the park rangers and i have to sign a form absolving the park from any responsibility to me.

Then its time to pay, I have to go a shop down the road, pay for the permit, come back with the receipt and then get the actual permit. What a clever system that is - Not! After that i need to buy a radio, go back to my hostel, get a taxi to the bus station and get to the park entrance (3 hours away) as quickly as possible before anyone changes their mind about me climbing! At the bus station I'm directed all over the place but there don't seem to be any buses at all to Aconcagua. The only option i have is to take a Santiago (in Chile) shuttle to the park gates, which is fine, but 4 times the price of the normal bus as I have to pay for the seat all the way to Santiago. Well, at least i have arrived, with my 30kg backpack, and a 25km walk to base camp. No mules to help carry the load of course, its already the end of the season! Thankfully I'm well acclimatised from Bolivia and all the other mountains I climbed on the way through Central and South America. It takes me 10 hours to get to base camp at 3300m, and it should get easier from here.

the long haul to base camp looking down...

....and up the valley

There is still one climber at base camp, a 56 Russian, Sergey, now living in Boston, USA for 20 years. And a porter who is also going to climb, i guess its his end of season treat from his company. Sergey has been there a few days already acclimatising, he plans to carry supplies up to higher camps and then come back down the mountain to sleep. By this method most people take 2 weeks to go to the summit and back down.

I'm feeling good and want to go higher up to 5400m the next day, but the doctor at base camp highly advises me to stay an extra night at base camp. I know i can go up, I already went to 5900m a few weeks earlier, but the doctor says how different the air is here. Its actually true, the air is thicker nearer the equator than it is higher or lower in latitude, such as in Argentina or Alaska. But the difference isn't going to be so big that i get sick.  I decide to stay though, if anything were to happen and I had gone against their recommendation, it wouldn't look good. And an extra day gives me time to have a walk around to the glacier, relax and eat a lot of food, reducing the weight in my pack!

Sergey from Russia

melting ice in base camp

The sunsets on the west face of Aconcagua are also spectacular, so the rest day gives me an extra chance to see the 'Alpenglow' a very deep, redder than usual sunset which doesn't always happen, even on clear days.

Aconcagua 6962m

The way to camp 1, Nido del Condor, 4300m, is slow but steady, not very steep and not too far.

There is also a refuge, which looks like an old caravan, and a tent set up which the police rescue team lets me use. On the way i pass Sergey who is camping half way between the two camps, he later brings his supplies up and goes back down to camp. I cant be bothered with all the up and down, its seems like he's climbing the mountain twice. My previous acclimatising is paying off as i don't feel the effects of altitude at all. !

Nido del Condor 5300m

Summit

There is one more camp before the summit and i go straight up to it in the morning, followed by Sergey and the porter who also got up to Nido del Condor yesterday. The three of us get to camp 2, Berlin, 6000m at roughly the same time, but its still almost 1000m to the summit, and after a quick photo stop, i keep going another 200m up, to White Rocks a very scenic camp site at 6200m. Tomorrow is summit day

Camp Berlin 6000m

Shadow of Aconcagua and full moon

White Rocks Camp 6200m

White Rocks Camp 6200m

climbing above 6000m

White Rocks Camp 6200m

I plan to get up at 5 or 6 am and start for the top. The last thing i need though is for my MSR stove to stop working. For some reason its not pumping so i only have the pressure left in the can to cook for me. I manage to put on my last steak :) that i brought from Mendoza and melt half a litre of water. No more dinner, no breakfast and no more water for the whole summit attempt! At least i have chocolate and about 10 energy bars. Eating snow will be the last resort if i need to!

Sergey on the final push

I hadn't really planned on going up so fast, but when you have energy still, you may as well use it! On top of that everyone was saying that tomorrow (Saturday) would be the best weather to summit, after that the weather would be getting worse and worse. I don't know if that was a big fat lie to get us off the mountain and an early holiday for them, or if the police, and the rangers all believed it, but Saturday turned out to be the worst day of the week and it was followed by 4 days of perfect weather.

As for my summit bid, the porter got to the top a few minutes before me and for some reason radioed down to base camp to say the weather was bad. On his way down and 10 meters below the summit he hands me the radio and a woman orders me down!!! saying its too dangerous!  I didn't know he was a porter until later, but its obvious why he is only a porter, who gets paid less to carry 20kg up a mountain than a guide does to carry nothing! because he knows absolutely NOTHING about the mountains!!! OK, so it was cloudy, but there was no wind at all (which is unusual at 7000m!) and fairly good visibility. The trail all the way down was easy to see too, so for a guy who knows nothing about mountains to tell a girl that had never been up here before that is was dangerous and then order me down without asking me anything about it is crazy and enough to spoil the whole trip!

The 'Order' down didn't stop me going to the top though, i was only 10m below it anyway and it took 2 minutes, hardly a life or death difference in the conditions. I was obviously under pressure though to get down and unfortunately i only spent a minute at the top and didn't really appreciate being there as much as i would have liked. Maybe a reason to go back some day, but after all the hassles I'm not sure if I would want to.

altitude reading at the summit

on top of the Americas

The way down was easy, but i was quite tired by now, and i have a habit of sleeping on the way down mountains. After taking a rest i find myself waking up 20 minutes later! Its very refreshing but probably best not to sleep too long, I'll have to get out of the habit of that if i climb Everest, I might not wake up at all one day!

In total the climb took me 8 days from Mendoza to Mendoza, 4 days from base camp to the top and back. Base camp is the official start and finish point for climbing Aconcagua. The record is 5 hours up and down, by an elite athlete!!!


Having climbed so quickly i felt like staying around another day or two, so went back to the glacier to do some ice climbing and photos of myself. This was probably the most difficult and dangerous part of the whole expedition! Its surprising how hard it is to get down off a big icicle!

Penitentes ice fall

getting down is tricky!

Actually the hardest part of the climb was the walk out of the park, Its about 20-25km from base camp to the road and it seems never ending when you just want to be back in Mendoza eating steak and drinking wine! Sergey was also feeling the effects and he had almost no energy to pack up from base camp and walk down. I told him it would probably take him three days just to leave! He just didn't want to move anymore!  I left him there and walked most of the day to Confluencia a camp a couple of hours from the main road. I found the girl who had ordered me down! But she invited me to have dinner and the next day i invited myself to lunch, so it made up for her bad call a little.

Finally i walked out of the park, signed out, left my trash bag which is recorded (big fine if you dont bring it down full!) and got to the road. I'd missed the last bus though so had to walk another 5km or so to the closest town where there was one more bus at 8pm, by midnight i was back in Mendoza. too late for steak, i crashed in a hotel near the bus station. Probably the worst hotel so far on this trip :(

Since then i have gone into meltdown with very little motivation to go out and photograph or see anything. I have however, had 4 all you can eat steak buffets, plenty of Argentinian wine and caught up with some photo editing and this blog again.  A German friend is arriving here too. He's on a 2 year motorbike tour of the Americas and is nearby in Santiago (just over the Andes in Chile). No doubt we will be eating a lot more steak, and wine too of course!