As a part of the 7 summits regimen, and after summiting Kilimanjaro, Elbrus and Kosciuszko, the next on my list was Aconcagua. Aconcagua is the highest mountain in South America located near the border of Argentina and Chile. Nearly 23,000 feet high, Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas and is known for its insane weather. Aconcagua tours start out of Mendoza, Argentina. We used Inka expeditions as our tour operator and they were pretty impressive. To get to Mendoza, you can take flights into town or a bus from Santiago. We realized that the flights are much cheaper into Santiago, Chile and then the bus from Santiago to Mendoza is an experience worth having. Its an ~8 hour bus ride through the Andean mountains with stunning views along the way. You can buy tickets online here. I recommend sitting close to the front of the top floor of the bus for the best view along the way. In Mendoza, Inka put us up in an awesome 5 start hotel called Hotel Diplomatic. This was a great way to start our gruelling trip. The first evening, Inka guides stopped by our rooms and evaluated all the gear. For the missing items, we went down to an outdoor rental place to pick up extra gear. I highly recommend to NOT rent/ buy from this place as it was overpriced and had crappy brands. There are several outdoor retailers in Mendoza with far better stuff. We went to El Refugio to pick up our extras (instead of Chamonix Sports as recommended by Inka). The next day, we exchanged money, paid Inka and Argentinan government for our trip. This took 2ish hours and then we were ready to get going. We loaded the bags in vans and headed down to Penitentes, an old ski town located just outside the Aconcagua nature preserve. Here, Inka has a storage facility where we were able to drop all our bags and casual clothes that wont be needed on the mountain. We even left our laptops and they were safely stored with the Inka guys. That same night, we packed our bags for the mules to drop our bags at Confluencia camp and Plaza Mulas (base camp). Since we stayed at Plaza Confluenzia for two nights, we didn't receive our Plaza Mulas bags for two more days. I will post a separate link to the full itinerary with elevation and other details. The following morning we packed our day packs and started the not so long walk to Confluenzia. The 12 strangers on this trip were quickly becoming friends along the short and easier hike. Within 4 miles, we were at our first camp site, Camp Confluenzia (3400 meters/ 11200 feet). As soon as we arrived, we were served with cheese, pepperoni, fruits, snacks, etc. I realized quickly that food will not be an issue on this trip. The accomodation at Confluenzia was a large tent with bunk beds. The tent had room for 8 peopel so we needed another one for our team. The tent was full of dudes and they all snored ALL night. It was clear that in order to get any sleep at all, we would need some solid ear plugs. Some other facilities include flushable toilets, running water showers (cold), full kitchen with staff and a common group tent. We also celebrated Christmas at this camp site and had a champagne filled christmas eve. Thanks Inka! Next day, we packed our day packs again and headed out to Plaza Franzia (4200 meters/ 13780 feet) for a day hike. The hike was round trip 9 miles from Confluenzia and is (apparently) required for acclimitization before heading to base camp. Plaza Franzia is located at the base of the South Face of Aconcagua. The view is stunning and completely worth this side hike. The south face of the mountain receives and keeps a signficant amount of snow, giving it a really remarkable look. There are several glaciers on this side as well. During the last 30-40 mins of the hike, we were hiking next to the Horcones Glacier, which has the appearance of being burried under soil. It is SO cool! Following day, the real expedition started. We set out early in the morning ~7 am towards Plaza Mulas (4370 meters/ 14337 feet), which is the main base camp for the mountain. The hike from Confluenzia to Plaza Mulas is easily 11.5 miles and most of it is in a flat valley. The valley also creates sort of a wind tunnel making it horrid to traverse during the windy days. We got unlucky and were doing this hike during one such day. To make matters worse, three miles into the hike, we were faced with a whiteout snow blizzard, that we had to hike through for the remaining 8 miles. This was easily one of the hardest things I have done in my life, completely pushing the edge of my resilience. All of our warm weather gear was in Plaza Mulas and we had to brave this storm in some goretex jackets and hiking pants. I borderline got a frostbite before the real trip started. One of our guides had extra gloves and gave me his mittens. For that, I literally owe him my fingers. Thankfully, our lead guide decided to quicken the pace a bit and we managed to reach the base camp 2 hours before planned. What surpised me was the tiny voice in my head that kept reminding me that we will eventually get there and its all going to be alright. This was one of the key lessons I learned time and again during the expedition. More than ever I realized the truth in the statement "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" Thankfully, we got to rest all day next day. This was highly needed and enabled us to replenish our energy. The day was mostly gloomy and windy, so it was a nice day to take a break. This also gave us some time to acclimitize and get ready before the hike to camp 1. Following morning, we woke up and had to carry a load to camp 1. Camp 1 is around 16,000 feet (4910 meters) and the first of the higher camps. We Moved around 15-20 kg per person to Camp 1, which made this day quite challenging. It took us ~3.5 hours to arrive at Camp 1, where we ate a picnic style lunch. We piled all our gear and covered it with a pile of rocks for the next time we stayed at Camp 1. During this hike, the team was divided into two groups of faster and slower hikers. The group of slower hikers had to leave our expedition for varying reasons over the following days. The way back to camp 1 was quick and good fun. We enjoyed a nice dinner with the rest of the crew. The days following our load carry turned out to be quite windy and our guides were unable to lock down a summit day. Traditionally, two days after load carry, the team starts moving to higher camps. However, we ended up spending three days extra at base camp to wait out the bad weather on the higher camps. This ended up being good fun as some of us went bouldering around the base camp. If you're a rock climber, bring your climbing shoes! There are some excellent bouldering problems out there. Also during this time, we all visited the doctor to assess our degree of acclimitization. I was quite well acclimitized with low blood pressure and high VO2. However, I had developed a horrid cough (bronchitis) and cold by this time. The doctors gave me some antibiotics and mucus suppressants to help with this. I decided to stay at base camp for another day to recover and was happy to be mostly over my cold and bronchitis symptoms. The extra day we spent at base camp was new years eve and there was quite a party and a celebration to welcome in the new year! Since I skipped one night at camp 1 (due to bronchitis), I had to catch up with the rest of the group directly at camp 2 (5400/ 18000). This meant a solid 5000 feet/ 1500 m elevation gain with heavy packs. We stopped at camp 1 to pick up part of the load that we carried couple days prior. This made the final approach to camp 2 really friggin hard. We did end up making pretty good time and got to camp 2 in 6.5 hours. The views from camp 2 are STUNNING and easily some of the best on the mountain. The sunset from camp 2 will take your breath away. We unpacked our stuff and got comfortable in the tents. Thankfuly, Inka had a cooking tent that we were able to use for breakfasts and dinner the first few days/ nights on camp 2. The weather was fantastic on our hike to camp 2 but quickly disintegrated over the next few days. The winds were SO high that night that some people lost their tents. We decided to make our tent quite taut by adding extra rocks. Even then, the tent was flexing so much at night that it was slapping us in the face. This whole experience was exhausting but hilarious and awesome at the same time. The next few days were really really windy and had horrible weather on the mountain. While it was sunny (thankfully), the winds were strong enough to lift you and knock over when outside. We therefore hung out in our tents and waited for the weather to pass for a chance to summit. The final day of our trip and the absolute last possible day, the weather finally cleared. By this point, we were exhausted of spending 4 solid full days on camp 2 nearly at 18,000 feet. What upset me was that our guides did not take any opportunity over four days to acclimitize us to camp 3, leaving it all for the last day. We also had an opportunity to move our camp to camp 3 and this would have given the entire team a solid chance for a summit. Finally on January 5th, 15 days after our expedition started, we woke at 1:30 AM to attempt summiting Aconcagua. We pakced up, ate some horribly cold and gross porridge and set out on the mountain at 3 am. To our surprise, our guide lost his way initially, causing us to cut across steep ice sheets on the mountain without much visibility. This sucked. I pulled a muscle in my calf was in in immense pain for the rest of the hike. To make matters worse, my backpack was poorly adjusted and gave me a horrible horrible back ache. Our guide also set out at a massive pace up the mountain that completely wore us out by the time we got to over 20,000 feet. This was the moment for decision. While I was tired, I didn't feel TOO bad. Several of the team members could barely sit up. It was a hard day and hard decision causing us to turn around and head back down. While this was disappointing, it was also necessary for the health and well being of most us. I am also very happy to have crossed my high altitude record of Mr. Kilimanjaro and we had gotten higher than every other mountain in South America.
I decided promptly that I will return to this mountain and will attempt to summit in the near future. However, I will certainly go back with a private expedition, rather than a team of 12strangers. If we were slightly more in control of our expedition, we would have moved to camp 3 and attempted from there. We also could have attempted for the summit earlier in the trip rather than waiting for the very last day possible. Overall, this trip was an excellent experience and the people we met along the way were terrific. Inka expeditions is a great expedition operator and we thoroughly enjoyed the food and the support from them. We will certainly go with Inka again in the future. Thanks for reading! contact me if you have any questions about this trip :)
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MahimaNuclear Engineer, Product and Strategy expert, Vegetarian, Adventurer. Categories
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